- (Focus Area) Yard & Garden
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Ricardo Vela, manager of UC ANR News and Information Outreach in Spanish (NOS), won the ACE 2024 Rising Star Award, an annual award that "honors communicators, instructors and researchers who demonstrate exceptional leadership and technical skills in their communication field, to their institution, and service to ACE."
Five other UC ANR communicators won either a gold (first place), silver (second place), or a bronze (third place) award.
- A trio from UC ANR Strategic Communications--Michael Hsu, senior public information representative; Ethan Ireland, senior videographer; and Evett Kilmartin, photographer--teamed to win a silver award for their video, “Farm-to-Corrections Project."
- Strategic Communications' social media strategist Doralicia Garay won a bronze award for her entry, “Improving Lives in California” in the category, social media organic campaign.
- Kathy Keatley Garvey, communications specialist for the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and author of the Bug Squad blog on the UC ANR site, won a gold award for “best feature photo."
They will receive their awards at the ACE conference, scheduled June 23-25 in Salt Lake City Utah. The theme: “Big Ideas Start Here.”
Ricardo Vela
Ricardo Vela is a 35-year, two-time Emmy-winning broadcast journalism professional, as noted on the ACE site. As program manager of NOS, he supervises a Spanish-language expert team that disseminates news and research about agriculture, nutrition, and natural resources to Spanish-speaking communities across California. Vela is “an advocate for Latino and other ethnic groups, promoting their contributions to society and creating for the first time, events for the UC ANR community to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month and Cesar Chavez Day.”
Before joining UC ANR, Vela worked as a national news correspondent for Univision and CNN in Texas and Los Angeles. He started his journalism career at the Chicago Tribune and Univision in Chicago, Ill. While in Chicago, he collaborated with several Latino community organizations, always promoting equity and inclusion. He served as Univision's main news anchor in San Diego for 17 years and hosted a morning talk radio show,“Voces Hispanas,” for 10 years. His career includes serving as news director and anchor at Entravisión (a Univisión affiliate) in Palm Springs and as a news anchor at Telemundo in El Paso, Texas. In 2006, Hispanic Magazine listed him as among the 100 most influential Latinos in the country.
UC ANR Vice President Glenda Humiston appointed Vela as a founding member of the UC Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee to serve a three-year term.
The ACE Rising Star Award memorializes Frank Jeter (1891-1955), a pioneering ACE member from North Carolina who made significant contributions to the communication field and to ACE.
Michael Hsu, Ethan Ireland and Evett Kilmartin
The Hsu-Ireland-Kilmartin team produced a video featuring UC ANR's Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) and its unique partnership with Impact Justice, ChangeLab Solutions, Spork, and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDRC). Last July they launched the "Farm-to-Corrections Harvest of the Month" project, which brings fresh, specialty produce into California prisons “to improve the diets of the residents, as well as improve their overall health and well-being.” Impact Justice is a prison reform organization, ChangeLab Solutions is a health equity nonprofit, and Spork is a regional food hub.
The video, Hsu said, aims to raise awareness and build support for the project. He cited its many wins:
- Opens major untapped market for California growers and producers (especially small farmers)
- Demonstrates a way for CDCR to meet requirements for in-state sourcing of food
- Provides healthier food for residents of the correctional facilities, while introducing new produce and nutrition education opportunities that can help them live better lives while they are in prison and after they return to their communities.
Hsu conducted the interviews and wrote the script; Ireland shot and edited the video; and Kilmartin contributed photos. Some images were taken in the California Department of Corrections, California State Prison, Solano (Vacaville). (See the news story, "Farm-to-Corrections' Project Provides Fresh Produce to People in Prison, Boosts California Growers.")
Doralicia Garay
"The campaign's strategic emphasis on showcasing employees within the narrative of research efforts enhances the UC ANR brand identity and positions the organization as a collaborative pioneer in innovation," Garay wrote. "This comprehensive approach leverages the power of social media to extend reach, foster engagement, and effectively cater to our online community."
Among those featured in "Improving Lives in California:" entomologist Ian Grettenberger, assistant professor of Cooperative Extension, and a member of the faculty of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Kathy Keatley Garvey
Kathy Keatley Garvey, a journalist formerly with UC ANR before joining the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, submitted an image of a honey bee buzzing over a zinnia. Her entry, “Celebrating the Honey Bee," won the feature photo category, for "one image that effectively tells a story."
"The purpose of this photo was to celebrate the honey bee by capturing an image of a pollen-packing worker bee in flight over a bright flower," wrote Garvey. Her gear: a Nikon D500 with a 105mm lens. Settings: 1/4000 of a second (to freeze the action), ISO 1000, and f-stop 6.3. She sought to showcase "the amazing color: the bright red zinnia and the orange pollen;" the bee's speed (deliberately blurring the wings); and "to emphasize that foraging honey bees are incredible workers."
