Sonoma County Fair ~ August 1 - 11, 2019

This year Sonoma Master Gardeners have chosen to use their garden space to demonstrate the wonders of edible landscaping. We will be showing fairgoers how easy it is to add food-producing plants into an existing landscape or to create an edible ‘food garden' from scratch. Using food-producing plants as part of an organic landscape is a perfect way to make your landscape more sustainable. And it is a fun way to teach children to joys of sustainable organic gardening.

Come join us daily from 11am to 5pm at our new location on the east side of the Courtyard to answer your gardening questions! 

For the first time, we will have information tables on topics ranging from succulents, food gardening, firewise landscaping, worms, bug hotels and more on August 3 & 4th and August 10th & 11th. 

Stop by our demo garden or information tables and say hi!  

Schedule of Talks/Demonstrations

Saturday, 8/3   

11am – 1pm – Saving Water in the Garden Master Gardener GardenSense specialists will be in the Courtyard to talk about how to reduce your water use in the garden. You can sign up to have a team of consultants come to your home to discuss landscape options.                          

1pm – 3pm – All You Need to Know About Soil Come talk with Master Gardeners and learn what makes good soil for plants and how to improve bad soil. Learn the difference between compost and mulch and how to use them.

3pm – 5pm – Caterpillars Make Butterflies Master Gardener experts will talk about the magic of caterpillars and butterflies. Butterflies are losing habitat at an alarming rate. Learn what plants you should have in your garden to create better habitat for butterflies.

Sunday, 8/4

1pm – 3 pm – Landscaping for Fire Master Gardeners will Be in the Courtyard to provide information and answer questions on how best to prepare your landscape for potential wildfires. Learn the most important things you need to do to give yourself and your home a better chance.

3pm – 5pm - TBD 

Saturday, 8/10

11am – 1pm – Good Bug Hotels Master Gardeners will be in the Courtyard to explain how to attract bees and other beneficial insects (the ones that get rid of the bad bugs!) to your garden and provide them habitat and winter quarters so they stay to help in your garden.

1pm – 3pm – Easy-to-grow Succulents Master Gardeners will be in the Courtyard to demonstrate how easy it is to grow succulents. There will be a grow-your-own demo for kids, too.

3pm – 5pm – Worms, Worms, Worms Master Gardeners will be in the Courtyard to talk about the wonders of worm composting and regular composting. Come see how easy composting can be and how good it can be for your garden. Kids of all ages are welcome! Worms will be on hand.

Sunday, 8/11

11am – 1pm – Food Gardening Specialists Master Gardeners will be in the Courtyard to discuss edible landscaping and answer all your questions about growing your own food.

1pm – 3pm - TBD         

3pm – 5pm - TBD

On April 13, 2019, 28 4-H members and volunteers from Sonoma, Marin, Napa and Alameda counties convened with Cooperative Extension staff at the Las Posadas 4-H Camp for the 2019 4-H Environmental Science Institute. The purpose was to improve the competence and confidence of youth 4-H camp staff (affectionately called staffers), and their adult coaches, to facilitate high quality outdoor environmental education during their 4-H camp.

The goal was to help staffers be able to use best practices in hands-on environmental education, improve their content knowledge of a nature subject, and then lead environmental education short courses/education/adventure time sessions during their 4-H camp.

Marisa Coyne, Volunteer Engagement Coordinator for Statewide Master Gardeners, facilitated a session on best practices in outdoor environmental experiential education. Maggie Gunn, 4-H Youth Development Advisor in San Mateo and San Francisco, lead a workshop on the ecologies of Las Posadas including a flower exploration hike. Steven Swain, Environmental Horticulture Advisor in Marin, lead a workshop on animal commutes and tracking animal movement and behavior in the forest, chaparral, and riparian zones. Michael Jones, Forestry Advisor in Mendocino, Lake, and Sonoma counties led a workshop on forests and insects.

Working landscape ecosystems provide benefits to the landowner and to all life forms living or passing through that land. Neighbors benefit with open viewscapes, to clean water and air, and carbon sequestration from well-maintained working landscapes – rangelands, grassland, and open space. There also a potential health benefits received from working landscape from properly managed vegetation removal to reduce the fire fuel loads. However, there are many challenges for landowners to control excessive vegetation on working landscapes, including vast roadless areas that limit access for weed control and lands of low economic value that make chemical and mechanical control impractical. These challenges favor biological control methods; such as insects and microbes for biocontrol, which can be effective but are difficult, expensive, and time consuming to develop. There is, however a readily available and under-exploited tool that has gained interest to manage vegetation – livestock grazing.

