- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Hundreds of garden enthusiasts are expected to gather at Orange County's "Great Park" on Saturday, Sept. 17, as a six-ton, 25-foot-wide Jacaranda tree is lowered into the ground by crane to commemorate the launch of a five-year $750,000 donation from ScottsMiracle-Gro, according to a news release distributed by the Orange County Great Park Corporation. The park's agricultural programs will receive $500,000 in financial support and $250,000 in products. The tree planting and check presentation take place before the first of five fall garden workshops offered in cooperation with the
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Writer Eve Kelley of the San Diego Reader contacted UC Cooperative Extension horticulture advisor Vincent Lazaneo when she was bent on a conducting a soil text to diagnose her garden failure. “When someone tells me they want to have their soil tested, I first ask, ‘Why?’” Lazaneo said. The UC advisor suggested some alternate approaches for getting a garden to grow, gave reasons gardeners would resort to a soil test and explained how to collect samples.
If you decide to submit your sample to a lab, Lazaneo told the reporter, “Make sure they will provide an interpretation of the...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The Sacramento Bee recently warned readers of certain plants that might at first appear to be lovely, delicate greenery, but in time can become the vegetative equivalent of a street gang viciously expanding its turf. The story was picked up yesterday by Scripps News Service.
The most notorious garden thugs, the story said, are bamboo and mint.
Ellen Zagory, the horticulture director for the UC Davis Arboretum, told reporter Debbie Arrington that she has neighbors with running bamboo, which means she has...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors voted yesterday to open county land — including parts of parks, open space parcels and vacant lots in residential areas — to community gardeners and small commercial farmers, according to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.
The initiative is designed to make land available for agricultural production in an area where high land values make it nearly impossible to farm.
UC Cooperative Extension in Sonoma County will conduct an inventory to identify suitable land for the project. The researchers will consider property owned by the county water agency and land controlled by the...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
At the end of a lengthy list of hoity-toity restaurants and upscale events published in the Los Angeles Daily News this week, the writer slipped in a road trip to the Great Park Farm and Food Lab in Orange County, where educational gardens are maintained by UC Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners.
After dishing about the five-spice braised pork belly with star anise served at Rama, seitan meatballs with tomato ginger curry at Mana's on Maple, and a $150 per person fundraiser at the Ritz-Carlton, food editor Natalie Haughton plugs the lab's pizza and spaghetti garden, where...