One of the amusements a garden can provide is watching the birds, bees, butterflies and other critters drawn to it. Most of us have seen honeybees flying from flower to flower, sipping nectar or collecting pollen to take back to their colony. Honeybees, however, are not native to the western hemisphere. They originated in Eurasia and Africa and were imported to North America by immigrants in the 17^th century. Before that time, pollination services for both wild and cultivated plants were provided by a host of native bees. There are about 4000 different species of bees native to the United States, and 1600 of those species are found in California. Most of these bees are solitary with each female making her own nest; most often the nests are in the ground, but some bee species nest above ground.

If you look closely, you are likely to find some native bees in your garden. Like other insects, bees have six legs and a body divided into head, thorax and abdomen. They range in size from tiny to much larger than a honeybee and have 4 wings, two on each side of the body. The two wings are hooked together, so the wings move in unison while flying. Most bee species have relatively long elbow-shaped antennae. If you see antennae that are short and stubby or club-shaped, you are not looking at a bee.

Bumble bees are one group of native bees. The body of a bumble bee generally has lots of black hair with contrasting bands of yellow, red, or white. Different species have different color patterns. Bumble bees are as large as or larger than honeybees. Female honeybee and bumble bee workers both have pollen baskets on their hind legs, which they use to carry the pollen they collect. A pollen basket is a shallow depression in the leg surrounded by a fringe of long hairs. Workers and males are similar in size, but queens are much larger. Both queens and workers have stingers, but they are not aggressive and rarely sting. Males don't have stingers.

Like honeybees but unlike other native bees, bumble bees live in colonies with a single queen. Their nests are generally found in tree cavities or abandoned rodent burrows, but they can sometimes be found in woodpiles, hay bales, old bird nests or the like. Bumble bee nests are smaller than honeybee colonies and not as highly organized. A bumble bee nest may contain about 250 bumble bees, while a honeybee colony can have as many as 50,000 bees. Bumble bees don't make honey, but their nests do contain a nectar pot and extra pollen stores to feed the queen and larvae.  While a honeybee colony can be viable for a decade, a bumble bee nest lasts for only a year.

In late winter or early spring the queens emerge from hibernation. Each queen will begin a new colony. First, she forages for both nectar and pollen to feed herself. Once she finds a suitable nesting site, she begins laying eggs fertilized with sperm stored from the previous summer. These fertilized eggs will become female workers. The queen continues foraging for pollen to feed to the larvae after hatching.

When the workers become adults, they take over foraging for nectar and pollen. The queen remains in the nest to lay more eggs as the colony grows and develops.

In late summer,some of the fertilized eggs are fed more frequently and longer than usual. These develop into new queens. The queen also lays some unfertilized eggs that will develop into male bees. Once they leave the colony, the males forage to feed themselves but don't return to the nest. They spend their days eating and searching for new queens to fertilize. At night they sleep in trees or shrubbery. In the fall the old queen, workers and males all die. Each new queen hibernates separately in a cavity in the ground until it is time for her to emerge the following year to begin her own colony.

Bumble bees tend to be generalists in the kind of flowers they visit, although individuals may have preferences for one type of flower over another. Different bumble bee species have tongues that vary in length which influences the kind of flower they visit. Bumble bees with short tongues have difficulty retrieving nectar from flowers with long tubes, like Penstemon or larkspur. Many of these short-tongued bees have learned to bite a small hole in the flower tube near its base, allowing them to access nectar through the hole. This behavior is called “nectar robbing.”  

As a bumble bee moves around inside the flower, pollen collects on her hair; she uses her legs to transfer the pollen to the pollen basket. Some flowers have pollen that is contained within tubular anthers that open only at one end or through a narrow slit on the side. These anthers must be vibrated or shaken to release the pollen through the opening. Plants that function in this way include some common garden vegetables like tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes and peppers, as well as native plants like shooting stars and manzanita. Bumble bees (along with a few other bee species, but not honeybees) have evolved a specialized method called buzz pollination to obtain pollen from these plants. Bumble bees grasp the tubular anthers while vibrating their flight muscles without moving their wings. The vibration shakes the pollen loose, and it falls onto the bumble bee. Having bumble bees in your garden can increase the yield of these crops.

