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STORRS, Conn.—
State residents can help weed out a growing concern in Connecticut – the spread of the beautiful but invasive plant, purple loosestrife – by becoming beetle farmers.
The University of Connecticut’s Department of Plant Science is co-sponsoring four free beetle farmer workshops between Monday, March 27 and Monday, April 10.
Workshop participants will learn how to raise leaf-eating beetles and release them as part of a biological control campaign to stop the spread of purple loosestrife. The beetles can be raised at home, at school or directly in the wetlands using parent beetles on potted purple loosestrife covered with fine mesh bags. The process produces as many as 1,000 new beetles per container, to be released in early summer.
Purple loosestrife, an invasive, non-native plant found in wetlands, chokes out native plants such as cattails, sedges, bulrush and ferns, and was added to the state’s list of banned plants in October. Since Connecticut launched biological control activities to stop the spread of purple loosestrife in 1996, more than 350 volunteer beetle farmers have been trained.
Workshops will be held at the following times and locations:
- Monday, March 27, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Farmington library at 6 Monteith Drive;
- Thursday, March 30, from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Jones Auditorium at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven at 123 Huntington Street;
- Friday, March 31, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Washington Montessori School in New Preston at 240 Litchfield Turnpike;
- Monday, April 10, from 7 to 9 p.m. on UConn’s Storrs campus in room 207 of the W.B. Young Building.
To register for a workshop, contact Donna Ellis, a UConn extension educator, at donna.ellis@uconn.edu or (860) 486-6448. Visit www.hort.uconn.edu/ipm/ipmbio.htm to learn more about the biological control of invasive plants.
March Releases
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