This is a story of adaptation, by both plants and their people. It's set in the fire-prone foothills of eastern Butte County, where in 1994 David and Cathy Walther purchased a home on 1.5 acres. The property sits on a gentle slope above the Feather River Canyon and is reached by roads that wind steeply up the hill and then through the undulating topography of Yankee Hill.

Their introduction to wildfire and evacuation occurred the first year when the Raulsen Fire burned within a half mile of their home. They knew when they bought the place they'd be in a fire zone or, as David (a fellow Master Gardener) said during our recent garden tour and interview: “It's not if we will burn, it's when….” Still, when the evacuation order was lifted, they began to build a life there around their shared love of plants.

Two raging infernos (the Poe Fire in 2001 and the Camp Fire in 2018), two terrifying evacuations, and 27 years later, they and their plants continue to adapt to new conditions in the burn scars that show how close these fires came to the walls of their home.

In the deep shade provided by 20 or so immense pines on the west side of their acreage in the early years, they began to amend the thin red clay soils and introduce a large assortment of plant species. They drew from hardy perennials and shrubs native to Mediterranean climates, including Proteus, Hebe, summer-blooming Cyclamen, Hellebore, Calanthe orchid, Podophyllum, and Echium, to name just a few. David is especially interested in plants that have whimsical “Dr. Suess” shapes and uncommon flowers and foliage.

The result was a lush garden spreading just past the green lawn in front of the house, interspersed with geometrically placed rock collections and dotted with garden art. But David's true passion lies in experimentation, finding what can adapt to the conditions there.  For example, he says “I planted lots of proteus, about 50, all over the yard just to see how they would do. I planted them to see how they would hold up in our Northern California weather.”

The plants were also a form of retirement planning.  David figured he could learn what would survive here and then offer other gardeners new choices: a larger palette of colors, textures, and shapes than are normally sold in our area. In fact, some of the species David began to grow are so uncommon that it is difficult to find information on propagating them. Which meant lots of trial and error: taking and planting cuttings at various times of year; trying different types of cuttings.

With the bounty resulting from his trials, David and Cathy started Spring Fever Nursery, selling at first on a small scale (a 20 by 40-foot area on the property), and at the Thursday Night Market in downtown Chico. To fund the commercial nursery operation, David sold his lucrative landscape business.

And then the Poe Fire roared up the hill, forcing the Walthers and their pets to evacuate once again. Returning home to find their gardens, nursery, and home intact while surrounding areas had burned (in fact, fire fighters used their greenbelt as a refuge), the Walthers adapted by turning adversity to advantage. Their neighbor to the east was done with foothill fires and, by acquiring that adjacent property, tearing out burnt stumps (“it looked like a war zone”), and leveling the remaining area, Spring Fever grew to a large, beautifully organized commercial nursery, complete with shade and green houses and metal tables, all sitting atop a bed of pea gravel.

Spring Fever Nursery joined other seasonal booths at the Chico Certified Farmers Market, setting up each Saturday spring through fall. They hauled their plants, almost all in pint-sized pots, in an old milk truck, the back steps of which doubled as their Market Sales Office and official perching place.

Their plants are propagated from cuttings, seeds, or divisions: any way David can create one plant from another. They remain in the nursery through two growing seasons in order to develop an adequate root system and prove their hardiness, experiencing heat, wind, frost (even, occasionally, snow), and sometimes deer. As David says, “If I didn't kill it, you can keep it alive.”

In between the Poe Fire and the Camp Fire, the Walthers continued to play with an astounding variety of plants. Cathy had a special circular garden just behind the house packed with aromatic and unusual herbs. An enormous Royal Paulownia (empress tree) towered beyond that, filling the air with an intoxicating fragrance each spring. One of the most charming aspects of the Walthers' landscape was its rambunctious exuberance; they encouraged all sorts of plants to co-exist. Theirs was not a fussy garden in which one was afraid to step off the path. Their garden invited one to wander, discover, and revel in the sheer wonder of the plant kingdom.

But that changed with the Camp Fire in 2018. After their month-long evacuation, David and Cathy returned to find that 70% of this joyful riot of plants had burned, as had a corner of the nursery, including the green houses. And their environment had changed drastically. Gone were the large pines offering hours of shade on the west-northwest exposure. Gone were Cathy's herb garden, the empress tree, and other favorites. An oak stump left from the Poe Fire burned to the ground in the Camp Fire. Twisted equipment, charred plants, and melted plastic now adorned the formerly neat and tidy nursery grounds.

