- Author: Mary Louise Flint
Memorial Day weekend, traditionally considered the beginning of California's camping season, is right around the corner. If you are preparing for an upcoming trip, you can help protect California's forests by buying firewood from a local source near the campsite rather than bringing it with you.
When people move wood from place to place, they may also be moving invasive insects and diseases that threaten California's landscape and wildland trees. The goldspotted oak borer, which is devastating native oaks in San Diego, likely hitchhiked from Arizona in firewood. The polyphagous shothole borer, walnut twig beetle and thousand cankers disease, and the pathogen causing sudden oak disease, all continue to spread to new areas on...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Every few years, when weather conditions are just right, California wheat farmers suffer devastating outbreaks of stripe rust, a fungal infection that can rob up to 50 percent of the crop's yield. Rust spores are typically carried on the wind from infected volunteer cereal plants and come to rest on the leaves of wheat, triticale and other cereal crops. The fungi grow just under the plant epidermis and tiny structures penetrate the plant to very harmful effect.
Serious stripe rust epidemics periodically claim the yield of grain growing around the world, including many places where a crop failure can mean widespread hunger in a local population.
Over time, researchers, plant breeders and farmers have found the best way to...
- Author: Mary Louise Flint
Many retail nurseries and garden centers sell lady beetles for controlling aphids in gardens and landscapes. Gardeners often ask, “Does releasing lady beetles really work?”
Lady beetles sold at nurseries for aphid control are convergent lady beetles, named for the converging white marks on its thorax. Suppliers collect beetles from large overwintering aggregations in California's foothills and mountains. Many other species of lady beetles occur naturally in California landscapes but don't aggregate in the mountains and aren't sold commercially.
University of California research has demonstrated that lady beetle releases can effectively control aphids in a limited landscape or garden area if properly handled...
- Author: Marissa (Palin) Stein
People, animals and plants all need water to survive, yet we have less than 1 percent of the earth's water available for our use. And our water supply is diminishing. This year's record California drought conditions mean that now, more than ever, every drop counts.
The average household uses 30 percent of its water outdoors for landscaping and gardening. Inside the home, the majority is used in the bathroom. Just shortening your daily shower by a minute or two can save as much as 700 gallons of water every month!
Pool your knowledge
On May 8, 2014, we're asking you to tell us what you are doing to conserve water. Have you started to take shorter showers? Invested in low-flow faucets...
- Author: Kat Kerlin
- Contributor: Ann King Filmer
More than a decade ago, Ruihong Zhang, a professor of biological and agricultural engineering at the University of California, Davis, started working on a problem: How to turn as much organic waste as possible into as much renewable energy as possible.
Last week, on Earth Day, the university and Sacramento-based technology partner CleanWorld unveiled the UC Davis Renewable Energy Anaerobic Digester (READ) at the campus' former landfill. Here, the anaerobic digestion technology Zhang invented is being used inside large, white, oxygen-deprived tanks. Bacterial microbes in the tanks feast on campus and community food and...