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6B Fall Home, Garden and Car Care The Altamont Enterprise – Thursday, September 27, 2012 ...Be prepared: The invasion is underway (Continued from page 1) 4 Auto 4 Truck 4 Farm 4 Garden Altamont Parts Store 996 Altamont Boulevard Altamont, NY 12009 861-1013 FAX 518-861-1027 Monday – Friday 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday – 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. SEE US We’ve got your part! Carrying all name brand automotive parts. “If we don’t have the part, we can get it!” New ScotlaNd auto ceNter Foreign and Domestic Auto repAir NYS Auto and Motorcycle Inspections • Tires Sold and Installed • Quality Pre-Owned Vehicles “We will buy your used car!” 439-3146 1958 New Scotland Road • Slingerlands www.NewScotlandAuto.com Across from the Stonewell Plaza 4 Small Engine 4 Trailer Parts We make up hydraulic hoses V Above the 24 Hour Laundromat V FOR PARTS for these colonies is ball fields,” said Hughes. “The people don’t usually know they’re there, and it’s easy to lose these colonies. If you tell people there are wasps on their ball field, and that you want to keep them there, they won’t really understand that. But the interesting thing is, you can pick these wasps up and hold them, and they don’t sting.” The Cornell Cooperative Extension and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation are working together with citizen scientists to build a mapping database called iMapInvasives, where people can report sightings of invasive species, and their coordinates. To learn more about Wasp- Watchers, visit www.cerceris.info. Those interested in participating may contact Cornell Cooperative Extension at 765-3500, and ask for Hughes. “I’m looking to train people so they can go out and do it,” Hughes said. Portentous plants Several invasive plant species have come to Albany County, but some raise more concern than others. “The one that concerns me is wild parsnip,” said Susan Pezzolla, a community educator with Cornell Cooperative Extension. “Wild parsnip, every year, is getting to be more and more abundant on the roadsides, so it’s drifting into rural areas like yards. It grows a little taller than Queen Anne’s lace, and a lot of people might mistake it for that, but it blooms earlier, and it’s more yellow than Queen Anne’s lace.” Wild parsnip, or pastinaca sativa, is a biennial plant, meaning it takes two years to complete its life cycle. Like giant hogweed, another prevalent invasive species, wild parsnip produces a sap that causes phytophotodermatitis, a condition where skin becomes hypersensitive to ultraviolet light. When exposed to sunlight, the skin will burn, turning red and sometimes producing massive bubbles that can leave scars. Pezzolla said she has seen the plant along Route 85A in New Scotland, and on Krumkill Road from Schoolhouse Road to Voorheesville, “But I think it was kind of innocent in how Wild parsnip, a species believed to have come to the United States from Europe or Asia, has been popping up on roadsides in Albany County. The plant, when in its flowering stage, produces a sap that can cause skin to be come hypersensitive to sunlight, sometimes leading to severe burns. it was originally brought here,” she said. Pezzolla wrote an article on the plant, “The Devil Along the Roadside,” for the online Capital Region Living Magazine, in which she writes that wild parsnip “appears to have been introduced to the Midwest from Europe and Asia; dried plants from the University of Wisconsin date back to 1894.” The plant “is nothing to fool around with, as people have been hospitalized after contact…This is a relatively new plant to our area, and many doctors may not know of it or its effects.” Further, it is not normally found in mowed areas, “so homeowners need not worry. But be “The one that concerns me is wild parsnip” careful if you are out gathering wild flowers, as this weed would find that environment quite suitable,” she wrote. “In its flowering state is when the sap is most harmful,” Pezzolla said this week, though it has passed that stage by this time of year. “The damage has been done. The seeds have been spread; they’ve matured and they’ve left the plant, and the plant is just going to be dying over the course of the rest of the year. That mother plant will not come back next year, but all its babies will.” Pezzolla also talked this week about other species of plants that have invaded Albany County, including the garlic mustard plant. Same Day Digital Photos Every weekday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Photos made daily from digital cards, flash sticks, CD’s, slides, negatives and reprints. Film Processing Same day film processing on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Or drop your film off on Tuesday or Thursday with pickup the following day. Any media type The Altamont Enterprise Photo Shop 861-6641 • 123 Maple Ave., Altamont Solution: Black resigns after 86 Kg6! because she is in zugzwang. If she moves her King to g8, white plays 87 Re8 mate, and any bishop move leads to the loss of the Rook pawn (or the bishop itself).