According to the book California Bees & Blooms (by G. Frankie et al, Heyday Press, 2014), ten of the 26 native bumble bee species have been found in residential gardens, but only three are common. The Yellow-Faced Bumble Bee (Bombus vosnesenkii) is mostly black with yellow hair in front of the wing bases, yellow hair on the face and top of the head, and a yellow band near the tip of the abdomen. The California Bumble Bee (B. californicus) is similar to the Yellow-Faced but has black hair on the face and top of the head instead of yellow. The Black-Tailed Bumble Bee (B. melanopygus) is somewhat smaller and fuzzier than the first two. It has mostly yellow hair with bands of black between the wing bases and across the middle of the abdomen.

Some insects superficially resemble bumblebees, but if you look closely, you can tell the difference. Carpenter bees have bodies that are mostly black and shiny with far less hair than bumble bees. The Valley Carpenter Bee is enormous, about one inch long, much larger than a bumble bee. The females are shiny black, and the males are fuzzy golden yellow with green eyes. Syrphid flies have abdomens that are striped black and yellow, but flies have only two wings and antennae that are short and stubby. Clearwing sphinx moths are yellow and black but larger than bumble bees. They hover in front of a flower, rather than landing on it, and their antennae are long and feathery.

As you wander through your garden, pay attention to all the bee-like insects you see. If you're lucky, you'll see some bumble bees hard at work.

Upcoming opportunity to learn more about bumble bees: John Whittlesey, owner of Canyon Creek Nursery and Design, will be presenting “Living with Bumble Bees” online on Wednesday, April 7 at 7pm during the general meeting of the Mount Lassen Chapter of the California Native Plant Society. This meeting is free and open to the public. Go to the chapter website and click on the program title to access the link to the Zoom meeting.

The Master Gardeners Spring Workshop Series has begun. Topics include: Diagnosing Plant Problems; Mason Bees; and Native Gardens. Others will be added soon.  Visit our workshop webpage to read about these upcoming free workshops and to register (required). 

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.

There are many benefits in sharing a love for gardening with a child. Gardening is an enjoyable and healthy way to connect with children, whether they're your own, a friend's, or a neighbor's.  Including children in the garden helps them develop skills they can practice for the rest of their lives. And gardening promotes mental and physical health.

It's not difficult to “grow” a gardener. Most children love to be outside, so it's not hard to entice them outdoors with a garden task. Watering plants, pulling weeds, and raking leaves are all outdoor activities that children can happily help with. Young children, especially, are keen to take on “grown-up” responsibilities. Older children are more independent and benefit from sharing the household responsibilities which the garden offers.  

Gardening teaches patience. Children live in the now, but life is a blend of immediate and delayed gratification. Waiting for a seed to germinate or a flower to open forces a child to slow down and focus on the process of its development. This is called patience practice. Learning to be patient is an essential element of future success and may also help children cope with stressful situations. Practicing patience teaches children to calm down and relax. When calm and relaxed, they are better prepared to control their impulses and emotions. This promotes good mental health.

Studies have shown decreased anxiety and better moods in children who spend time in garden activities like digging and planting. Further, a study published in the American Journal of Public Health (September 2004) studied the impact of natural settings on children diagnosed withAttention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The study found that simply being outdoors in a natural setting may reduce ADHD symptoms.  

Working outdoors in the garden with children encourages brain health. Intellectual skills like remembering, analyzing, and predicting outcomes are practiced in the garden. Learning the differences among various plants and the different parts of each plant (e.g. leaf, stem, root, flower, seed) facilitates cognitive development.  The garden is a great place for kids to ask questions and explore outcomes.

Anyone who has spent time working in a garden knows that gardening is a physical activity. Turning dirt with a trowel or shovel, raking leaves, even just walking around the garden exercise upper and lower body muscles. Young children fine-tune motor skills. All children expend calories which may be instrumental in preventing obesity and other health issues as they grow into young adults. The food children harvest is full of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients, building strong bodies and boosting brain development. According to an article published in Harvard Medical School's HEALTHbeat titled “Foods Linked to Better Brainpower” (May 2017; updated November 16, 2018),green leafy vegetables and berries are effective brain foods. They're also not difficult to grow in containers or raised beds. Eating what they've planted helps children develop healthy eating habits. Who can resist nibbling on something we've grown ourselves?

Working in a garden, no matter what size, becomes a wholesome pattern of exercise to carry forward into adulthood. Children are exposed to fresh air and vitamin D from the sun. Fresh air improves circulation and lowers blood pressure.

