In light of all the terrible news about wildfires this week, I would like to share some websites which can help you make your home and surroundings as safe as possible.

What you can do for you

UCANR has a Homeowner's Fire Mitigation Guide that includes a lot of information about how to fire-proof your home and surroundings. Take a look at the toolbar on the left side of the webpage. Under “Additional Information” there are several useful checklists including Quick Fixes, Pre-Fire Readiness, and a Pre-Evacuation Checklist.

This blog post has a list of UCANR fire experts (with contact info) who can answer questions related to fire prevention, impacts, and general wildfire science.

UCANR has a Center for Fire Information and Outreach. Of interest is their Fire Information Toolkit, which contains information for homeowners including a Homeowner Wildfire Assessment and after-fire resources for when it's time to go back to your property and start rebuilding.

CAL FIRE has up-to-date information on all the active fires in California. The site also has evacuation information, including video instruction for evacuation pre-planning.

What you can do for others

I read a news article that stated that the average age of fire victims so far is about 80. If you have some elderly neighbors, check in with them to see that they have the resources they need to be safe. 

I'm sure there are a lot of great organizations out there collecting donations of goods and funds to help people displaced by fire. I'll list a couple here and feel free to add more in the comments. As always, you need to make sure that an organizations values and priorities are aligned with yours before making a donation. Redwood Credit Union is collecting donations for North Bay Fire Relief. 100% of your donation goes to victims of the fires and you can designate a county for your funds or have the funds equally distributed among all the counties affected by fire. Nature's Select, a Northern California pet food company, is offering a buy one-get one deal where if you purchase a bag of dog or cat food, they will match it with a second bag. The company is delivering the pet food to families affected by fire. 

 

 

Fungus gnats have started making an appearance in my home. Not huge numbers, but enough to be noticeable. Fungus gnats are small flies that lay eggs in moist organic material such as potting soil or compost. They look sort of like mosquitoes and are usually between 1/8 and 1/16 of an inch long. You may mistake them for fruit flies but fruit flies look a little beefier and also are better fliers than fungus gnats. Fungus gnats are attracted to light, so you may see them near windows but they usually hang out on leaves of houseplants or on the soil in your houseplant pots. They lay eggs in the soil and the larvae burrow into the soil and feed on root hairs and other organic material in the soil. Usually they're just a nuisance in the house, but they can grow to such numbers that a plant's ability to take up water is compromised because fungus gnat larvae have destroyed the plant root hairs. Larvae may also spread plant pathogens, especially in commercial nurseries. A reproductive cycle from adult laying eggs to those eggs hatching larvae which grow to adulthood takes about 17 days and may happen more quickly when it's warm outside.

There are all kinds of folk remedies for these critters. Common treatment suggestions include covering plant soil with a layer of sand or other inorganic mulch, sprinkling cinnamon on the soil surface, or even treating soil with fabric softener. But it turns out that these remedies are pretty ineffective. While mulching with inorganic material does block the gnats' ability to lay eggs on the surface of the soil, if the soil dries out and pulls away from the sides of the pot, the gnats will enter at the sides. In fact, fungus gnats have even been found to enter and lay eggs at plant pot drainage holes. So cultural remedies are unlikely to completely eliminate the problem, although emptying excess water in plant saucers and not overwatering your plants is a good start. 

If you suspect you have fungus gnats, yellow sticky traps placed on the surface of the plant soil will trap the adults. Larvae can be monitored by placing chunks of raw potato in your plants, with the cut side down on the soil. The larvae will enter the potato, at which point you can throw it away and replace it with fresh chunks.

If you determine that you have a fungus gnat problem, there are a couple of biological control agents that will control them in pots and container soil mixes. These include Steinernema nematodes, Hypoaspis predatory mites, and the biological insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis subspecies israelensis (Bti). Bti is readily available in retail nurseries so it may be the easiest agent to acquire. Bti doesn't persist or reproduce indoors, so you may have to do repeated applications at about 5 day intervals to provide control. Nematodes and mites can be mail-ordered but are live and perishable, so must be applied immediately upon receipt. Nematodes can reproduce and provide longer term control of fungus gnats. If your fungus gnats are an outdoor problem, several natural predators will help manage the population, including predatory hunter flies. Avoid broad spectrum insecticides to conserve these and other natural enemies. 

For more information, take a look at the UCANR literature on fungus gnats here and here. Don't forget to subscribe to our blog so that you receive an email notification when a new post goes up. If you have questions, contact us online, by phone or in person to get answers to your gardening quandaries!

 

Last weekend I went out to my back porch to water and deadhead my container garden and came across some damage to my cosmos. The petals of most of the flowers had multiple small holes. I looked more carefully and noticed that the tomato plant next to the cosmos also had small holes in the leaves and in the fruit. Now I was curious! What was causing this damage to my plants? As I started turning over leaves and rotating tomato fruits, I spotted what looked like a yellow ladybug. A-ha! A potential pest! But who was this spotted critter?

Some time on Google netted me the moniker spotted cucumber beetle. Armed with a common name, I started looking for information on the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources website. Pretty soon I had a scientific name, Diabrotica undecimpunctata undecimpunctata. Not just a spotted cucumber beetle, but the Western spotted cucumber beetle. Although I haven't run across this little dude in my garden before, it turns out he's the most abundant cucumber beetle in California.