"That is one huge ball of pollen that she'll take back to her colony," Garvey wrote. Feedspot, which ranks blogs by traffic, social media followers and freshness, ranks her Bug Squad blog as the No. 4 bug blog in the world, Garvey has written the blog every night, Monday through Friday, since Aug. 6, 2008.
Communication Professionals
ACE, headquartered in Morton Grove, Ill., describes it members as "communication faculty and professionals at public and land-grant universities throughout the United States and in similar institutions in other nations.We are communication professionals at local, state and federal agencies; corporations and nonprofit organizations; and agriculture- and natural resources-focused international research centers."
Its members include "writers, editors, graphic designers, webmasters, video producers, information technologists, photographers, administrators, researchers, faculty members and others in the communications field. We plan, prepare and disseminate research results and Extension educational materials. We distribute research-based information to scientists and technicians, and practical, problem-solving information to people who put it to work: farmers, families, foresters, food processors, ranchers, homemakers, news media, youth, marine businesses, businesses and many others."
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Today, Memorial Day 2024, we pay tribute our fallen soldiers, and those who served, survived, and struggled home.
It's a day I remember my American Revolutionary War ancestors, but especially my Civil War ancestor, Samuel Davidson Laughlin, who at age 18 served as a Union color bearer in the Civil War. He was selected to carry Old Glory for his height (6'3"), his strength (farm boy from Linn, Mo.) and his courage (front-line duty).
"Being a color bearer (aka carrying the flag), was a prestigious and important role in the Army. Not only were you carrying the symbol of what you were fighting for, the flag was any easy mark for soldiers to organize around," according to an article written in a National Museum of Civil War Medicine post by Amelia Grabowski, the outreach and education coordinator at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine and the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum.
Young Samuel carried the flag in three of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War: the Battle of Lookout Mountain, and the battles of Chicamauga and Chattanooga. A musket tore a hole in his flag but he emerged from the Civil War physically unscathed.
He returned home to Missouri, married, moved with his family to Castle Rock, Wash., and built a round barn there in 1883. He would die of blood poisoning in 1910. In 1986 his barn would be listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
He rests in a small cemetery next to his beloved barn. His gravestone reads simply: "Gone, But Not Forgotten."
"Color bearer" Noah Coughlan, a native of Vacaville, Calif., paid tribute to American soldiers, including Samuel Laughlin, in his 2023 Run Across America that spanned 167 days and 3,600 miles. See Run for Revival.
In addition, Memorial Day traditionally marks the beginning of summer, and as an aside, it's often the weekend when we see our first monarch of the year. Yesterday, right on cue, a monarch fluttered through our garden, touched down on a cherry laurel branch,surveyed the milkweed and floral resources, and then, poof...gone.
But not forgotten.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
That was the consensus at the Bohart Museum of Entomology open house when attendees tried to locate the queen in the bee observation hive at a table staffed by UC Davis graduate student Richard Martinez of the Elina Lastro Niño lab, Department of Entomology and Nematology.
Martinez purposefully didn't mark the queen.
"Most kids thought the queen was going to be marked--common beekeeping practice--but mine wasn't, so they thought that was unfair," Martinez quipped. "Only one kid was able to find the queen. And it was toward the end of the event. The queen was laying an egg when we found her."
The drones, the males, also drew avid interest.
"After I mentioned the hive has drones, what i referred to as 'the boys'--it helps kids understand their role in the hive--they were fascinated with finding the drones, which they did."
Most kids, however, confused drones for the queen, Martinez said.
Attendees, both adults and youth, delighted in trying on the beekeeper veils and suits, and examining the hive tools and other apiary equipment.
"A lot of the kids asked what bees do inside the hive," Martinez said. "So I went through my list of roles honey bees carry out. One family was super invested in the science behind honey bee research, particularly nutrition, which is what I study."
"It was a pretty fun event," he said.
The queen bee, the largest bee in the colony, has a long, narrow, pointed abdomen, and shorter wings than the worker bee. The worker has a rounded abdomen and wings that extend almost to the end of the abdomen. The drone, stout in body, has what some call "wrap around eyes."
The Bohart Museum open house, held May 19 not only featured honey bees (managed bees) but wild bees. (More images pending)
Martinez, a master's student, studies honey bee health, specializing in nutrition, in the lab of E. L. Niño, associate professor of Cooperative Extension, and a member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology faculty.
Martinez recently helped staffed the UC Davis Entomology Graduate Student Association (EGSA) t-shirt booth at Briggs Hall during the 110th annual UC Davis Picnic Day, where he and fellow graduate students wore "Bugbie" shirts. The t-shirt, designed by Marielle Hansel Friedman, a second-year doctoral student in the lab of urban landscape entomologist Emily Meineke, features a rosy maple moth, Dryocampa rubicunda. (EGSA offers a variety of t-shirts on its sales website at https://ucdavisentgrad.square.site/.)
The Bohart Museum, located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis, houses a global collection of eight million insects, plus a live petting zoo, and a gift shop. Professor Jason Bond, the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair of the Department of Entomology and Nematology, and the associate dean, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, directs the museum. He also serves as president-elect of the American Arachnological Society.
