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June 8 - Calling all gardeners: fight insects, contribute to sustainable gardening project
Is your garden being attacked by insects? If you have a plot in a community garden, don’t like using chemicals to control pests and want to contribute to sustainable gardening practices, UNIBUG is looking for you.
UNIBUG – the User Network for Insect Biology in the Urban Garden – fights insects the natural way: with other insects. These predators – ground beetles, hoverflies and soldier beetles, to name a few – eat the bugs that are making a meal of your vegetables.
Learning which plant types and species these hungry “good guys” are attracted to is UNIBUG’s goal. But they need your help.
“We’re looking for citizen scientists who are willing to dedicate a small area of their plots to a specific test plant species or variety, and then count the beneficial insects,” says Dr. Veronica Wahl, UNIBUG Project Coordinator at the Institute for Urban Ecology at Douglas College. “It only takes about 15 minutes a week, and the information can be sent to us over the Internet or by telephone.”
UNIBUG staff will visit the gardens and provide onsite training and support as well as the monitoring equipment free of charge. Dr. Wahl is hoping that local nurseries will donate the plants needed for the project. “If we can’t get the nurseries on board and we have 100 participants, there may be a small fee of approximately $5 per person.”
The project won’t be all work and no play, however.
“We’ll have community meetings and socials for the teams, and are starting a Facebook page where people can connect and share their experiences and ask questions. There’s also a year-end gathering where we thank everyone and they can meet each other in person and learn about the latest findings from the research data that they collected over the summer.
Wahl says UNIBUG is hoping to use the results to make recommendations to gardeners about beneficial insect-attracting plants they can use to manage pests naturally, rather than with pesticides.
“We’d also provide the information to the plant nursery industry and retail garden stores so they can make recommendations to homeowners or landscapers of plants suited to attract biological controls to urban garden spaces.”
To get involved, contact Veronica Wahl at iue@douglascollege.ca or 604-527-5522.
UNIBUG – the User Network for Insect Biology in the Urban Garden – fights insects the natural way: with other insects. These predators – ground beetles, hoverflies and soldier beetles, to name a few – eat the bugs that are making a meal of your vegetables.
Learning which plant types and species these hungry “good guys” are attracted to is UNIBUG’s goal. But they need your help.
“We’re looking for citizen scientists who are willing to dedicate a small area of their plots to a specific test plant species or variety, and then count the beneficial insects,” says Dr. Veronica Wahl, UNIBUG Project Coordinator at the Institute for Urban Ecology at Douglas College. “It only takes about 15 minutes a week, and the information can be sent to us over the Internet or by telephone.”
UNIBUG staff will visit the gardens and provide onsite training and support as well as the monitoring equipment free of charge. Dr. Wahl is hoping that local nurseries will donate the plants needed for the project. “If we can’t get the nurseries on board and we have 100 participants, there may be a small fee of approximately $5 per person.”
The project won’t be all work and no play, however.
“We’ll have community meetings and socials for the teams, and are starting a Facebook page where people can connect and share their experiences and ask questions. There’s also a year-end gathering where we thank everyone and they can meet each other in person and learn about the latest findings from the research data that they collected over the summer.
Wahl says UNIBUG is hoping to use the results to make recommendations to gardeners about beneficial insect-attracting plants they can use to manage pests naturally, rather than with pesticides.
“We’d also provide the information to the plant nursery industry and retail garden stores so they can make recommendations to homeowners or landscapers of plants suited to attract biological controls to urban garden spaces.”
To get involved, contact Veronica Wahl at iue@douglascollege.ca or 604-527-5522.
