- Author: Anne Schellman
- Soils and fertilizers
- Basic horticulture and botany
- Growing fruit and vegetables
- Water wise and sustainable landscaping
- Gardening for pollinators
- Integrated pest management
- Plant identification
And much more!
What's Ahead for our Program
Future Training Classes
Our program is modeled after the UCCE San Joaquin Master Gardeners, which train every-other-year. This means we will not have a training class for new Master Gardeners in 2023.
Schedule
Summer 2023 – Advertisement and Email to Interest List
Fall 2023 – Informational Meetings & Interviews
January 2024 – New Program Starts
Make sure you are on our interest list, and that you receive this e-newsletter, the Stanislaus Sprout, so you don't miss our training class announcement.
/h3>/h3>/h3>- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
When Rebecca "RJ" Millena recently received her bachelor's degree in entomology from the University of California, Davis, it was the culmination of her kindergarten dream. At age 5, she wrote on her "About Me" poster in her Concord (Calif.) kindergarten class: "When I grow up, I want to be an entomologist."
And now she's 22 with a prized diploma in hand and an insect-themed graduation cap on her head.
The graduation cap, featuring the metamorphosis of a butterfly, is lettered with "When I grow up I want to be an entomologist."
The cap and net images are the work of Kalee Fagan, "the older sister of my best friend from high school," RJ related.
RJ's graduation cap is now entered in a UC Davis graduation cap design contest. Folks can vote for her design by simply liking this UC Davis Facebook page or making a comment by noon (Pacific Daylight Time) on June 23. The four winners receive gift cards: first-place, $300; second, $200; third, $100, and editor's choice, $100.
Her contest entry:
RJ Millena
Major: Entomology
Minors: Nematology, and Ecology, Evolution, and Biodiversity
In kindergarten, I once wrote, “When I grow up, I want to be an Entomologist.” As I graduate and continue studying insect evolution in a PhD program, I celebrate the fulfillment of my childhood dream with my cap. It features the original marker phrase from my kindergarten poster. Additionally, my first college field project involved the California pipevine swallowtail (Battus philenor)—here it represents my metamorphosis from a hopeful child to a fully-fledged entomologist.
In her dual roles as an independent student researcher in the laboratory of Jay Rosenheim, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomologist and a scholar with the Leadership Excellence through Advanced Degrees (UC LEADS) program, RJ is now finishing a research paper on Strepsiptera endoparasites, which attack their hosts, the Ammophila (thread-waisted) wasps. UC LEADS is a two-year program that prepares promising students for advanced education in science, technology, mathematics and engineering (STEM).
As part of her UC LEADS project, RJ studied specimens at the Bohart Museum of Entomology. As larvae, members of the order Strepsiptera, known as “twisted wings,” enter their hosts, including wasps and bees, through joints or sutures. In its nearly 8 million insect collection, the Bohart houses “about 30,000 specimens of Ammophila from multiple continents,” says director Lynn Kimsey, UC Davis distinguished professor of entomology. Kimsey pointed out that global wasp authority Arnold Menke (a UC Davis alumnus who studied for his 1965 doctorate with Professor Richard Bohart) identified most of them. His publication, "The Ammophila of North and Central America (Hymenoptera, Sphecidae)” is considered the bible of Ammophila research.
What's ahead? RJ has just accepted a four-year, full-ride fellowship offer to a PhD program at the American Museum of Natural History to join the systematics laboratory of Dr. Jessica Ware.
(Editor's note: RJ Millena is one of six UC Davis entomology majors who filed to graduate in the spring or summer of 2021. The others are: Maxwell Koning, Spring 2021; Laura Rivera, Summer 2021; Misa Terrell, Summer 2021; Stephanie Tsai, Spring 2021; and Elizabeth Uemura, Summer 2021)
- Author: Kara Manke
Reposted from UC Berkeley News
For UC Berkeley students graduating with a degree in conservation and resource studies, a paper diploma just won't do.
At a special alternative graduation ceremony held in Tilden Regional Park on Sunday, graduates of the Conservation and Resource Studies program instead each received a plant — an oak sapling, a strawberry plant, a pot of buckwheat grass or even a succulent — lovingly collected and cultivated by younger students.
These “living diplomas,” part of a nearly 50-year-old tradition in the program, symbolize the graduates' ongoing growth as they explore the world beyond Berkeley.
“This is our form of love and remembrance and connection to our cohort, to past cohorts and to the future,” said graduating senior Tanya Hanson during a speech on Sunday.
“We hope that they take the diplomas and plant them or take care of them,” added Leah Jones, another new graduate. “The vision is that they will grow with the plant.”
The tradition harkens back to the founding of the conservation and resource studies major in 1970. At the time, deforestation was a major issue facing California and the rest of the world, and students graduating from the new program were irked by the idea of having a paper diploma as a final symbol of their time at Berkeley.
“People were very aware of the role that the paper industry had in [deforestation], especially locally, so they said, ‘We're not going to support that — we want not to have a dead tree, but a living plant,'” said Ignacio Chapela, a faculty adviser for the program and an associate professor of environmental science, policy and management at Berkeley.