The Camp Fire watch word is “resilience.” The one that came out of the Covid pandemic is “pivot.” Add them together and you get adaptation. When the ash and dust cleared in late 2018, that is exactly what the Walthers did with their remaining plants. Some wonderful things resulted in the wake of that fire. For instance, in a newly sundrenched patch of yard a forest of foxgloves volunteered. Huge echium (the beloved Dr. Suess plants) are popping back up all over the place. What David calls a “freak hellebore,” a beauty with white flowers, began to thrive in more sun than he thought possible. Other hellebores were basking in the now-open canopy, and David found that they bloom more prolifically now than they did in the deep shade. He estimates that, compared to where they lived the first year, the successive fires have thinned out about three-quarters of the forest.

Of course, events of this magnitude change interior landscapes as well. During our conversation, David noted that he is now free from the illusion of control: he has acquired a sense of acceptance and adopted a “wait and see” attitude. He expressed a sense of hopeful joy, and he continues to explore the property to see what post-fire changes the plants are exhibiting. He is building his nursery inventory, one plant at a time. And he is sure they have not seen the last of the fires on this ridge above the Feather River Canyon.

David is grateful to Magnolia Gift and Garden for their support – you can find Spring Fever Nursery plants there. Spring Fever Nursery is open by appointment and is holding a Comeback Sale on May 9 (Mothers' Day) and May 10! Please check their Facebook Page for more details.

The Master Gardeners Spring 2021 Workshop Series has begun.  Topics include:  Plant Propagation, Native Gardens, Invasive Plants, Honeybees, and a 4-part series on Firewise Landscaping. Visit our website to read about these upcoming free workshops and to register for them.

UC Master Gardeners of Butte County are part of the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) system. To learn more about us and our upcoming events, and for help with gardening in our area, visit our website. If you have a gardening question or problem, email the Hotline at mgbutte@ucanr.edu (preferred) or call (530) 538-7201.

Almost thirty participants strolled through Verbena Fields on March 30 for the second of a year-long series of Wildtending Walks. This month's leaders, Raphael DiGenova and Janeva Sorenson, shared their passion for and knowledge about the native plants of this area. DiGenova, a native plant expert and Wildtender, is a long-time volunteer at Verbena Fields and has worked closely with Mechoopda Indian TEK specialist Ali Meders-Knight. Their goal is to introduce us to and inspire us about the native plants used by indigenous peoples of our area. DiGenova is deeply invested in sharing the knowledge required to cultivate a large range of native plants throughout the region.

Verbena Fields is a living lab, a space to identify natives in all of their growth phases. Ultimately, we learn how to find, and the best methods to propagate, these natives through gathering and planting their seeds at the appropriate times. The Wildtending Walks introduce us to the yearly cycle and monthly changes of these plants, from dormancy to growth to bloom to seed.

Underlying these tangible lessons is the deeper goal of helping us develop a more intimate relationship with nature, understanding its benefits and our interactions with our ecosystem. Even deeper than that lies the lesson of the importance of listening to native peoples, respecting and utilizing their original wisdom about each intricate part of this land. Indigenous wisdom about plants is based on ancient and ongoing interactive relationships. DiGenova cautions us not to make the mistake of believing that TEK is not “real” science: it is, but from a different root – the result of thousands of years of trial and error, of observation and experimentation. The plants we see around us are the product of human intervention and selection over millennia.

Much of Butte County, notes DiGenova, is “occupied Mechoopda territory.” Through the efforts of Meders-Knight, DiGenova, Sorenson (of the Campfire Restoration Project), and their volunteer teams, Verbena Fields is being restored to what the landscape looked like before colonization. A larger dream is to encourage neighbors of the park to extend the habitat for pollinators from Verbena Fields outward through the neighborhood, creating corridors of connection for these and other wildlife species. 

Here is a brief summary of the plants and processes the Wildlife Walk participants studied on the beautiful, warm, clear afternoon of March 30.

Grindelia: First up on the tour was grindelia, or valley gum plant. In April, it is still a basal rosette on the ground, but this super tough native can compete with even the dastardly star thistle. Grindelia has a number of medicinal uses, including to soothe and counteract poison oak. During its growth cycle, it manages to shade and thus inhibit the growth of star thistle seeds. (Star thistle and non-native mustard threaten to take over parts of Verbena Fields and much of the efforts by volunteers focus on eradicating these invaders.) Grindelia flowers and seeds provide lots of food for insects, including beetles which live inside spent flowers over the winter. The flower is sticky and gummy, hence the common English name.  

