​By: Megan Rought, Ag Resource Specialist, BCCD
Tulips are a very well-known flower and a springtime favorite. I am always so excited to see the first tulip pop up through the ground and blossom into its bright springtime color. When the tulips start to blossom, you know spring is on the way. As many of you probably know, tulips are perennial flowers. That means they come back year after year with little to no maintenance. For many people this is the main reason they love tulips so much. So, for those of us without tulips already planted what is the proper way to plant them? It is really very easy! Tulips come in bulb form and are planted directly into the ground. Tulips should be planted in the fall because they need at least 6 weeks of cold weather to flower in the spring. When planting the bulbs, you can plant them very close together. So close that they are almost touching. Dig a 6-inch-deep hole and place the tulip bulb pointy side up. Cover the bulbs back up with soil and you are done. Easy right?

​By Chad Gadsby, Service Forester
By now most of you are aware that ash throughout the region are mostly dead or dying due to emerald ash borer (EAB) infestation. The US Forest Service has been working since 2018 to develop a process and begin breeding EAB resistant ash out of their Delaware, Ohio research lab. The goal is to breed a genetically diverse population of all ash species native to the US.
To accomplish this task, they developed a set of criteria to identify healthy and/or lingering ash that carry some form of resistance.

This excerpt is taken from Northcentral Pennsylvania Conservancy (NPC) newsletter. To learn more about NPC or to sign up for their newsletter, visit https://npcweb.org/. Written by Allyson Muth, director, Center for Private Forests at Penn State.
Fall hunting seasons have begun in Pennsylvania. Which means for hunters and non-hunters alike, if you’re out in the woods, you should be wearing a significant amount 

By DAN RHODES BCCD Education Coordinator
Please consider constructing or purchasing a bat house from the Game Commission to provide bats with places to live. If you turned on the TV this past month, you were likely to find no shortage of creepy horror movies with bats terrorizing the main characters. If you visited your local candy store to stock up on Halloween trick-or-treat supplies, you probably saw dozens of plastic bat decorations hanging from the ceilings to create the perfect Halloween atmosphere for shoppers.  Bats, it seems, are consistently one of the most popular animals alive when it comes to adding scary effects to your favorite horror movie or getting people in the Halloween mood. For centuries, even before the invention of television, books such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula highlighted the bat as a sinister, bloodthirsty animal who was always out to get you.
Is this hatred and fear toward bats really justified?
What is the truth about bats and their relationship with humans?

Small Scale, Big Reward Forest Management Tools
By: Adam Chorba, Forest Specialist
 
Forestry is often viewed as only large-scale, long-term projects, and this is often true. Forestry is always about planning ahead and getting the most benefits out of an area. However, some concepts can be utilized to benefit small areas, from a few acres to even just a few trees, and it can be accomplished in a relatively short time. If these concepts are done properly, they can have great rewards for both nature and landowner.

By: Kevin Brown, Ag Team Leader
Greetings. I am not necessarily going to go in this order, but these will be the topics of discussion. And I will ramble on in between topics.
First topic, requests. We have had this column for a couple years now. We have hit many topics. We have heard good things about the column, and I want to continue with it, but truthfully, I am running low on topics. We have many topics that we have knowledge about- solar, electric vehicles/power equipment, fossil fuels, anything environmental, ponds, insects, streams, dirt and gravel roads, forests, crop production, and the list goes on. Please contact us with what your interests are. You can hit us up on Facebook, our website www.bccdpa.com , or call us directly. We are here for conservation, but more importantly, education. That is our passion.

By: Kevin Brown, Ag Team Leader
So, in part one I outlined how easy things are to garden this way. I would like to explain a few reasons why in this article.
The comment I finished with last week was that most people plant too early. Now, if you are having great luck with your garden, then don’t change anything.
However, if you aren’t, this could be one reason. I looked up planting times for our area for different things and they were way later than what I have seen people plant at.