- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Cities throughout the United States and Canada are reforming land-use and health policies to allow and encourage urban agriculture - including raising chickens, wrote Josie Garthwaite in the New York Times.
Among her sources for the story was the director of UC Cooperative Extension's Statewide Master Gardener Program Pamela Geisel, who keeps 10 hens at her own rural home west of Chico.
She said enthusiasm for homegrown hens in urban areas may be close to peaking.
“It’s sort of a fad,” she said. Still, “it’s easy to buy chicks, and they’re cheap."
Most of the potential...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Alameda County UC Cooperative Extension Master Gardener Birgitt Evans knows a lot about dirt, according to an article in The Bay Citizen. And now, a lot of people know about Birgitt Evans.
Evans sat down for a lengthy interview with reporter Heather Lynn Wood, who published the Q&A session on winter gardening, getting a garden started, composting and tools, and recounted the Master Gardener training process. The result of each volunteer's 17-week certification course, the story said, is an expert gardener armed with a wealth of research-based information and the ability to mentor...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
The UC Cooperative Extension Master Gardener program won't give advice about growing marijuana, even if it is grown legally, according to a Los Angeles Times blog post by Jeff Spurrier.
Spurrier, who is himself a volunteer Master Gardener, reported that UC Master Gardener academic coordinator Pam Geisel recently passed along word from the UC Regents general counsel that Master Gardeners cannot offer assistance on marijuana growing, propagation or problem diagnosis.
To be sure, the new edict doesn't require dramatic changes in...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
UC Davis Cooperative Extension post-harvest specialist Marita Cantwell told Bee reporter Niesha Lofing that consumer demand for high-flavor tomatoes has prompted greater availability of a diversity of tomato varieties in hues from golden yellow to deep burgundy.
"Sales are greater if...