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Note: This article is part of the Growing Knowledge series in Digger magazine. This series is provided by Oregon State University in collaboration with the United States Department of Agriculture and in partnership with the Oregon Association of Nurseries.

Flora at your fingertips

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Revised, rebranded OregonFlora has new and expanded plant information Looking for an online resource with information about the native and naturalized plants of Oregon? The Oregon Flora Project’s newly expanded website, OregonFlora, will meet the need. Rich with details about more than 4,670 unique species of ferns, conifers, herbs, grasses, and trees, it presents information […]

Heroes and villains

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Research identifies harmful and beneficial microbes in nursery soil Four years ago, we received funding from the Floriculture and Nursery Research Initiative to study the interaction of soil-borne pathogens and environment on nursery plant health and disease control (Digger, July 2015). Since then, we have made significant progress in identifying the beneficial and pathogenic microbes […]

We study gardens: An update from OSU’s Garden Ecology Lab

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Gardens are unique and understudied systems that can have multi-faceted and positive impacts on the environment and public health. The positive impact of gardens is an important thing to consider when planning, installing and maintaining individual gardens as well as neighborhood-wide landscaping installations. It turns out that gardeners and landscapers manage and maintain a significant […]

Stink bugs dining at nurseries

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By Victoria Skillman and Jana Lee You probably have seen the brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB for short) coming into your home or shed to find shelter from the winter cold. This pest arrived in the United States in 1996 and is now in 43 states. BMSB was first detected in Oregon in 2004 and […]

Fighting the resistance

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Weeds can become herbicide-resistant, but there are strategies to counteract it Evidently we hate weeds. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that expenditures on herbicides consistently accounted for the largest portion of total world pesticide expenditures at approximately 45 percent, followed by insecticides, fungicides, and other pesticides. Amazingly, in 2012, U.S. expenditures accounted for […]

Starting a board of directors for your family business

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Starting a board of directors is frequently cited by family business owners as something they know they “should do.” In fact it’s a perennial top request for new family business workshop topics. With all of this reported interest, it’s surprising that only 48 percent of family businesses have actually instituted a functioning board. Two important […]

Rainwater harvesting systems for the Willamette Valley

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The recent trend toward more extreme periods of drought has been a shock to residents of the Pacific Northwest. Many are able to maintain their landscapes at high levels only through heavy summer watering. This has forced people of the Pacific Northwest, and people from all around the world, to rethink their water-use strategies, as […]

The sudden oak death epidemic in Oregon

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Oregon nurseries are increasingly threatened by the repeated expansion of the sudden oak death (SOD) epidemic in Curry County. Although this epidemic is geographically far away from the main nursery production areas, the continued expansion of the SOD quarantine area and the newly discovered introduced EU1 clone are distinct threats to the nursery industry. What […]