Redbud: This member of the legume family is now in various stages of bloom. Redbud doesn't bloom until about its fifth year. The tiny blossoms have a surprisingly delicate and sweet flavor. DiGenova noted that native peoples also ate the young leaves and seed pods. Because the plant evolved with periodic fire, it developed ingenious strategies to ensure that future generations would thrive. The seed pod has a thin paper coating which burns very quickly, singing the seeds just enough for them to open into the smoldering ground below. When harvesting redbud seeds to plant, scarify them to mimic the fire regime to which they are adapted.

Datura: This poisonous plant, also known as jimsonweed or devil's weed, belies its toxicity with its large and beautiful moon-white trumpet-shaped flowers. A low-growing herbaceous shrub, in winter and before its spring growth it carries a large seed head atop a curved skeletal arm.

Naked Buckwheat: The largest and most edible of the buckwheats, naked buckwheat (Eriogonum nudum) is super drought tolerant, and its flowers contain nice big seeds for birds to feast on. The Eriogonum species feeds many different pollinators. To distribute this plant to more and different areas, simply cut off the dried seed heads and sprinkle them on the ground.

Pipevine: As the group made its way toward Lindo Channel, the northern border of Verbena Fields, it came upon a pipevine twining up the limb of a young valley oak. The vine is host to the pipevine swallowtail butterfly, whose emerging larva will eat a good percentage of the vine, helping to keep it in check. Because the seeds of this plant fall directly down, it spreads better with the help of human hands.

Valley Oak: Valley oaks dot the landscape of the park. When acorns germinate, their initial taproot grows quickly to a few feet so the seedling can survive dry conditions. The valley oak prefers soil that is a little richer and deeper than does its cousin the blue oak, which grows upslope in the shallow, rocky soils of the foothills. Much of the soil at Verbena Fields has been covered with cobble from the historic gravel mining; valley oaks provide evidence that this soil is better than it appears on the surface.

Western Chokecherry: Western chokecherry (and all native prunus) provide abundant food for migratory and resident bird populations. It is a large sprawling shrub that can also provide habitat to wildlife. Coincidentally, at this point in the walk, a red-shouldered hawk conducted a fly over.

Yerba Santa: On the rocky shoulder above the channel sits a thicket of Yerba Santa. Translated from the Spanish as “holy herb,” this plant has a number of medicinal uses, especially for throat and respiratory ailments, and for fevers.

Also, on the way to visit the willow engineering project, walkers passed mugwort (a potent dream medicine), silver bush lupine (a beautiful showy native perennial), mule fat (good forage for equine species), and the pungent coyote mint.  Together, this panoply of plants, with their different growing, flowering, and seeding schedules, provide year-round food and shelter for animal species.

Willows and soil-building: They are playing the long game out at Verbena Fields.  Twelve years ago, when Meders-Knight began tending the wild there, volunteers planted multiple lines of willows along the south bank of the channel to slow flood waters and encourage them to drop out their sediment load (instead of carrying it downstream). A nice bed of soil has resulted, and the willows were recently cut down to a few feet above the ground. Using the supple willow-cuttings, volunteers wove walls to hold in the built-up soil and retain the sediment from previous and future flows.

While the group stood amid these clever and carefully wrought artifacts of Wildtending, DiGenova shared the vision of what we can create, by acting together and following the wisdom of those who came before us. This space, these plants, evolved with people. Humans are a major influence on the evolution of all plants, and these plants are our family. If we, as the native peoples do, saw all things on this Earth as people, as members of our family and friends, we would take care of them much differently. We can live in reciprocity by providing habitat and things that are useful to us and useable by others on this Earth as well. We are not outside of our ecosystem, and we cannot engineer our way out of what we've created by believing we are separate, above, and untouchable.  DiGenova emphasizes that it's critical to support and promote indigenous sovereignty, to listen to and act on their advice; that it's vital to learn the true history of our region, our state, and its plants.

What they are teaching us at Verbena Fields is that we have the chance to create a living seedbank; literally to put the land back to its original abundance. After all, DiGenova says, wild areas such as this are just remainders of a really large, interrupted garden.

Your next chance to be a part of the change is Tuesday, April 27, 2021 at 4pm at Verbena Fields. Due to the increase from about 8 participants in February to about 30 in March, an online Eventbrite sign-up page will be used for future walks to aid in preparation. People can also donate directly to the fiscal sponsor for this event by clicking here and selecting TEK Plant Walk. There is a suggested $5 donation to support the facilitators.  Eventbrite has free and donation-based tickets.  No one is turned away due to lack of funds.  Wildtending Walks take place on the last Tuesday of each month, but the time may change as the weather does. 

For more information, please visit Camp Fire Restoration Project and TEK (Chico Traditional Ecological Stewardship Program).

