“I want them to all feel like they know how to grow food,” says Vicki Wonacott, describing the fundamental goal of the UC Master Gardeners of Butte County School Gardens Program.

This program brings how-to horticultural knowledge to first-graders in four of our local elementary schools. Why first graders? According to Wonacott (a retired elementary school teacher), at that young age children are easy to engage, they retain their sense of wonder at scientific phenomena, and they are just plain fun to work with. In addition, the School Gardens Program imparts basic biological and botanical information. For Wonacott, this is science teaching at its best.

The classroom visits commence in the fall, when days are becoming shorter and cooler: a perfect time to explore some horticultural basics indoors. Lessons take place each month except December, following a logical progression, and culminating with outdoor planting in the spring. Here are the details:

SEEDS: Together, the kids and the adults (Master Gardener volunteers, school teachers, and classroom aides) soak lima bean seeds to soften them up so they can pull them apart to examine the inner parts. The magic here is that visible within the seed are the seed coat, the leaves, and the root; the seed halves will provide food for the new sprout when it grows.

PLANT PARTS AND THEIR FUNCTIONS: With help from the Master Gardeners, children draw the plant parts on paper, identifying the xylem (vascular tissue that conducts water and dissolved nutrients upward from the root) and the phloem (vascular tissue that conducts sugars and other metabolic products downward from the leaves). This leads directly into a discussion of photosynthesis, that miraculous process by which plants make their own food by converting the light of the sun to synthesize foods from carbon dioxide and water. This lesson culminates in a very clever teaching approach, as the kids eat each of the plant parts they have identified: carrots for the root; celery for the stem; spinach for the leaf; broccoli for the flower; cherry tomatoes for the fruit; and sunflower seeds for the seed.

SOIL: After a discussion of soil constituents (sand, silt, clay, and humus), students make their own soil by loading each of these components into a quart jar, filling it with water, shaking it, and watching it settle out into layers. This leads to discussion and exploration of ideal combinations for plants.

THE NEEDS OF A PLANT: This experiment highlights the five components a plant needs to thrive: soil, water, light, air, and space. In each of six disposable cups, a radish seed is planted. In Cup One all five needs are met – this is the Control Cup. Cup Two contains soil, but is given no water. Cup Three also contains soil, but is covered against the light. In Cup Four, the seed is planted in pure clay, so the seed receives no air. Cup Five does not contain any soil, but the seed is watered. And in Cup Six, so many seeds are planted that they are too crowded, and don't have space to grow. The kids watch and water (or not) their cups twice a week for the next four weeks and record what is happening by charting (drawing) what they observe. After four weeks, they show their results and what they have learned.

One of the best memory aids is singing, and there is a catchy tune with lyrics to help remember these plant essentials, titled The Needs of a Plant Chant. It goes as follows: For a plant to stay alive, it needs five things so it can thrive. It needs water so it can grow. And it needs soil down below. Plants need space, they can't be tight! The sun helps plants by giving light. Don't forget to give plants air. Repeat the needs if you dare: water, soil, space, sunlight, air, AND DON'T FORGET THE LOVE!

WORMS: The contributions of worms to soil health are highlighted, accompanied by adults singing and acting out the Wormy Wiggle (another catchy tune). Students build a worm hotel: a clear plastic container is lined with another, leaving approximately one inch of soil on the outer circumference. Moist sandy soil is added, and food is placed on the top. With this device, the kids can observe the worms doing their work of eating, tunneling, and effecting decomposition of organic matter. While they are not being observed, the light-sensitive worms are protected by sliding a paper sleeve over the outer container.

PESTS AND PALS / POLLINATORS: This lesson focuses on insects that act as pollinators, beneficials, and / or pests in the garden. After learning about the various roles insects play to help or hinder plant health, the class is taken outside to play a game of Treasure Hunt. They search for evidence of bugs, or try to find the bugs themselves.

GARDEN MAINTENANCE / PREPARATION FOR PLANTING: After the indoor explorations and experiments, it's time to plant seeds in the outdoor garden beds! This usually takes place in March, so that the crops can be harvested before school lets out for summer. The seeds chosen to plant have high success rates and lower maintenance requirements. They must be able to sprout, grow, and be harvested within the school year.

Although summer vegetables are some of the easiest to grow, they are not suitable for school gardens, because no one is there to tend the gardens during the punishing heat and drought of our summers. Instead, the focus is on fall and winter vegetables. Great success has been achieved with leafy greens such as bok choy, lettuce, kale, and chard. The tendency of these plants to bolt is turned into a lesson on how to attract and provide sustenance to pollinators. Carrots have not been successful, but peas have. Wonacott wants to add pumpkins to the planting list: they can be planted in spring and harvested just in time for Halloween.

