Progress 10/01/19 to 09/30/20
Outputs
Target Audience:Greenhouse, Nursery growers, and landscape professionals, Greenhouse, Nursery and garden center owners, managers, and employees, flower and plant breeders, and plant distributors, home gardeners, Master Gardeners, extension educators, and consumers, township officials, general public, and special interest groups and associations interested in green infrastructure, green roof professionals, urban planners, landscape designers, commercial landscape developers, stormwater professionals and regulators, Plant Science students Changes/Problems:COVID 19 restrictions severely reduced opportunities for information dissemination to target audiences and professional development. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Undergraduate students planned, planted, and managed a green roof market garden including evaluating the use of cover crops in that setting. A Masters degree was completed on a project evaluating the use of anthracite as a bioswale amendment to adsorb hydrocarbons. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Flower trial results were published to the PSU Flower Trials website. The website contains searchable results from 2017- 2020. A Masters thesis was published. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Flower trials will be conducted at the PSU SEAREC farm and will include both annual and perennial herbaceous flowering plants. Results will be reported to the Trial Gardens Website. Green roof media nutrient test results will be evaluated and the recommendations on the test reports will be updated based on ongoing test ranges from commercial roofs.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 1: Primarily assisted in the Penn State Flower trials in an advisory capacity. Evaluations of herbaceous annual and perennial flowering plants provide information useful for PA greenhouse growers, garden centers, and homeowners to select and grow the best performing plants for our region. Results also are used by plant breeders to inform their breeding programs to improve herbaceous ornamental plants. Flower variety trials were conducted at the SEAREC (Southeast Ag Research and Extension Center) near Lancaster, PA. Annual and perennial entries from US and international plant suppliers were evaluated for garden performance. Results and photographs from 2017 - 2020 have been published to the website https://agsci.psu.edu/flower-trials/trial-results and are fully searchable. These trials are among the largest flower trials in the Northeast US and are used by commercial growers and landscapers from throughout the region. Goal 2:A green roof vegetable planting was established on the Penn State University Park campus. This project was initiated to demonstrate the potential for food production on a green roof. Undergraduate students designed and planted the beds and started an evaluation and demonstration of the use of a cover crop on a section of the green roof to improve media to be planted with food crops in the spring of 2021. The project is part of the PSU Student farm. A project evaluating the potential use of anthracite as an amendment for rain gardens and bioswales was completed. Adsorption trials with anthracite found that the material was effective at removing petroleum hydrocarbons from water. Column studies were conducted to confirm and quantify this potential. Anthracite was found to have potential for use as a soil amendment in rain gardens and bioswales that might be exposed to petroleum hydrocarbons in stormwater runoff.
Publications
- Type:
Websites
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
https://agsci.psu.edu/flower-trials
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2020
Citation:
Carlos Rolando Fernandez Pulido, 2020, Anthracite as a filter media to remove petrogenic hydrocarbons from stormwater. The Pennsylvania State University. 73pp.
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Progress 10/10/18 to 09/30/19
Outputs
Target Audience: Greenhouse, Nursery growers, and landscape professionals, Greenhouse, Nursery and garden center owners, managers, and employees, flower and plant breeders, and plant distributors, home gardeners, Master Gardeners, extension educators, and consumers, township officials, general public, and special interest groups and associations interested in green infrastructure, green roof professionals, urban planners, landscape designers, commercial landscape developers, stormwater professionals and regulators. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Flower trial field days for landscape professionals and the gardening public were held. Results were presented at extension programs including the Mid-Atlantic Fruit and Vegetable Growers Conference in Hershey, PA, Penn State Ag Progress Days in Rock Springs, PA, The Capital Region greenhouse growers programin Lancaster, PA. Undergraduate students in the student Farm Club planned, planted, maintained and managed green roof flower and herb plantings on a campus green roof. A Masters degree candidate worked on a project evaluating the use of anthracite as a bioswale ammendment to adsorb hydrocarbons. A Ph.D student completed her degree working on green roof biodiversity. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Flower trial results were published to the PSU Flower Trials website. The website contains searchable results from 2017-2019. A Ph.D. dissertation was published. Openhouses and extension meetings were conducted (see previous section). What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Flower trials will be conducted at the PSU SEAREC farm and will include both annual and perennial flowering plants. Results will be reported to the Trial Gardens Website. Flower garden field days for commercial producers and the general public will be held.Column adsorption studies with anthracite amended media will be conducted to confirm the potential for anthracite to remove petroleum hydrocarbon contamination from simulated runoff. Green roof media nutrient test results will be evaluated and the recommendations on the test reports will be updated based on ongoing test ranges from commercial roofs.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Goal 1: Primarily assisted in the trials in an advisory capacity. Evaluations provide information useful for PA greenhouse growers to select and produce the best performing plants for our region. Results also are used by plant breeders to inform their breeding programs to improve herbaceous ornamental plants. Flower variety trials were conducted at the SEAREC (Southeast Ag Research and Extension Center) near Lancaster, PA. Annual and perennial entries from US and international plant suppliers were evaluated for garden performance. There were 914 entries in 2019. Results were published to the Trial Gardens website and presented at the annual trial gardens field day to commercial and professional flower growers and landscapers. Results and photographs from 2017 - 2019 have been published to the websitehttps://agsci.psu.edu/flower-trials/trial-resultsand are fully searchable. These trials are among the largest flower trials in the Northeast US and are used by commercial growers and landscapers from throughout the region. In addition, the trial site was used for a public open house and garden field day reaching an additional 600 participants and is visited by many others during the summer season. Goal 2: Ongoing green roof projects evaluating plant communities and water use rates were concluded and published in a Ph.D dissertation.Students planted, managed, harvested and distributed to the student farm CSA, cut flowers, and herbs grown on a green roof as a part of the PSU Student farm project. A project evaluating the potential use of anthracite as an amendment for rain gardens and bioswales was initiated. Adsorption trials with anthracite found that the material was effective at removing petroleum hydrocarbons from water. Column studies to confirm and quantify this potential have been initiated. The green roof commercial media testing program was evaluated and several minor changes and updates were instituted based on updated guidelines from Germany and the US. Analysis and interpretation of commercial samples was provided to green roof professionals, developers and installers. An evaluation of the nutrient testing program for green roof media was initiated using sample results from the testing lab. Introduced and planted species diversity on an established green roof was most correlated with wind speed and incoming radiation. The study suggested increased likelihood of finding C3 and C4 plants in shaded locations on the roof compared with CAM plants. Single species and mixed community drought stress evaluations suggest that a more diverse community than is commonly employed could survive a 2 week drought while providing better water use and more plant resiliency.
Publications
- Type:
Websites
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2019
Citation:
https://agsci.psu.edu/flower-trials
- Type:
Theses/Dissertations
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Razryadov, Julianna, 2018, Investigation of Methods and Benefits of Expanding Extensive Green Roof Plant Diversity. Ph.D. Dissertation. The Pennsylvania State University. pp.125.
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