UC Master Gardeners of Butte County are part of the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) system. To learn more about us and our upcoming events, and for help with gardening in our area, visit our website. If you have a gardening question or problem, email the Hotline at mgbutte@ucanr.edu (preferred) or call (530) 538-7201.

As our weather warms, be on the lookout for the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug (BMSB). It's important to be able to recognize this voracious pest in order to prevent its spread.

There are a large number of stink bugs, all “true bugs” in the order Hemiptera, whose common trait is the piercing-sucking mouth part (stylus) which can do great damage to commercial and ornamental plants. The BMSB (halyomorpha halys) is an equal-opportunity feeder, foraging on up to 300 species of produce, trees, and other vegetation, according to some estimates. Although serious commercial crop damage has been limited to the eastern US, the BMSB is on the move in California, and could pose a threat to Northern California farmers and ranchers. The BMSB includes almonds in its culinary repertoire; in 2018 and 2019 several almond orchards in Stanislaus and Merced Counties reported BMSB damage.

This pest doesn't limit itself to the outdoors: because it likes warm conditions, in late summer and early fall it will seek shelter in the warm cavities between residential home walls, and even in cars. The first BMSB formally identified in Butte County was found crawling on the walls of the enclosed back porch of this writer's home in July of 2013. A few months later, I spotted one inside my car. Resist the urge to smash it: the stink bug earned its colloquial name for a very good reason.  Making an early appearance, the BMSB has already been spotted in Chico this spring.

Stowed away on a cargo ship from Asia, the BSMB entered the US in the late 90s. According to a 2012 article in the Wall Street Journal, the US Department of Agriculture noted that this immigrant pest had spread to 36 states; in 2010 trade groups reported $37 million worth of damage to apple crops alone.  In California a reproducing population was first found in the LA County areas of Pasadena and San Marino in 2006.  The BMSB has since been detected in many other parts of the state, making its way north to Sacramento and Yuba City by 2013.  Home gardeners can be of key assistance in preventing the spread of this exotic, invasive species.

Identification: The BMSB exhibits the traditional shield-shaped body of all stink bugs and is five-eighths of an inch long. Distinct white and brown bands on its antennae and legs distinguish it from other stink bugs.  “Marmorated” means streaked or marbled, and the body of this particular stink bug is mottled in shades of brown. The BMSB lays barrel-shaped eggs in tidy rows on the underside of leaves; these eggs range in color from white to pale green. While the number of its life cycles in our area is not known, the bugs are inactive during the colder months, and produce more generations in warmer climates. Please see the UC IPM website for identifying specifics about the BMSB's five nymphal instar stages before adulthood.

Damage to Plants: BMSB nymphs and adults feed on leaf and fruit tissue by injecting digestive enzymes to facilitate nutrient extraction.  This feeding results in localized necrotic spots. Direct feeding on developing fruit can lead to severe distortion and in some cases fruit drop. Stink bugs can also contaminate fruit products:  for example, if infested grapevine clusters are pressed for their juice, the bugs will also be crushed, and the juice destroyed.

Control and Management: Because the BMSB is a nuisance in and around the home, and poses real danger to commercial crops and ornamental plants, methods of control and eradication are being explored and tested all over the US.

Nuisance Control: A number of non-invasive methods are available to the homeowner seeking to rid walls and rooms of these bugs: direct a flashlight onto a pan of soapy water in a dark room which contains the bugs and watch them crawl or fly in and drown. Try sucking them into a hand vacuum cleaner (dedicated to this purpose) or shop vac; sweeping them into a bucket of soapy water; or place in Ziploc bag and freeze or squash them.  Use silicone, caulk, or foam to seal the small narrow gaps by which they gain entry into homes, porches, and garages.

Management and Eradication Methods: The use of pesticides is not recommended, as they have not been proven to be effective for either small- or large-scale eradication. For the home gardener, be on the lookout: hand-pick the slow-moving, fairly large adult bugs and drop them into a bucket of soapy water. Hand vacuums can be effective in the garden, as can their natural enemies which include assassin bugs, earwigs, and green lacewing larvae. Birds may feed on adults and nymphs.

Large Scale Management and Eradication: The potential for commercial loss from the BMSB means that research is being conducted in a number of areas, including chemical controls, pheromone baiting and trapping, and the use of natural enemies. Most promising are tiny parasitic wasps from Asia (Trissolcus japonicus), which lay their eggs within the stink bugs' own egg masses. When the wasp larvae hatch, they devour the stink bug eggs and kill them.

Keep an eye out in your home, your garage, and your garden for the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug so that you can help control the spread of this damaging pest. Pick it, trap it, drown it or vacuum it up: just don't step on it!