A TAKE HOME GARDEN: In the past, the program has culminated with a field trip to the Master Gardener Demonstration Garden at Patrick Ranch. Unfortunately, the cost of busing and other logistics have now made this trip difficult to accomplish. Instead, students build their own miniature garden to take home with them: they make paper pots, fill them with soil, and plant two with veggie starts and two with seeds. Squash, sunflower, and watermelon seeds have been the most successful.

The value of lessons like these, taught by dedicated volunteers who want to see kids succeed, and which are age appropriate, exciting, and effective, cannot be overstated. The kids get excited when they see the Master Gardeners enter the classroom because they know it is time for “science class.” One child, who during regular school lessons has difficulty staying still and paying attention, recently said “I really like it when you guys show up, because I never get in trouble.” Plus, he's learning how to grow food.

The UC Master Gardeners of Butte County are part of the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) system, serving our community in a variety of ways, including 4H, farm advisors, and nutrition and physical activity programs.  Our mission is to enhance local quality of life by bringing practical, scientifically-based knowledge directly to our community. To learn more about the Master Gardeners and their upcoming events, and for help with gardening in our area, visit https://ucanr.edu/sites/bcmg/. If you have a gardening question or problem, call our Hotline at (530) 538-7201 or email mgbutte@ucanr.edu.

One of the ways the UC Master Gardeners of Butte County serve our community is through their School Gardens Program. Currently this program serves four schools, reaching 300 children a month in a total of twelve first-grade classrooms. (Before the Camp Fire, the program served eighteen classrooms).

The School Gardens Program is headed by Master Gardener Vicki Wonacott, in collaboration with Master Gardener Candice Boggs. It began in 2013 when Wonacott, a recently retired elementary school teacher, designed four basic lessons about plants to share with children who were visiting the Master Gardener Demonstration Garden at the Patrick Ranch Museum on school field trips. Those initial four lessons focused on seeds, plant parts, soil, and the history of Patrick Ranch. Children learned that they were touring property which in the 19^th century had been the ranch family's “Safeway Store,” because back then, they raised what they ate.

The Master Gardeners' School Garden Program has since grown into a collaboration between the UC Master Gardeners, local elementary schools, and CalFresh, part of California's Nutrition Education Program. Plant starts are provided by local community-supported agriculture farm GRUB (Growing Resources Uniting Bellies), and previously also were supplied by the Plant Barn nursery. All of the schools involved are defined as “underserved” and many, if not most, of their students qualify for reduced or free lunches. It is important to note that the Master Gardeners' School Garden Program is just one of many local programs focusing on bringing agricultural knowledge and hands-on experience directly into schools.

What is the ultimate goal of the School Garden Program? Wonacott hopes to instill within these children a love for and connection to the earth; to teach them that they can grow their own food; to lure them away from electronic screens; to engage them, delight them, and show them how fun science can be through teaching how plants function; and to encourage in each child a sense of self-direction and empowerment.

When Wonacott wanted to expand from teaching kids at Patrick Ranch to bringing her lessons into classrooms (and schoolyards), she tweaked her materials to ensure they complied with California's educational standards. Initially, the Master Gardener School Gardens Program team worked with first-graders at Oroville Elementary School. In quick succession, they introduced programs to first grade classrooms at Little Chico Creek Elementary School and Citrus Elementary (both in Chico), and Paradise Elementary School. Among the multitude of devastations wreaked by the Camp Fire was the destruction of an extensive outdoor garden and classroom already in place at Paradise Elementary School; it included tables, benches, and 20 raised garden beds, 15 of which were equipped with timed irrigation equipment. Wonacott and Boggs, in collaboration with the staff of Paradise Elementary, have plans to rebuild a state-of-the-art school garden and outdoor classroom in Paradise. Currently, the School Gardens program serves Paradise first-grade children at Paradise Ridge Elementary school, and in Oroville, the program works with first-graders at Stanford Avenue Elementary School.

The lessons are designed specifically to “hook” the kids – grabbing their attention, and appealing to their imagination and as-yet-unjaded sense of wonder. To do this, lessons are age-appropriate, clear and simple, fast-paced, and often entertaining (for example, the performance of the “Wormy Wiggle” song and dance is unforgettable!). Master Gardener volunteers visit each classroom for one hour every month and get the kids outdoors to plant, grow, observe, harvest, prepare, and eat nutritious food.