The Altamont Enterprise – Thursday, September 27, 2012 Fall Home, Garden and Car Care 7B … Foreign plants and insects are making their mark in Albany County “It’s problematic from the standpoint that it’s displacing other native species,” Pezzolla said. “It’s creeping out of the edge of the forests, where it’s really taken a foothold, and the seeds are spreading from there.” T h e g a r l i c mustard plant, she said, was one of many plants brought to the United States by European colonists. “They brought seeds for things they grew in their homeland, not knowing what they’d find in the new country they were going to,” said Pezzolla. “This plant, too, was brought here kind of innocently, but it escaped cultivation, and it’s kind of been running wild ever since.” She said that garlic mustard has been found in and around Delmar. It blooms in late spring, and is also a biennial plant. In its first year, “It doesn’t grow very tall,” Pezzolla said. “We’re telling people to try to mow it as much as they can.” If the plant makes it to its second year, it grows taller and flowers. “It’s important to not let it finish that flowering phase,” she said. “Cut it down before it’s ready to seed. We’re trying to discourage using herbicides. Frequent mowing almost starves the plant to death, because you’re limiting its ability to do photosynthesis. In this case, we’re limiting its ability to set flower and set seed.” Another invader, which has just finished b l o o m i n g along roadsides, is Japanese knotweed. “It’s spacehungry, and “It’s space-hungry, its root system and its root system is incredibly is incredibly aggressive.” aggressive,” Pezzolla said of the weed. “It’ll just keep going till it gobbles up all the space. It’s harder to eradicate because it’s almost woody at its base. It’s very tough, so the longer you allow it to stay, the tougher it gets.” Again, Pezzolla recommends mowing, but gardeners may also then try covering the stumps with cardboard or heavy black plastic to limit sunlight and water absorption. Japanese knotweed was originally brought to the United States in the late 1800s to be used as an ornament, and its deep and dense roots were used for erosion protection along stream banks. “A lot of these plants, it was just such innocence that brought them here, and people thought they were doing a good thing,” Pezzolla concluded. “But the fact is, we don’t know what’s going to happen with our climate, and the way seeds spread around. Before you know it, something that was a good idea has gone very sour.” The Enterprise — Zach Simeone Unharmed hemlocks: Shortly after the invasive hemlock woolly adelgid was spotted in Glenmont, Knox Planning Board member Daniel Driscoll points to the branch of a healthy hemlock tree at the Hudson and Nancy Winn Preserve in Knox. Driscoll explained that the destructive adelgid, which feeds on hemlock trees, creates small white ova sacs that “look like tiny Q-Tips” when it nests. — From Purdue University Department of Botany and Plant Pathology Deep roots: From an original one foot of root, these Canada thistles spread underground in two years, reaching 10 feet below the surface. The thistles cause problems for farmers since the roots run deeper than the soil overturned by plows. The Enterprise — Melissa Hale-Spencer An Addams Family garden In just three years, Canada thistles overtook this once lush Guilderland garden. Although the gardeners spent hours pulling the thistles up by their roots, they proliferated, strangling out the other flowers. Finally cutting them off knee-high, the gardeners applied poison to each individual stalk. A few of the spiky leaves remain in front. BOURQUE MECHANICAL SYSTEMS Residential ● Commercial Furnaces ● Boilers Sales ● Service GAS FURNACE CLEANING $99 95 Donating $10 $10 to to The The Ronald Storm McDonald Relief House Fund for every gas furnace cleaned by Nov. 1st Rensselaer 465-7524 $109 95 Voorheesville 768-2488 Clifton Park 371-8280 www.bourque-hvac.com www.bourquehvac.com CUSTOM MADE INDOOR WEATHER
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