Living Lab Update: Low Maintenance Turfgrass

Low maintenance turfgrass requires less water, pesticides, and labor to maintain, thereby creating a more sustainable landscape on campus. Sam Bauer, a Turfgrass Extension Educator, has implemented low maintenance turfgrass as part of his living lab on the St. Paul campus. We're checking in with Sam this week to learn the status of his living lab and advice to future living lab participants.

How does your Living Lab relate to sustainability?

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Lawn and grounds areas established with traditional​ turfgrass species require a significant amount of resources and labor to maintain.  Low maintenance turfgrasses have proven to provide acceptable appearance and function, while requiring fewer inputs of labor, irrigation, fertilizers, and pesticides. We've established three separate areas of low maintenance turfgrass on the St. Paul campus with specific goals of sustainability. The species of tall fescue has been established across from the display and trial garden. In this area we are mainly looking at a reduction in water usage. Between Alderman Hall and the Soil Science building we have established a mixture of fine fescue species that require minimal irrigation, mowing, and fertility. This mixture was chosen because of the sloped landscape that is difficult to mow, which causes safety issues for the landcare team. The third area was established with salt-tolerant sod on a boulevard that receives heavy loading from deicing salts. Every year many boulevards on campus need to be renovated because of the damage from salt. Salt-tolerant sod is more sustainable in this environment.             

How has your Living Lab changed since its beginning? What has been successful/unsuccessful?

​Conversion of the traditional turfgrass species in the Living Lab areas has been a successful process. In many cases, we've been able to completely change the species from start to finish in about six weeks. As the turfgrasses matured, we started to reduce maintenance accordingly. Currently all of our low maintenance turfgrass areas are performing as planned. ​

What advice would you give to someone wanting to start a Living Lab?

​A greater benefit from the Living Lab program can be achieved by collaborating with colleagues and other departments on campus. We've been successful mainly through the support of Landcare and the Department of Horticultural Science.   ​

What has been the most rewarding part about the Living Lab program?

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The opportunity to "practice what we preach". The main goal of our turfgrass extension program is to educate consumers and turfgrass managers on low maintenance grasses and environmentally responsible turfgrass maintenance practices. It is only fitting that we approach the maintenance of campus grounds with the same goals.  ​

Living Lab Update: Community Connections Garden

The Community Connections Garden next to Skok Hall on the St. Paul campus provides a serene pocket of nature for students and faculty to relax and enjoy the outdoors. The Living Lab experience has been a rewarding one for any student or faculty that has participated, so let's check in with Kelly Nail, a Conservation Biology Graduate Student, on the status of her project.

Kelly Nail - Community Connections Garden

How does your Living Lab relate to sustainability?

Our pollinator garden shows that areas on campus can not only be beautiful, but also sustain populations of native plants and pollinators and facilitate informal education of those on campus. Additionally, while there is some work that must be done to maintain this beautiful and educational space, a majority of the work occurred at the outset, making this a very sustainable garden.

How has your Living Lab changed since its beginning? What has been successful/unsuccessful?

Last year, our garden was just getting off the ground and didn't have a chance to bloom to it's full potential. This year, the garden has really taken hold and at any given time has many different flowers in bloom and many different pollinators present. As far as surprises, I don't think we anticipated quite how popular a gathering spot this would be!

What advice would you give to someone wanting to start a Living Lab?

The best advice I can give is to be ambitious and to form partnerships to make it sustainable. The Monarch Lab worked hard to design this garden, with our own Wendy Caldwell and Karen Oberhauser partnering with master gardeners to successfully design the garden, partnering with facilities to successfully start up the garden, and with people in the Monarch Lab to help maintain the garden.

What has been the most rewarding part about the Living Lab program?

The most rewarding thing about our Living Lab garden for me has been to see it being so fully used, not just by pollinators, but by the whole spectrum of university staff, students, and visitors. Seeing this garden used as both a gathering space, a place to relax and communicate, and a place to learn about native plants and pollinators has been extremely rewarding. Also, the proliferation of butterflies, bees, and other insects now present daily in the garden has been so fulfilling to see!