CalFresh shares these goals. This state-sponsored nutrition program helps provide healthy food to low income families, with an emphasis on fresh and locally-grown produce. Both CalFresh and the Master Gardener Program headquarters are housed at the University of California Cooperative Extension office in Oroville, and the two programs share a coordinator, Karina Hathorn. The School Gardens Program benefits from that relationship through access to funding for, or direct provision of, curriculum, books, and other garden education supplies. Each teacher who participates in the School Garden Program can obtain classroom supplies that fall within approved CalFresh lists. CalFresh provides curriculum and other resources to interested schools within their five-county service area.

Wonacott's love for the earth and its bounty was developed early in her life by her father, an amateur naturalist who loved to garden. Her own passion for gardening is infectious; she notes that the classroom teachers love the School Gardens lessons as much as she does, noting “We have to turn teachers away.” There is a core group of six or seven dedicated Master Gardener volunteers who work in the schools each month; most are committed to a particular school. Wonacott says the classroom visits require at least two volunteers (preferably three), plus an engaged and committed participating teacher to make each lesson engaging and worthwhile.

The carefully-devised science-based lessons are inspirational and impressive. Our next Real Dirt article will focus more squarely on the classroom lessons, along with Wonacott's ambitious goals for the future of the Master Gardener School Garden Program and for the bigger picture of all school garden programs in our area. Schoolchildren in our county are lucky kids indeed!

To learn more about UC Butte County Master Gardeners and their upcoming events, and for help with gardening in our area, visit our website. If you have a gardening question or problem, call our Hotline at (530) 538-7201 or email mgbutte@ucanr.edu.

Photo credit:  Bok Choy: JS [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

Plummeting winter temperatures often lead to frost damage in plants. The damage occurs when ice crystals form within plant tissue, damaging their cells. Leaves and tender new growth are usually affected first. Initially, they will appear wilted. Then the wilted growth will turn brown or black and eventually become crispy. This means these affected parts of the plant have died.

It is tempting to remove frost-damaged plant growth immediately, but dead material should be left on the plant until the full extent of the damage is apparent in the spring. There are several reasons to wait. By allowing plenty of time for new growth to appear, the extent of any damage will be clearly apparent and it will be less likely that you will accidentally remove living tissue that survived a freeze. Additionally, dead material can actually provide an insulating effect and removing it too soon may expose additional tissues to future freezes. If you prune out dead material before another freeze hits, it is more likely that an even greater portion of the plant will be killed. In Chico and nearby areas of the valley floor, the danger of frost is usually over in late April, so it is prudent to wait at least until then, or later, before doing any pruning.

In citrus, if hardier growth (such as twigs or wood) has not been seriously damaged, it is normal for dead leaves to be rapidly shed. If the frost-killed leaves remain on the plant, this is an indication that twigs or branches have been seriously damaged. If larger branches or the trunk of a tree sustain cold damage, the bark will split and dead patches of curled, dry bark may appear. If a young citrus tree has been killed nearly to the ground, inspect it closely to determine if the damage extends below the union. The union is the junction where the fruit-producing part of the tree was grafted onto the rootstock. If new growth comes only from the rootstock, the tree will no longer be true to the type you originally planted and will usually be unproductive. In this case, the tree should be replaced.

The only thing that should be done immediately after frost damage has occurred to citrus and other woody plants is whitewashing. Whitewash should be applied to the trunk and exposed limbs. This protects the bark from sunburn, which is more likely to occur if a plant becomes defoliated. Frost-damaged plants are more susceptible to disease and insects, and sunburn increases this susceptibility. To make whitewash, mix equal parts of white interior latex paint with water. If the area to be painted is particularly rough and fissured, a thinner mixture can be applied for better penetration and coverage.

It is also important to note that frost-damaged plants are unbalanced: although their leaves have been reduced, they still have the same root system. This can result in extensive new growth over the entire plant.

To ensure that the plant reaches an acceptable balance between its leaves and its root system, the new shoots should grow at a moderate rate. It is recommended that little or no fertilizer be applied to these plants initially, and they should be irrigated less than usual until they have returned to a normal appearance. Too much nitrogen fertilizer, for example, can encourage sucker and water sprout growth, while too much water can damage roots.

Of course, it would be preferable to prevent frost damage from occurring in the first place. For specific information on frost protection, see our Real Dirt articles on this topic.