Organized in its entirety by students, the graduation event embodies the freedom and inclusivity of the major itself: There is no cost, no dress code and no limit on the number of guests each graduate can invite. Anyone is free to speak and perform, and food and decorations are either donated by, or sourced from, local sustainable businesses.
The event “embodies the emphasis that CRS (conservation and resource studies) puts on building a cohort and establishing a community,” said Skye Michel, a junior who is president of the Conservation and Resource Studies Student Organization (CRSSO), which runs the event each year. “It's meant to be a way to celebrate everyone that's been involved in the educational and personal growth of the CRS individuals.”
This year, the alternative graduation ceremony drew around 200 people to a muddy meadow at Tilden Park, part of the East Bay Regional Park District. Friends and family danced barefoot to Inspector Gadje Balkan Brass, a horn and percussion ensemble from San Francisco, and feasted on local food and drink from Trader Joe's, Acme Bread, House Kombucha, Lagunitas Brewing Company and Mixing Bowl Catering, all while dodging intermittent downpours.
Following the picnic and dancing, the crowd gathered for the ceremony, which comprised speeches from and performances by students and faculty, followed by the awarding of the living diplomas.
“[Living diplomas] very much represent the ethos of the students in the major, in that their work in the world is alive and vibrant and is something tender that needs to be cultivated,” said Erica Bree Rosenblum, an associate professor of environmental studies, policy and management and a faculty adviser in the Conservation and Resource Studies program. “To me, it's a much more apt symbol for college graduation than a piece of paper.”
With a limited budget, the students sometimes have to get scrappy to gather enough living diplomas to go around. This year's crop included California buckwheat donated by a student who grew it as part of a research project, strawberry plants originally cultivated for an unrelated fundraiser, and succulents, given to Jones by a friend.
“Last year, we had this grass that had yellow flowers, and it was really pretty, but this year, I like the diversity of the different plants,” said Hanson, CRSSO co-vice president.
Some students who participated in CRSSO's “Adopt-a-Senior” program, in which a younger student forms a mentorship relationship with an older student, grew their own plants from seeds. Junior Chris McCarron grew type of shrub called a snowdrop bush for his senior and a five-fingered fern for a friend's senior.
“I grow a lot of California natives, and it's very important to me that people (are) given plants that fit them,” McCarron said.
Chapela also chipped in by growing 12 oak saplings from acorns that he collected in Sonoma County and the Sierra Nevada — six of which he cultivated outside his office in a corrugated metal box, built to protect them against a local squirrel.
At the ceremony, Chapela read off the graduates' names, while younger students eagerly lined up with plants in hand to pass on to the seniors.
Hanson, a first-generation college graduate who plans to apply to law school, received one of Chapela's oak saplings — and she knows exactly what she's going to do with it.
“My mom's house has a 300-year-old oak tree,” Hanson said. “I want to plant mine next to it.”
- Author: Mary B. Gabbard
On Friday, May 11, The Master Gardener Volunteer Program of Solano County graduated its’ 2012 class of Master Gardeners. The setting was apropos, the beautiful gardens at the Buck Mansion. The atmosphere was filled with an air of both relief and excitement as graduation marks the completion of their 5-month training program combined with their eagerness to blossom into the beginning of their career as Master Gardeners. These newly Certified Master Gardeners are geared to head out into their respective communities and extend horticultural information based on research-based information, verified by UC experts. Every year, I look forward to this day and make every effort to clear my schedule to attend; however, my intentions are a bit selfish. To be truthful, my favorite part of the day is catching up with my classmates from 2002 as well as fellow gardeners I have volunteered with over the years. I really can’t say enough about this wonderful group of people and hearing about how they have branched out and developed their expertise in gardening. None of this would be possible without our Program Director who provides the stable base from where the program grows, Jennifer Baumbach. She’s the roots and the trunk that holds everything together. If you find yourself thinking about becoming a Master Gardener, visit the Master Gardener booth at your local Farmer’s Market. Talk to us; find out what’s involved…this may be the group for you!
- Author: Myriam Grajales-Hall
A focus on education is especially timely for Latinos given the younger age of that population, says an article in the Los Angeles Times. The median age for Latinos nationwide is 27 versus 40 for the entire population. In California, the median age for Latinos is 27.
The article mentions that ‘the college gap is especially significant in California, where 38 percent of the population is Latino as well as half of all grade-school students. About 75% of the students in the Los Angeles Unified School District are Latino.”
Although the article indicates that graduation rates are declining for Latinos and the gap seems to be increasing between Latinos and other groups, the researchers mentioned several programs that are helping Latinos succeed in college, such as the University of California Puente Project.
The mission of the Puente Project is to increase the number of educationally disadvantaged students who enroll in four-year colleges and universities, earn college degrees, and return to the community as mentors and leaders of future generations. To accomplish this, counselors, teachers and mentors work together to provide students with the necessary tools to successfully transfer to four-year institutions. Through the Puente Project, Latino students persist at greater rates than other students, transfer to four-year institutions at higher rates than other students, and graduate at similar rates to white students (86 percent vs. 83.9 percent).
Source: Los Angeles Times, Report details Latino education gap in California and nationwide, April 10, 2012.