Dirt may also strengthen a child's overall health and immunity. In medicine, the “hygiene hypothesis” theorizes that playing in dirt and being exposed to germs is actually a good thing. This hypothesis contends that the over-use of hand sanitizers, antibiotic soaps, and cleansers increases a child's susceptibility to autoimmune disorders, asthma, and allergies simply because children's developing immune systems are being suppressed. In other words, getting dirty may benefit overall health, as well as physical well-being.

Gardening gives children a sense of self-accomplishment. They learn by caring for their plants and watching them grow from seedlings to food or flowers. Children learn that their hard work pays off, boosting self-esteem. Those with positive self-esteem are more likely to try new things. They can learn responsibility and consequences when they are encouraged to take part in the care of a garden or are given some space for their own garden.  Children develop confidence when given responsibility.

Gardening also teaches mindfulness. It encourages children to focus on their senses. In the garden, children are engaged with multiple sounds, smells, and sights. Garden work can calm and center children as they pay attention to the smell, taste, feel, or visual characteristics of a particular plant. Activities that help children focus on their senses encourage self-awareness and strengthen qualities such as tolerance, empathy, kindness, and appreciation. Becoming mindful of their gardens and the physical world in general encourages children to become environment-conscious “green thinkers.”

Children can participate in many gardening activities which foster curiosity, creativity, and mindful thinking. Here are a few suggestions:

• Mindful eating. Snack on something grown in the vegetable or flower garden. We tend to forget that many flowers such as dandelion (also known as a stubborn weed), nasturtium, pansy, and chamomile are edible. Snow peas, spinach, and lettuce are ready for the picking now. What does it look like? Talk about how it smells. Close your eyes and chew slowly. Discuss the taste. Bitter? Sweet?
• Pressed flowers. Gather fresh flowers. Place each flower (or, for larger flowers, the separated petals) between two pieces of parchment (or waxed) paper. Put between pages of a heavy book and add more weight with other books on top. Wait two to three days for flowers to dry. It's fun to place the dried flowers in a picture frame to display in the house. The same method works beautifully for leaves and is especially effective with fall foliage.
• Butterfly feeder. A butterfly feeder is simple to make with a clean tin can and some twine. Poke holes in the tin can and thread the twine through the holes so you can hang the can from a tree branch. Add a bit of sponge soaked in sugar water and then fill the can with colorful stemmed flowers (like filling a vase with flowers).  Butterflies are attracted to bright colors. Soon they'll be visiting your feeder.
• Flower/Vegetable/Seed journal. Start with a blank journal. On the left side of each set of pages, have your young gardener paste an envelope for the seed package. Place the seed packet inside the envelope. On the right side, your gardener will write the date the seeds are planted and illustrate the different stages of growth of the seeds.
• Painted pots. Let your young gardener paint his or her containers.
• Pizza/Salsa gardens. These are great to plant in containers. What herbs are needed for pizza? Peppers and herbs are perfect container plantings.
• Plant a rainbow. You'll only need a small plot (or large container) to plant flowers and vegetables that mimic the hues of a rainbow. Think flowers and vegetables that are pink, orange, green (mint is great here), and blue/purple.
• Plant a name garden. Take a flower box or a container large enough for your young gardener's name. Fill the container with potting soil. With a pencil have your child write their name in the soil. Sprinkle alyssum seeds in the marks. Gently sprinkle soil over the marks. Water and wait. Your child's name will appear as the seeds sprout.

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.

Do you want to learn more about incorporating native plants in your garden? Are you curious about the healing properties of native plants? Ever wondered how Native Americans managed wild spaces? Would you like a free source for native seeds, cuttings, and plants? If so, join the Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) Wildtending walks on the last Tuesday of each month at Verbena Fields. This series of two-hour educational tours focuses on native plants and includes identification of plants in various stages of growth, their importance to native cultures, information on propagation and growing needs, examination of plant communities, interaction with insects, and forestry management. The first in the series was held on February 23;the next one will take place March 30.

