- Author: Daniel H Putnam
- Author: Peter H. Robinson
During our current severe drought any technique that saves water excites us more than a dog in a sausage factory.
Thus the comments by some claiming substantial water savings by growing forage hydroponically as a livestock feed has attracted substantial interest.
Most recently in early September 2016, there was a national NPR radio broadcast about a California rancher who uses a hydroponic growth technique to sprout barley to create forage to feed to sheep. [See: ‘With Water in Short Supply, One California Farmer Grows Feed Indoors” broadcast August 2016 by Ezra David Romero (
- Author: David Robert Haviland
- Author: Peter B Goodell
- Author: Larry Godfrey
- Author: Jeffery A. Dahlberg
Sugarcane aphid has historically only been known as a pest of sugarcane. However, in 2013 farmers in Texas and Louisiana reported that this pest was now causing economic losses in grain sorghum and that traditional broad-spectrum insecticides were not providing control. By 2014 similar reports were received from at least 11 southern states from Texas to Florida, and by 2016 this pest has now moved west to California.
Sugarcane aphid can easily be distinguished from other aphid species due to their yellow color with black feet, tips of antennae and cornicles (tailpipes) that point upward from the rear of the insect....
- Author: UC IPM
Our mission at the University of California Agricultural and Natural Resources (UC ANR), Statewide Integrated Pest Management Program (UC IPM) is to protect the environment by reducing risks caused by pest management practices. UC IPM developed Bee...
- Author: Michelle Leinfelder-Miles
- Author: Mick Canevari
A land manager recently contacted me with questions about overseeding alfalfa. Her alfalfa stand is diminishing but not to the point of giving up on it. Rachael Long, Yolo County farm advisor, Dan Putnam, UC Davis alfalfa specialist, and Mick Canevari, San Joaquin County farm advisor emeritus, presented on this topic at the Alfalfa and Forage Symposium a few years back and wrote up a proceedings paper on this topic. Additionally, there is a production manual which is available...
- Author: Rachael Long
- Author: Larry Godfrey
- Author: Daniel H Putnam
OK - those millions of pretty yellow and white butterflies that have fluttered over fields and ditches and smeared across your windshields - what are they?
Alfalfa fields appear more yellow and white than green with outbreaks of alfalfa caterpillar (Colias eurytheme) butterflies in some fields this year in the Sacramento Valley. There have been massive populations observed throughout the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys.
Although these butterflies are pretty, in this case looks are deceiving. High numbers of butterflies are a warning sign, as they can be serious pests of alfalfa. The larvae, green caterpillars with a white strip along their sides, consume entire leaves and can strip a plant,...