Along with prescribed fire, grazing of domestic livestock may be the earliest vegetation management tool employed by humans. We suggest that the challenges of vegetation management on working landscapes may be addressed with the careful sharpening of this old tool. Prescription grazing is the application of livestock grazing at a specified season, duration and intensity to accomplish specific vegetation management goals. Controlled grazing of this type is being employed throughout California on public and private land and is proving to be a promising tool in reducing the fire fuels and unwanted, excessive vegetation.

Furthermore, livestock grazing has one distinct advantage over other control methods; in the process of controlling an undesirable plant, grazing animals convert it into a saleable product.

Steps in Developing a Grazing Prescription

Formulating an effective grazing prescription requires a solid understanding of plant ecology, animal behavior, and plant-animal interactions. A grazing prescription should include specific information on the season and intensity of defoliation, the species, breed, sex, and age class of animal to use, and the stocking rate that will result in the most harm to the target plant and still maintain healthy rangeland ecosystems. A successful grazing prescription should: 1) cause significant damage to the target plant; 2) limit irreparable damage to the surrounding vegetation; 3) be consistent with livestock production goals; and, 4) be integrated with other control methods as part of an overall weed management strategy.

Selecting the Right Species

The species of livestock best suited for the specific vegetation management goals depends on both the plant species of concern and the production setting. Cattle have large rumens that are well adapted to ferment fibrous material and are classified as grass and roughage eaters. They are therefore generally superior to goats or sheep to manage fibrous herbaceous vegetation such as dormant grasses. Goats have narrow and strong mouths well designed for stripping individual leaves from woody stems and for chewing branches. Goats also have a large liver mass relative to cattle or sheep and may therefore more efficiently process plants that contain secondary compounds such as tannins or terpenes. Sheep are generally considered an excellent species to accomplish control of herbaceous weeds. Sheep possess a narrow muzzle and a relatively large rumen per unit body mass. These characteristics allow them to selectively graze and yet tolerate substantial fiber content, and results in diets generally dominated by forbs. Sheep are also small, sure-footed, and well suited for travel in rough topography which may not be easily accessible for chemical weed control.

Grazing Workshops for Working Landscapes in Sonoma & Marin Counties

Creating resiliency in the rural landscape of Sonoma and Marin Counties is critical in preparing for the next natural disaster, managing biodiversity or achieving ecosystem service goals such as carbon sequestration, wildlife habitat and viewsheds.  This growing recognition of the ecological benefits livestock grazing is important to our County's resiliency. However, grazing can be difficult to landowners that have never grazed their properties before.  UC Cooperative Extension will hold several workshops on prescriptive grazing techniques to address the sustainability of our working landscapes while reducing the vegetation that leads to catastrophic wild fires.  Private land owners manage the majority of the open spaces in Sonoma and Marin Counties and these workshops are aimed at those private citizens and other public land owners that are interested in using grazing as a vegetation management tool. Increasing the number of agriculture land grazed will benefit both public and private open space and the residents that benefit from them.  The goal of the workshops is to increase understanding, interest and acceptance of using grazing as a vegetation management tool. Upcoming workshop held at SRJC Shone Farm: 

DAY 1 – FRIDAY, May 17 (8:30 am - 7pm)

• Setting Achievable Grazing Goals
• Basic Principles of Managed Grazing
• Animal Nutrition, Body Condition Scoring 
• Selecting the right grazer
• Animal Husbandry Basics
• Grazing 101
• Electric Fencing
• Drought & Flood Management

DAY 2 – SATURDAY, May 18 (8: 00 am - 5 pm)

• Graze Planning 
• Infrastructure
• Pasture & Range Ecology
• Livestock Protection Tools
• Health Issues-Parasite Control
• Livestock Economics, Leasing
• Carbon Plan
• Monitoring, meeting grazing goals

Register online for 
Grazing School for Vegetation Management & Wildfire Vegetation Reduction.  

Sonoma and Marin County's working landscapes, properly managed with prescription grazing, could prove to be a winning solution for all parties involved. Grazing not only provides a service to land owners and managers that may not be easily achieved in other ways, but it can also provide an income stream to aspiring livestock grazers just starting their grazing businesses.  These workshops will provide educational opportunities for all parties to learn the “how to” in grazing, landowners who what to graze themselves, landowners who want to hire grazes and grazers who are looking to start or increase their grazing business enterprise. Let's work together to sharpen the “old” tool of “livestock grazing” into the “new vegetation management tool” for working landscapes.

UCCE is excited to present our 2018 Annual Report, demonstrating our commitment to education, research-based information and technical expertise in Sonoma County. Our annual report highlights UCCE's research and education impacts, which enhance quality of life and the environmental and economic well-being of the residents of Sonoma County. Our UCCE advisors and County staff continue to bring the highest quality of science to address local issues, especially related to wildfire recovery.