Unlike most public gardens sporting signs that forbid touching or removing plants, in Verbena Fields (a 17-acre plot of public property in the middle of Chico), visitors are encouraged to take a redbud or willow cutting, dig up and give a new home to a mugwort, or scatter native wildflower seeds. Ali Meders-Knight, a TEK practitioner and Mechoopda Tribal Liaison, led the February tour with Raphael DiGenova, who is skilled in the propagation, seed collection, and cultivation of native plants; and Janova Sorenson of the Camp Fire Restoration Project. On their delightfully rambling tour of the park, the Plant Walk co-leaders allowed attendees to get up close and personal with native species such as poppies, lupine, blue oak, and gray pine, as well as intruders like star thistle and mustard. Meders-Knight shared her deep traditional knowledge of Mechoopda heritage, describing the tribe's kinship with the healing properties of the plants and the earth.

As the tour attendees paused for a few minutes to pull up handfuls of invasive star thistle in order to give the poppy seedlings and herbaceous perennials a better chance of growing successfully, Meders-Knight and DiGenova discussed the traditional use of fire in managing plants. The earliest inhabitants of this region utilized fire, an arm of “wildtending,” to ensure the health of oaks and pines, to encourage straight young shoots of willow and redbud for use in basket weaving, and to control undesirable insect populations.     

DiGenova shared his extensive knowledge of our native flora and highlighted the importance of reseeding and replanting areas destroyed by fire or invaded by non-natives. The co-leaders of the Wildtending Plant Walk combined scientific knowledge with traditional wisdom and the wisdom born from wildfire experience. Redbud, for instance, needs plant companions. Lonely redbuds that have been planted away from others of their species or from other species they evolved with will not thrive and may die. Redbuds need periodic fire (or pruning) to grow the straight, pliable shoots prized by basket makers.  Meders-Knight noted that the redbuds they planted along the eastern portion of Verbena Fields were allowed twelve years to mature before they were radically pruned this last winter. New shoots will be harvested for both weaving and propagation.

Lower branches of blue oaks and gray pines were pruned to hip height, mimicking the “pruning” from traditional burning methods. Interestingly, the Mechoopda tradition teaches that to:ni (gray pine) and c'awk'awi (blue oak) evolved such a symbiotic relationship that gray pine needles dropped near a blue oak add many times more nutrients to the shared soil than do gray pine needles dropped near other tree species.

During the course of the tour, Meders-Knight read out passages on the care and uses of the identified plants from After the First Full Moon in April: A Sourcebook of Herbal Medicine from a California Indian Elder, by Josephine Peters and Beverly Ortiz.  She also recommended Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources by M. Kat Anderson.

The Plant Walks are free.  They are a collaborative effort between the Camp Fire Restoration Project, the Mechoopda Indian Tribe of Chico Rancheria, and California State University, Chico Department of Agriculture. Visit Verbena Fields Wildtending Days for more information.  The TEK Wildtending Walks will continue at least through April and will include seed collection methods.

Managing, tending, and preserving the wonderful resources in Verbena Fields is a huge job. If you want to get involved you can join the Verbena Fields Wildtending Days team of volunteers which meets every Friday from 10am to 1pm. Volunteer tasks include laddering trees; removing star thistle to allow in more sunlight for native plants; seed propagating and transplanting; creating small native plant communities; and controlling invasive species. The group welcomes all comers to help with this unique and vital project.

For the monthly Wildtending Walking Tour meet at the entrance to Verbena Fields at 4pm on the last Tuesday of the month (time may change in Summer).  So, whether you want a two-hour informative tour of native plants and their uses, or the camaraderie of working with others for the health and beauty of the park, Verbena Fields is your answer.

For the history of Verbena Fields and a more detailed description of what to find there, see “Discovering Verbena Fields in Chico” by Laura Lukes, published in The Real Dirt blog on June 19, 2020. For more information on the Camp Fire Restoration Project, click here.  For specific questions about Wildtending Days or Walks, email DiGenova at Raphael@gnogi.com. For more information about the Mechoopda Indian Tribe of Chico Rancheria, visit their website.

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.

People new to gardening often ask what tools are needed to maintain their gardens. It's easy to become overwhelmed by the scope and variety of garden tools available in stores, online, and in garden catalogues. Even seasoned gardeners may wonder which tools are really necessary to help make their garden tasks easier and their gardens more productive. Since there are as many types of gardens as there are gardeners, there is no magic list of essential garden tools.  But all gardeners need quality tools that will perform well for many years.