As is indicated in the common name, Western spotted cucumber beetles and cucumber beetles in general are common on cucurbits, that is melons and cucumbers. But they also will feed on other tender succulent portions of garden plants, including the flowers and leaves. The life cycle includes several generations a year, with eggs laid at the base of plants or in soil cracks, larvae which burrow into the soil and eat plant roots, and adult beetles that attack the aboveground portions of plants. Adult beetles are shiny with black heads, long antennae, and yellowish bodies with black spots. There's also a related striped cucumber beetle that has stripes rather than spots, but does pretty similar damage in the garden.

The good news: older plants can support substantial numbers of cucumber beetles without serious damage. The bad news? Although there are some predators on these critters, including a parasitic tachinid fly, predators may not be enough to dent the population, especially in commercial farming. There are no effective cultural controls for cucumber beetles. Because the larvae are underground, the only life stage that's treatable with pesticides is the adult beetle stage. For the home gardener, the best solution may be to grow seedlings under a protective cloth which can be removed when the plants are old enough to tolerate damage. 

For more information, check out the UCANR Integrated Pest Management information here and here. Don't forget to subscribe to our blog so that you receive an email notification when a new post goes up. If you have questions, contact us online, by phone or in person to get answers to your gardening quandaries!

If you've been wanting to start a garden but feel a little overwhelmed by the task, why not a container garden? You can start simply with just a pot or two and expand as you build your confidence. Why a container garden? 

• You can grow a great variety of vegetables, fruits and flowers in containers 
• You don't have to do nearly as much soil prep as you do for an in-ground garden
• Containers can be squeezed into small spaces where a larger garden won't work, for example, on a balcony or small porch.

Container Types

There are many different types of containers available to use: half wine barrels, plastic pots, glazed clay pots, 5 gallon buckets or other recycled containers can all work. I've got a container garden on my back porch with all of the aforementioned container types as well as a few others including a stock tank I drilled holes in the bottom of, some hypertufa pots, and a couple of containers I built out of old redwood deck boards. In general you want a pot that will hold soil and moisture but also allow drainage. If your container doesn't have drainage holes, make sure you add some. If your pot is large, put it where you want it before filling it with soil as it will get heavy. If your pot is less than about 10” diameter x 10” deep, be careful what you plant in it as the soil will dry out faster. That size would work for a succulent or cactus but wouldn't be ideal for a tomato plant.

Location, Location, Location

Choose your garden container location based on the cultural needs of the plant you plan to put in the container. Most vegetables need 6-8 hours of sunlight a day, as do a lot of annual and perennial flowers. Some varieties of flowers and foliage don't need as much sun or prefer it to be filtered through trees. If you aren't certain, read about the plant's needs before you choose the location.

Soil

Soil is probably the most important factor in having happy container plants. You want a mix that is light, easily wettable and quick draining. The soil should retain moisture but also have plenty of air spaces for the roots. About half the soil mix should be organic material such a coconut coir, compost or worm castings. The other half of the soil mix should be inorganic material such as perlite, vermiculite, or sand. A good quality soil mix might cost you a little more but your plants will be much happier and more productive. The four functions of soil for plants include:

• Anchorage and support
• Storage and supply of water
• Supply of air
• Storage and supply of nutrients

Drainage

Make sure the pot will not damage anything when water drains out of it. It's better not to use a saucer if you don't need it. Why? Because irrigation water with fertilizer in it will leave soluble salts in the soil. If you don't leech these salts out of the pot by adding enough irrigation water so some water drips from the bottom of the pot, the salts will build up in the soil and could cause problems for your plants.

Saturation Zone

There's always a saturated zone at the bottom of the pot after the water drains out. The height of the saturation zone depends on particle size. The finer the particles in the soil, the more saturation occurs. That's important because if the soil is too saturated the plant will have difficulty taking up air through the roots. And although it seems hard to believe, adding gravel at the bottom of the pot only shifts the saturated zone up, leaving less unsaturated soil for the plant to grow in. So don't put a lot of gravel in the bottom of your pots, just a few broken shards to keep your potting mix from falling out the holes in the bottom of your pot. If you have poorly draining soil in your pots, here are a few solutions:

• Improve soil by changing it to a coarser mix
• Practice over-potting if necessary (use a larger pot than you need)
• Increase plant spacing to increase evapotranspiration (the water loss occurring from processes of evaporation and transpiration. Evaporation is when the water on the soil or the plant surfaces turns to water vapor. Transpiration is the loss of water through the leaves of the plant.)
• Irrigate at mid-morning when evapotranspiration is high

Nutrients

The rule for fertilizer is weakly, weekly. That is, frequent but low doses of fertilizer are best for container plants. Using a water-soluble fertilzer is an easy way to control the amount of fertilizer your plants get, because you can apply it when you water your plants, dissolved into your irrigation water. 

Visit here and here for additional reading. Don't forget to subscribe to our blog so that you receive an email notification when a new post goes up. If you have questions, contact us online, by phone or in person to get answers to your gardening quandaries!

Dan Randow's container garden photo license is here. Kristine Paulus' container garden photo license is here.