Search Results for: garden

Scientist in the garden: dragonfly eyes, bees bite flowers, cool tomatoes, & tips

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What’s the deal with dragonfly eyes? They are so huge! We’ll zoom in on them. Do bees bite? Yes, but not the way you might think. Growing cool tomatoes? I have some thoughts on that too. I’m a scientist and a gardener so it’s not surprising I write an occasional series here on The Niche …

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Scientist in the garden: purple cauliflower & other cool photos

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I’ve been gardening since I was a kid and I guess I’ve been a scientist that long too so now it’s time for another installment of “scientist in the garden.” You can see past such posts here, which usually include various cool photos.  Today’s post is focused on unusual things in the garden. Getting out …

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Where I discover an alligator (lizard) in my garden

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If you garden long enough you may start to see some cool critters. We had an unusually wet winter and very hot, dry summer here in Davis, CA. Maybe it’s coincidence, but the range of creatures in my garden seems different. For instance, I’ve been seeing much bigger dragon flies this year and a lot …

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Scientist in the Garden: lessons for stem cells & science

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Here’s another edition of my posts over the years in my series ‘The Scientist in the Garden’. Can gardening teach us some important things about stem cells and about doing science more generally? Regular readers of this blog know that I am really into gardening and especially during the last 5 or so years I’ve been …

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Scientist in the garden: tomato crop builds, faces giant enemy

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As regular readers of this blog know, one of my hobbies is gardening and I like to bring a scientific perspective to the garden. This year in my garden I’ve planted a whole bunch of tomatoes including unusual and fun varieties. Little did I know that a giant tomato enemy would arrive. More on that …

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Praying mantis & giant spider hunting bees on garden sunflower

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As readers of this blog may recall, I have a garden where I grow a variety of plants every year. One year I had quite a few sunflowers and ever since I have “volunteer” sunflowers popping up that have all kinds of interesting traits. The neighborhood squirrels collected hundreds of sunflower seeds and buried some …

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