When maintaining the landscape around your home, there are several tools that will make the job easier and more enjoyable. If there is an area of lawn, a mower is needed to keep the grass trimmed. The type of mower will depend on preference and the size of the lawn area. Gas mowers can accommodate any size of lawn or a need for weed mowing and allow more freedom.  Older electric mowers were tethered to an electric socket.  The new lithium battery-powered electric mowers run for over an hour and work well on medium-size lawns typical on a quarter-acre urban lot.  An electric mower is easy to use, starts every time, and does not require running to a gas station to fill the gas can (or the storage of gas between uses). A push mower is a wonderful tool for exercise, and a great choice for a small lawn. With a push mower the person doing the mowing is getting a cardio workout while maintaining the lawn.

Deciduous trees and shrubs dictate the need for a leaf rake. The flexible metal or plastic bristles of a leaf rake allow the removal of debris like leaves and twigs without overly disturbing the soil. Leaf rakes have a large, fan-like head of tines and come in a variety of head sizes with long or short handles. Adjustable leaf rakes with telescopic handles that can be lengthened and shortened are a useful option for those with little storage space.

A digging shovel is a staple for garden maintenance. The curved blade shovel is used for many heavy-duty jobs such as digging holes for planting trees and shrubs, turning over compacted soil in beds, and moving soil and organic compost from one area to another. They can be used to dig trenches, cut sod, and create sharp edges to outline a planting area. A curved blade digging shovel is truly the garden workhorse.

Hand pruners and loppers are needed for tree and shrub maintenance. There are two main types of pruners:  those with bypass blades and those with anvil blades.  These perform different garden jobs. A bypass pruner cuts like a pair of scissors: a larger sharper blade slips by a smaller blade to make a clean cut in living branches. Anvil pruners work like a knife on a chopping board:  they have a single sharpened cutting blade that strikes down on the flat anvil blade below. Because anvils crush soft plant tissue, they are a better choice for pruning out dead wood, while bypass pruners work well on live tissue. Bypass pruners generally have much broader utility than anvil pruners.  Loppers are tools with longer handles that offer more leverage and larger blades than hand pruners; use loppers to make cuts in any branch larger around than your finger. Loppers come in both bypass and anvil styles and work the same way as hand pruners.

A good-quality leaf rake, digging shovel, hand pruner, or lopper would be a thoughtful housewarming gift for someone new to gardening.

Besides the basic tools used to maintain the landscape around your home, there are other tools that are especially useful for particular garden jobs. Whether you are growing flowers or vegetables, working in raised or flat beds, planting in containers, or growing houseplants indoors, adding to your basic tool inventory can save time and help to prevent sore muscles. The following are some tool suggestions for specific garden types.

• Large vegetable garden. Long-handled tools, particularly a spade (longer and narrower than a digging shovel) and a hoe, are kind to the back and help get chores done in a shorter amount of time. Spades are not only good for digging and turning over the soil but aerate it as well. There are many types of hoes, and gardeners often have several favorites, alternating between them depending upon garden chores. Hoes are a foe to weeds and a much better garden defense than chemicals. Wheelbarrows and garden carts are also useful in a large vegetable garden.
• Raised bed garden. With beds usually no wider than four feet, this type of garden is becoming popular because of its ease of maintenance and the ability to grow more in a smaller space. A garden fork will turn the soil, aerate, and mix nutrients into the soil. A trowel will handle planting needs. A garden knife (also called a hori-hori knife) has one multipurpose steel blade useful for weeding and digging and can also be used for other garden tasks like measuring planting depths and cutting open bags. A hand plow and cultivator hoe are also helpful in raised bed gardening.
• Flower garden. A rabbiting spade and edger can make life easier in the flower garden. A rabbiting spade is narrow-headed and ideal for placing plants in containers and moving plants and shrubs without damaging the plants nearby. An edger will define flower beds. Don't forget a good quality garden hose and nozzle.
• Container gardens and house plants. Whether in the garden or in the house, plants in containers will benefit from a soil scoop. Transferring soil from the bag to the container with a scoop avoids a potentially messy cleanup. A garden knife is also a good addition, as it can be used in weeding and also for performing other tasks. Misters and watering cans keep plants hydrated and happy.

Whatever tools you choose to purchase for your gardening needs, stick to the tried-and-true designs of old-school garden tools manufactured by well-known companies. While you may be able to save a few dollars purchasing a cheaper tool, it will soon add to the landfill, because you'll have to replace it after a couple of years. With proper selection, care, and maintenance, your garden tools should serve you well for many, many years.

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.