- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The Fresno morning news show KSEE Sunrise used the occasion of Pearl Harbor Day yesterday to encourage people to plant Victory Gardens. Victory Gardens are fruit, vegetable and herb gardens that Americans traditionally planted during wartime to aid the war effort.
Director of UC Cooperative Extension in Ventura County, Rose Hayden-Smith, is a vocal proponent of a Victory Garden resurgence in California. She maintains a Victory Grower Web site and blog. Hayden-Smith says the connection...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The Irvine City Council voted on Tuesday to spend $65.5 million over the next three to five years to transform a portion of the old El Toro Marine Corps Air Station into parkland, according to the Los Angeles Times. Orange County's "Great Park" - billed as the first great metropolitan park of the 21st century - is across the street from the UC South Coast Research and Extension Center.
The City of Irvine funds will turn about 225 acres of the base into lawns, exhibition space, sports fields, farmland, citrus groves and a wildlife corridor, among other amenities, the Times story said. Eventually, the Great Park...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The Ventura County 4-H program made a splash over the weekend with two front page feature stories in the Ventura County Star.
The article opened as almost a profile of UC Cooperative Extension 4-H Youth Development advisor Susan Gloeckler. It said Gloeckler teaches children, young adults and other teachers about the importance of farming and technological advances in the field.
“Farmers are scientists and businessmen, and like other fields, they also have to keep up with technology,” Gloeckler was quoted. “We also want children to have an appreciation for animals and understand how important it is to preserve...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
A Ventura County UC Cooperative Extension master composter, Lorraine Rubin, wrote a guest column published in the Ventura County Star over the weekend about the increasing popularity of food gardening. She attributed growth in the age-old hobby to high food costs, job losses, hunger, concerns about food quality, climate change and dwindling energy supplies.
Rubin wrote that the acting county director in the Ventura office, Rose Hayden-Smith, is a nationally recognized leader in the effort to boost home gardening. Hayden-Smith, Rubin wrote in the article, "has been crisscrossing the nation giving speeches,...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
UC Cooperative Extension in Calaveras County has been instumental in initiating a program aimed at providing fresh, healthful food to local residents in need. Farm to Family is actively encouraging gardeners to help supply the local food bank by planting extra vegetables in the coming months, according to a story in today's Stockton Record.
A food shortfall last Thanksgiving and Christmas prompted local decisionmakers to collaborate with UCCE and farmers to find a way to feed hungry families at a time when the economy is putting the squeeze on funding options.
The group identified its chief assets:
"We...