The Real Dirt

Are your tomatoes not looking their beautiful best this year? They may be suffering from blossom end rot. Blossom end rot first appears as a small, water-soaked spot on the blossom end of a tomato. The spot enlarges, darkens, and becomes sunken and leathery.

It's hot. Tomatoes like heat, right? Actually, tomatoes like warm weather, between 65 and 85 degrees. When temperatures soar past 95, tomatoes stop growing. In that kind of heat, their flowers fail to pollinate and instead they dry up and drop off, putting a pause on the production of new fruit.

The Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge in Willows is headquarters to the Sacramento National Wildlife Complex. In January of this year, construction was completed on a beautiful new headquarters building and Visitor Center for the Complex.

Gardeners looking for a drought-tolerant and highly disease-resistant native shrub might consider adding the blue elderberry (Sambucus cerulean also known as Sambucus Mexicana) to their landscape.

Chilopsis linearis, the desert willow or desert catalpa, is prized in dry gardens for its showy, fragrant blossoms which cover the tree in summer.