- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
It's beginning to look a lot like...Halloween.
If you haven't noticed, stores are gearing up for Halloween with assorted ghosts, goblins and ghouls for you.
We remember Halloween 2023 when a female migratory monarch fluttered into our pollinator garden. She checked out the milkweed (we had several native and one non-native species) and chose to sip nectar on the tropical milkweed, Asclepias curassavica, a non-native.
We managed to capture several images of her around 5:30 p.m. before she left on her journey to overwinter in coastal California.
The
- Author: Ben A Faber
Informational Videos Covering Fertilizer Application through Irrigation Water
Now Available in English and Spanish
Nicole Nunes FREP Grant Program
Through a grant from the Fertilizer Research and Education Program (FREP), Cal Poly's Irrigation Training and Research Center (ITRC) has developed a series of informational videos covering chemicals, application hardware, techniques, and timing of fertilizer application through irrigation water.
The videos...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
So, here you are, a newly eclosed Western tiger swallowtail, Papilio rutulus, eager to sip some nectar from a Mexican sunflower, Tithonia rotundifola, in a Vacaville garden.
It's a warm, windless day, and you're anxious to score, score, score.
You touch down on a Tithonia, but something whizzes by your tails.
Whoa! What was that?
You're startled, alarmed, and irritated. It's a territorial male long-horned bee, probably a Melissodes agilis. He aims to dislodge you from your blossom in his attempt to save the nectar for his would-be girlfriends.
You teeter, then totter, then take off. You touch down on another...
- Author: DJ Andriessen
Maintaining a garden irrigation system is essential for keeping your plants healthy and your garden flourishing. One common issue that gardeners may encounter is a leak or damage to PVC pipes in the irrigation system. Repairing these PVC pipes is crucial to ensure the efficient operation of the irrigation system and a successful garden.
Recently, our learning garden suffered a major break in the irrigation system. It was hard to determine where the leak was because the entire area had flooded before we knew there was a problem.
After turning off the system and waiting a day for the flood to subside, we were able to identify the area in need of repair. Then, we drained the irrigation system by opening the ends of our...
- Author: Nanelle Jones-Sullivan
By now you have heard of purple tomatoes, and you've probably heard of heart-shaped tomatoes, but have you heard of the Dwarf Purple Heart tomato?
For those who haven't heard, The Dwarf Tomato Project “grew out of a comment made in a Tomato Forum at Gardenweb when Craig LeHoullier lamented the fact that the dwarf category in tomatoes was very restricted, and suggested it would be good to cross dwarfs with heirlooms to remedy this situation”.
I love that both the plants, with their rugose leaves, and the tomatoes, with their variety of shapes and colors, are attractive and easy to manage in my garden.