To learn more about the UC Master Gardeners of Butte County, and for help with gardening in our area, visit our website. The Master Gardeners have produced a Garden Guide and Three-Year Garden Journal full of useful information specific to Butte County. It is currently available in Chico at Magnolia Gift & Garden, the Patrick Ranch gift shop, the UC Cooperative Extension office in Oroville and all Master Gardener workshops.

If you have a gardening question or problem, call our Hotline at (530) 538-7201 or email mgbutte@ucanr.edu.

Educating the public about the best gardening practices for our region is the primary mission of the UC Master Gardeners of Butte County. A terrific example of our educational outreach was on tap at the first offering of our Fall 2019 Public Workshop series. This 90-minute workshop focused on getting the most out of our Gardening Guide and Three-Year Garden Journal, a publication full of useful information, seasonal tips, and regional plant wisdom specific to Butte County.

Joyce Hill, a Master Gardener and lifelong educator who teaches teachers how to teach, led the workshop. Before delving into her carefully devised learning activities, Hill gave a quick outline of the Guide which was first published in 2014 and is currently being revised. Articles on climate, soil, compost, fertilizer, native plants, sustainable gardening, managing pests, and attracting pollinators comprise the first portion of the spiral-bound book. The following sections combine the format of a journal with pertinent information for every month within each season, starting with spring and ending with winter. Each seasonal segment begins with an overview of what to expect from climate and plants, gardening tasks for that time of year, and ripening fruits and vegetables to be harvested.

Designed with journaling and record keeping in mind, the interactive part of the Guide follows the seasonal introductions. Each of the thirteen weeks of the season is given a two-page layout which features three lined columns, each to be headed by the month and year of use, and filled in by the user as they wish. On the left side of each two-page layout is a short, pertinent article. Helpful tips and items of interest appear on the lower right.

An appendix at the end of the Guide contains pruning and planting guides for the Valley and the foothills, detailed information on caring for fruit trees, and photos and descriptions of common garden pests and beneficial insects.

All-in-all this Gardening Guide is a handy resource for gardeners of all abilities and preferences. But lecturing about what's in the Guide is one thing – getting us into it hands-on is another, and as a good teacher, Hill knew how important it was to engage us in this educational material. To that end, she had prepared a series of garden-, plant-, and climate-related questions, each of which was printed out and pasted onto colored construction paper. Colors were coded by season, and workshop participants were grouped by season/color to locate the answer to each question within the Guide.

About two-thirds of the workshop participants had brought their own dog-eared (or hardly used) Garden Guides with them – the others were able to purchase them on site before we began. Within our groups, we began to leaf through our Guides – the cleverly formulated questions directed us variously to the table of contents, planting guides, pest tables, and task lists.

A former community college instructor myself, I valued group work as an educational tool, and learned to gauge the success of an exercise by the level of noisy interaction occurring in each group. Judging by that criterion, Hill's color-coded questions were a success – we were discovering, learning, and helping each other. Better yet, we were using the Guide as it was intended.

A second benefit of group work is when each team shares the outcome of its investigation. And here is where even more learning occurs – individuals share experiences and knowledge – all of us tapping into expertise that would not have been available in a traditional lecture-oriented class.

The Master Gardeners are working on a revised edition of the Guide, and in wrapping up the workshop, Hill asked participants to critique the existing Guide and offer suggestions for improving the second edition. Changes already in the works include firewise planting and yard maintenance, new and updated sidebar articles, and a section on the basics of garden design (the Guide includes several pages of grid paper for planning to scale). Of course, everyone wanted color photos. So did and do the Master Gardeners. But the prohibitive cost of color images would make the Guide far less affordable for many of its potential users, and getting the information contained in the Guide to as many people as possible is the goal. Other items on the wish list included index tabs (some workshop participants had already added their own), website addresses added to resource lists, an area dedicated to recording climate conditions, and a list of invasive plants.

The Garden Guide and Journaling Workshop showcased and encouraged some highly effective teaching methods, including interaction, self-discovery, and individual and group contributions. A good teacher helps students find the “answer” on their own. The best teachers do this subtly – all of a sudden you have that “aha” moment of discovery without knowing that the exercises crafted, and the information presented, have guided you there. I had just experienced proof of this at our Master Gardener Workshop.

The Garden Guide and Three-Year Garden Journal is currently available in Chico at Magnolia Gift and Garden, the Patrick Ranch Gift Store, the Butte County Cooperative Extension Office in Oroville and all Master Gardener workshops.

To learn more about UC Butte County Master Gardeners and our upcoming workshops and events, and for help with gardening in our area, visit our website. If you have a gardening question or problem, call our Hotline at (530) 538-7201 or email mgbutte@ucanr.edu.