inserts in the garden

Last Thursday, I had attend an insert workshop held by Student Sustainable Club at Riverside City College's Community Garden and it was presented by University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.  At the workshop, I learned using inserts to keep the garden healthy by using natural enemies (Predators vs Parasites) like convergent lady beetles vs aphids.  I also learned that scale insects are very harmful to the garden because they will take all the nutrients from the plant and the plant will die slowly.  In order to get rid of scale insects, you will need to introduce wasps into the garden to control the scale insects’ populations.  Another inserts, I learned in the workshop is Syrphid fly will help the plant pollinate and their larvae eat aphids and eat soft-bodied insects.  Before the workshop, I just know that ladybugs eat bad bugs.  Since after the workshop, I had learned a variety of inserts that can benefit and keep your garden healthy by keeping the parasites inserts population low.

Here are some of the photos I took at the workshop:

The collection of insert bought by UC Agriculture and Natural Resource

There is a convergent lady beetles/ ladybug searching for aphids, whiteflies, and other soft-bodied inserts

There are a few Syrphid flies in the garden

A grasshopper is a parasites in a garden, they will eat your crop

There is a whitefly within blue circle I draw in this piece photo at the center and near the top of this photo.

Some common list of Natural Enemies of Garden Pests/Inserts from UC Agriculture and Natural Resources

Gasland 2 after thought

After seeing “Gasland 2”, I felt that the oil giant have taken over people’s land slowly and forced them to leave their home because of fracking along the fault line and Marcellus and Utica Shale.  Fracking is to drill for oil or natural gas use high-pressure stream or water to force the oil or gas out of the wells.  Fracking may caused some earthquakes, when oil companies inject water into the ground until a certain pressure the ground can hold before an earthquake is released its energy (stress).  However, it has a negative impact the environment and just a matter of time before it pollute groundwater and air large area around the drill site with their toxin waste.  Also, oil company are not reliable because they are exempt from the Clean Water Act.  Drill wells are prompt the leak over time, and it could leak huge volume of methane gas (4 times as powerful as carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere, which can lead to runaway global warming or climate change.  The oil giant and the government hide the truth about fracking to the public.  It is just matter of time before the oil company starts to mine the methane ice in the arctic.

Is Riverside City College sustainable or not?

This week, I was assigned to observe how sustainable Riverside City College (RCC) is.  I had observed at RCC the transportation is not that green; although that, some of the students did walk, take the Riverside Transit Agencies (RTA) bus, and even ride their bike to RCC.  I find that most students prefer drive or carpool to RCC.  I have asked some of the International Club members on Saturday about their thought about the RTA bus service on Route 1, and most of them replied that the RTA service sucks because it always late and sometimes over-crowded.  I have also asked the club members that if you have a driving license and a car will you drive to RCC, and they replied possible yes because they are tired of waiting for a RTA bus.  I had some similar experiences with RTA, which RTA was always late and they sometimes will missed a scheduled bus service.  I only ride the RTA for half a year since I transfer from Santa Monica College (SMC) back in 2009.  The reason I stopped ride the RTA bus because it is unreliable and I was always late for my classes during my first semester at RCC that is not fun at all.  Now, I drive to RCC everyday although RTA bus can reach my apartment but I still prefer I drive to RCC because I can better manage my time from at least an hour back and from RCC to about 20 minutes when I drive, which I can used the time I saved to put it on my study time.  When I compare the transportation between RCC and SMC, I saw there is a huge difference because the bus company (Big Blue Bus) at Santa Monica did add some special service on top of their normal service on the Route 7 depends on how much people are at the bus station depart form SMC toward Los Angeles.  I remember that SMC encouraged students to take the Big Blue Bus to school that is one of the green principle they have beside there are a lot of green recycle bins which is very easy to identify.  Overall, I do not believe RCC is that sustainable campus compared to SMC; in order to, for RCC to be sustainably first they educate students how to be sustainable, and for its transportation to and from campus RTA need to improve its service and its frequency.

www.smc.edu

http://bigbluebus.com/
http://riversidetransit.com/home/