The next open houses are set for
- Saturday, July 20: "Moth Night at the Museum," 7 p.m. to 11 p.m.
- Saturday, Sept. 28: "Museum ABCs: Arthropods Bohart, and Collecting," 1 to 4:30 p.m.
All open houses are free and family friendly; parking is also free on weekends.
Summer public walk-in hours are on Tuesdays, June 17-Aug. 27 from 9 a.m. to noon, and from 1 to 4 p.m. The museum will be closed to the general public from Sept. 1-22.
For more information, access the website at https://bohart.ucdavis.edu or contact bmuseum@ucdavis.edu.
- Author: Ryan Daugherty
I was dealing with a gopher problem in a lawn awhile back and I came across another turfgrass pest that you may or may not be familiar with; a chafer beetle.
These white grubs are the immature larval form of a chafer beetle.
Here in California we deal mainly with the masked chafer (Cyclocephala spp.). Mature grubs have white or cream colored, C-shaped bodies, six legs on their upper half, and a chestnut brown head. They can be confused with the somewhat smaller black turfgrass ataenius larvae (Ataenius spretulus). To identify the difference between the two, look at the tip of the abdomen (the opposite end from the head) for the arrangement of bristles and overall anatomy, we call this the raster pattern. A chafer's raster will have a transverse anal slit with an indistinct pattern of bristles all over. An ataenius will have two distinct pad-like structures on the tip of the anal slit.
The chafer grubs feed on turf roots in early spring then stop around May to pupate with adults emerging around June to mate. Adults actually have non-functional mouthparts and so do not cause feeding damage, in fact they die of starvation shortly after laying eggs. Adults are about 3/4 inches long with golden brown bodies and they emerge during the night with a strong attraction to light. If you see adults during the summer, eggs are likely being laid in your grass. Eggs hatch around August and the grubs do most of their damage in September and October before moving deeper into the soil to overwinter until the spring.
Damage looks like drought symptoms in turf: brown, blueish, or gray spots, brittle straw colored grass, thinning stands, and footprinting. These symptoms are from the extensive root feeding of the grubs as the grass loses much of its ability to take up water. You may also see vertebrate feeding from birds or skunks that can cause further damage digging for the grubs. Spots of affected turf may be small, only being a foot or two across but may combine with other spots to form large sections of damaged turf. A hallmark of grub damage is that damaged turf can be peeled back from the soil like a carpet, due to the turf having no roots.
Insect damage in home lawns is rarer than you might think, with abiotic problems like poor irrigation, mowing, or fertility practices being a more likely culprit for a struggling lawn. If there is an insect pest make sure you correctly identify the insect before intervening with any control measures. Also remember that the presence of a pest doesn't always necessitate control. A healthy lawn can withstand damage from a few grubs and a robust lawn is always the best defense against pest damage.
Damaged turf can be helped by irrigating more frequently to keep soil moist around the lawns now shallow roots. Lawn aeration can also kill segments of grub populations. Reserve any kind of chemical intervention until you see 6 or more grubs per square foot. Several insecticides are available on the market for chafers or white grub control just look at the label. UC IPM has a page dedicated to masked chafers, but keep in mind the pesticides recommended there are for professionals.
Always read and understand the label of any pesticide you intend to use. Be careful to refrain from applying insecticides (especially broad spectrum) if there are flowering plants in and around the lawn; this includes weeds like clover or dandelions as it can harm beneficial insects like pollinators that may come into contact with them.
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
If you visited the horticulture building during the Dixon May Fair (the four-day fair traditionally ends on Mother's Day), you probably saw a team of UC Master Gardeners answering questions from fairgoers and handing out literature.
The UC Master Gardener Program, founded in 1980 and part of the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR), is directed by Missy Gable. The members share a passion for gardening and environmental stewardship, as noted on their website. "UC Master Gardeners are rooted in education and grown in-service! In exchange for training from the University, UC Master Gardeners offer volunteer services and outreach to the general public in more than 1,286 demonstration, community and school gardens across 53 California counties. Last year 6,154 active UC Master Gardener volunteers donated 446,237 hours, and 6.8+ million hours have been donated since the program's inception."
"Our mission is simple: To extend research-based knowledge and information on home horticulture, pest management, and sustainable landscape practices to the residents of California. We stand guided by our core values and strategic initiatives, aiming to inspire, educate, and build communities of eco-conscious gardeners."
The team at the Dixon May Fair mostly fielded questions about vegetable crops--tomatoes proved to be a popular topic. They distributed information from the UC Integrated Pest Management (UC IPM) Program.
If you missed them, the enthusiastic team of Master Gardeners will be back next year. Same fair, same building, same booth...and with some of the same questions asked by fairgoers--"I have a question about planting tomatoes..." You can also contact the UC Solano Master Gardeners via their website. Jennifer Baumbach serves as the program coordinator for both Solano and Yolo counties.