{"id":1027,"date":"2019-11-26T20:02:53","date_gmt":"2019-11-26T20:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/?p=1027"},"modified":"2025-11-14T14:52:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T22:52:16","slug":"from-the-lab-to-your-laptop-getting-research-to-the-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/2019\/11\/26\/from-the-lab-to-your-laptop-getting-research-to-the-public\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Lab to Your Laptop: Getting Research to the Public"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The members of the Garden Ecology lab <\/a>spend much of their time on research into subjects that affect, what else, the ecology of home gardens. Pollinators and their relations with native and non-native plants, bee variety and abundance in gardens, and soil nutrient levels, are among the topics they are delving into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the challenges for the\nlab members \u2013 and for all scientists – is how to get the results of their\nresearch into the hands of people who can use it. Scientific papers are the\ntraditional way, but not many people actually read those, and it can take a\nlong time for research to trickle out from papers to the general public. If you\nread this blog, you\u2019ve discovered one of the ways current research is\ndisseminated quickly, and you\u2019re learning new ideas that you may be able to\nimplement in your own research or gardening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Science you can use in your garden<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Another way research gets to\nthe public is through teaching. Lab members present new data in lectures,\ninterviews, presentations, workshops and classes, including OSU Extension\u2019s Online Master Gardener training<\/a>, which I teach. Each year the course reaches around\n40 Oregon MG trainees, plus another 60 or so horticulturally-minded people who\ntake the course simply to improve their garden knowledge. In addition, our single-subject\nShort Courses<\/a>\nare accessed by several thousand people per year. So any new research I can\ninclude in these courses can potentially reach hundreds or thousands (depending\non the subject) of gardeners per year, who in turn may influence other\ngardeners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this in mind, I have cited Mykl Nelson\u2019s research <\/a>on excessive nutrient levels in managed vegetable garden soils to caution students about the perils of over-fertilizing. In 2020, my new module on Gardening with Pacific Northwest Native Plants will be influenced by Aaron\u2019s data on the native flowers <\/a>most favored by native pollinators. His research, plus other research taking place elsewhere, is showing that just planting a garden of pollinator-attracting plants may not be the best tactic to help native pollinators. A garden full of bees is often, really, a garden full of honey bees. What about all the native bees that are less visible, but at least as important? Aaron Anderson\u2019s research into which plant species attract which bee species is beginning to show that the plants most attractive to honey bees are generally not the same as those most attractive to native bees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Native bee on a native rose<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Honeybees on non-native sunflower<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The takeaway? Gardeners who want to support\npollinators can take the extra step of searching out and growing native plants\nthat are especially attractive to native bees, in addition to the many flowers\nthat honey bees frequent. This is what I will be teaching my Master Gardener\ntrainees in Oregon, and the rest of my students all over the country; many of\nthem will in turn teach other people. Bit by bit the new information gets out\nthere, and more native bees may find the flowers they need to thrive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The members of the Garden Ecology lab spend much of their time on research into subjects that affect, what else, the ecology of home gardens. Pollinators and their relations with native and non-native plants, bee variety and abundance in gardens, and soil nutrient levels, are among the topics they are delving into. One of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8006,"featured_media":1028,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1295191,1295190,1000],"tags":[1427,88537,1174184],"class_list":["post-1027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bees","category-native-plants","category-teaching","tag-native-plants","tag-online-learning","tag-pollinators","has-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/osu-wams-blogs-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs.dir\/2786\/files\/2019\/11\/ipad-in-garden.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8006"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1027"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1038,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions\/1038"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/gardenecologylab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}