Spark-Y Youth Actions Lab will host Open House Showcasing Sustainability Projects

What have you done with your summer? The youth interns at Spark-Y Youth Actions Lab will have some pretty impressive answers to that question.

Spark-Y is a Twin Cities non-profit that provides educational programs about sustainability for high school, college, and alumni students. Over the course of the summer, interns work in teams to learn how to create sustainable food and plant systems. The six teams include a Sustainable Education (SEL) Team, Vermicompost Team, the Food Lab Team, the Mushroom Team, Curriculum Team, and the School of Environmental Studies (SES) Team.

University of Minnesota student and Minnesota Student Association Sustainability Representative, Justin Halverson, participated as a team leader to the Sustainable Education Team who worked on redesigning one of four Aquaponics systems at Spark-Y.

"What we focus on most at Spark-Y is that there is no such thing as "waste" in nature. Everything is usable!" said Halverson. "In aquaponics systems, there are plants and fish that live in symbiosis with each other. Essentially, the plants use fish waste as nutrients to grow."

Other projects include partnering with the Turtle Bread Company to provide produce to their business in exchange for compostable food waste, creating technology that tests if food is genetically modified, and building an aquaponics system at the School of Environmental Studies at the Minnesota Zoo.

"Our Curriculum Team is also providing the education for our upcoming generations to know what "sustainability" could mean and what our connection and role is within nature, because we are a part of it," he said.

The Spark-Y internship program occurs every summer and Halverson recommends the program to any students interested in doing work with science, plants, fish and replicating nature in a controlled environment.

The Open House will allow patrons to learn how Aquaponics and Vermicompost works, as well as learning about the rest of the sustainability projects worked on by the teams this summer.

Halverson said that it's extremely important to educate the youth about sustainability because we are the future. "If we are not pushing ourselves and the people around us to move into a period where we can thrive in sustainability, who will?"

Spark-Y 2014 Interns

Photo courtesy of Spark-Y Youth Action Labs

Learn more about Spark-Y Youth Action Labs here.

Spark-Y 4th Annual Open House
August 20, 2014
3 p.m. - 8 p.m.

Spark-Y
4432 Chicago Ave
Minneapolis, MN

Facebook Event Page

Organic Recycling Stations in Minneapolis

Are you a resident of Minneapolis or St. Paul looking for a place to dispose of your organic waste? The City of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board have opened two Residential Organics Drop-Offs at Pearl Park (414 E Diamond Lake Road) and South Transfer Station (2850 20th Ave S). The South Transfer Station requires that you bring an ID to drop off organic waste and Pearl Park requires a code for the locks, accessible once you sign up at the City's organics website.

3 SIMPLE Steps for Organics Waste Recycling

1. Collect organics in compostable bags (paper or plastic) from your kitchen, bathroom and laundry room.
2. Bring your bagged organics to the drop-off site.
3. Place the bagged organics into the organic carts during hours of operation.
South Transfer Station: Tuesday 2 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
                                    Wednesday-Friday 12:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
                                    Saturday 8 a.m. - 10 a.m.
Pearl Park: Open 24/7

Organics include:

• Food Scraps
• Fruits and vegetables
• Meat, fish and bones
• Bread, pasta and baked goods
• Egg shells
• Dairy products

• Food-Soiled Paper
• All paper, non-plastic lined plates, cups, bowls
• Paper towels, napkins, facials tissues, tissue paper, paper egg cartons, pizza boxes
• Boxes from refrigerator or freezer not lined with plastic
• Wax, parchment paper and containers

• Other
• Coffee grounds, filters and tea bags
• Tissues, cotton swabs and Q-tips (paper stem only)
• Wood chopsticks, popsicle sticks and toothpicks
• Dryer lint and vacuum cleaner contents
• Floral trimmings and house plants
• Animal, human hair and nail clippings

Information courtesy of City of Minneapolis Solid Waste & Recycling.