NOTE: for more information: UC IPM BMSB Pestnote; UC Riverside Center for Invasive Species Research; and Stop BMSB. For details on the BMSB and almonds, see Brown Marmorated Stink Bug Emerging as Significant Pest in Almonds - West Coast Nut (wcngg.com).

UC Master Gardeners of Butte County are part of the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) system. To learn more about us and our upcoming events, and for help with gardening in our area, visit our website. If you have a gardening question or problem, email the Hotline at mgbutte@ucanr.edu (preferred) or call (530) 538-7201.

With a second year of below-normal rainfall, California is sliding into another drought cycle.  Here in the North Valley, total rainfall for the current Water Year (October 2020 through March 2021) measured between 8 and 10 inches, depending upon location, well below the previous average of 18 to 24 inches.  As of the first week of April 2021, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is just 60% of normal and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is predicting water allocation cutbacks for California and other western states.  One way for homeowners to adapt to these coming cutbacks is to convert to drip irrigation for home landscaping and vegetable gardens.

As many readers may already know, drip irrigation is a form of irrigation that uses a system of tubes and emitters to drip water slowly onto the soil surface, or directly into the soil.  Although methods of slowly applying water to plants have been around since ancient times, modern drip irrigation using plastic tubes and emitters was developed and patented in Israel by Simcha Blass in conjunction with Kibbutz Hatzerim in 1959.

The most important advantage to drip irrigation is that it is more efficient than traditional irrigation methods.  Drip emitters can be placed to deliver water only where it is needed, so water isn't wasted on unplanted areas.  By applying water slowly, drip irrigation also allows water to be absorbed quickly into the soil instead of standing on the soil surface.  This means that far less water is lost to evaporation than with flood irrigation or sprinklers.  Additionally, because water sinks into the soil rather than puddling, there is less loss due to runoff, which makes drip irrigation a good choice for steep terrain.  Another way in which drip systems can conserve water is by installing them under a layer of mulch, promoting even greater water savings by further reducing evaporation from the soil.  Last but not least, it should be noted that by saving water, drip irrigation also saves the homeowner money.

Drip irrigation has several other advantages.  In addition to water, plant roots also need air and when soil pores are completely flooded, roots can actually “suffocate.”  The slow application of water by drip systems virtually guarantees a good soil/water environment with a balance of water and oxygen in the soil.  Next, weeds don't grow if they don't have water, so they become far less of a problem when water is efficiently targeted to desirable plants by using drip irrigation.  As a bonus, this means that herbicide use can be cut back or eliminated, which is better for both the environment and the pocketbook.  A final advantage of drip irrigation is its flexibility.  It can be installed in a variety of landscapes and, at a relatively low cost, it can be altered and changed as plants grow. 

There are disadvantages to drip irrigation systems that should be considered as well.  Sediment or bugs that find their way into the tubing can clog drip emitters.  In-line filters can be installed to eliminate most of this clogging, but mineral deposits can also clog emitters.  There is really no easy way for homeowners to eliminate this, but clogging due to mineral deposits can be delayed by using emitters with a greater flow rate.  For example, use a 2-gallon per hour (2gph) emitter rather than a 0.5gph emitter, but run it for a shorter time.  The faster flow discourages mineral buildup which can cause clogging.

In addition to problems with clogging, drip irrigation systems, with their softer tubing and plastic emitters, are more easily damaged by animals than irrigation systems made of sturdier PVC or metal components.  Some dogs seem to delight in chewing on drip tubing, and drip systems also make tempting targets for thirsty rabbits or squirrels.  On the plus side, burying drip tubes in shallow trenches or under mulch seems to be effective in mitigating this sort of damage.

If you are considering installing a drip system, putting it on an automatic timer is recommended.  An automatic timer provides a consistent watering schedule.  With a timer, you provide the exact amount of water you want and there is no forgetting to turn the system on or off. 

Something else to consider when planning a drip system is planting zones.  Simply put, this means that the same valve should service plants with similar watering needs.  You wouldn't want a drip line that waters a vegetable garden to also serve a cactus garden, because their water needs are so different. A simple, inexpensive pressure regulator is also necessary because drip systems require far less water pressure than normal house pressure. Most emitters cannot withstand pressures greater than 40psi and micro-sprinklers cannot function below 10psi (psi stands for “pounds per square inch,” the measurement standard for water pressure). 

Many retailers offer how-to pamphlets that provide further information on drip irrigation components and installation.

UC Master Gardeners of Butte County are part of the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) system. To learn more about us and our upcoming events, and for help with gardening in our area, visit our website. If you have a gardening question or problem, email the Hotline at mgbutte@ucanr.edu (preferred) or call (530) 538-7201.