To celebrate our 25^th anniversary, UC Master Gardeners of Napa County asked the sole remaining member of the first class to share some garden tips.

by John Chwistek

1. 
   When a subdivision is built, the builder brings in soil and existing top soil is moved around to grade the lots. You can have different types of soil in your yard.
2. After a heavy rain or irrigation, some parts of your garden might take longer to drain than others. It could be different soil types, compaction or how water moves out of your yard.
3. Microclimates are important since house lots are getting smaller, houses are 2-3 stories and closer to the property line. Trees (yours or the neighbor), tall shrubs, tall fences can affect how much sunlight you have during the growing season. Observe your garden during different times of year to see when you have sun or shade over your garden beds and about how many hours. This will vary greatly during different seasons.
4. When landscaping a new yard, draw a good design. Decide where to put the patio, service areas, lawn, vegetable garden, where to plant screen plants etc. This plan may evolve over time and you may have to replace plants as it changes.
5. Be aware of how tall and wide plants will get, so you do not shade solar panels with trees or large shrubs or block pathways and needed access around the yard.
6. Do not block your site lines near driveways and sidewalks. You need to see cars, people, etc., when backing out. And don't plant sharp, thorny or sticker-y plants near walkways or sidewalks; they may become a hazard.
7. Plant plants in odd numbers, groups of 3, 5, 7 etc. This will make the planting look bigger. If plants are planted in even numbers you will divide the area in half and the planting will look smaller.
8. If you are changing part of a landscape, use plants with similar leaf size so they will blend with the existing plants.
9. Group plants with similar needs for light, water, soil type (clay, loam, sand etc.), and pH (acid loving plants).
10. Give your plants the space they need to grow to mature height and spread. Don't let your plants grow into the neighbor's yard or plant too close to structures like fences where they will become a problem.
11. No plants are truly deer resistant, but plants listed as resistant will work if there is enough natural food for the deer to eat. Unless they are roses, deer LOVE roses.
12. If you live along a deer trail they will nibble on every plant and could damage them, but if there are enough plants they will not eat much of any one plant. Most plants will regrow. They generally do not like fuzzy or highly scented plants.
13. 
    Tall fences a deer cannot jump over is the best way to protect for your plants.
14. To improve your soil and reduce pest problems rotate the families of vegetables and annual flowers planted in your garden beds. 
15. Don't plant warm season vegetables too early in spring. They need warm soil and longer days to grow well. Plant at the end of April through the 2^nd week of June for best results.
16. Mulch warm season vegetables one month after planting so the soil has time to warm-up.
17. Cool season vegetables establish best while soil is still warm, so plant in late August through October. If planted into cool soil the seedling plants will not start to grow until the soil heats up again in spring.
18. Plants that are grown for fruit, vegetables, nuts and flowers need to be fertilized and watered regularly to keep producing well.
19. Bamboos and vines can be very useful as permanent to temporary screens. Plant in containers to help control running bamboo, vines, mints or other plants that have aggressive roots or that may be invasive.
20. Plants grown in containers need to be repotted or transplanted regularly. A plant cannot stay in the same pot forever, unless you regularly repot and trim the roots – we call this a bonsai.
21. Trees, shrubs and perennials bloom during certain times, not all season or year-round in our climate. However, with a little bit of planning and some careful choices you can create a garden that will have flowers year-round that will feed our local birds and pollinators, creating a habitat garden.
22. Trees, shrubs and perennials do not live forever. With proper care and management, they will live to their maximum capacity but will have to be replaced eventually.
23. Healthy plants can survive an insect or disease attack better than a stressed plant (planted in the wrong place, unusual weather, etc.)
24. All plants require some maintenance during the year.
25. If you would like more information about plants, insects, diseases, look for information on the following websites:

UC Master Gardeners of Napa County, napamg.ucanr.edu
   See Garden Resources and Healthy Garden Tips

UC Davis IPM http://ipm.ucanr.edu/ ; UC Davis Arboretum https://arboretum.ucdavis.edu/ ;

UC Davis Backyard Orchard http://homeorchard.ucanr.edu/ ;

California Native Plant Society https://www.cnps.org/about/contact

Master Gardeners are following recommended social distancing guidelines that keep everyone safe, Napa Master Gardeners are available to answer garden questions by email: mastergardeners@countyofnapa.org. or phone at 707-253-4143.  Volunteers will get back to you after they research answers to your questions.

Visit our website: napamg.ucanr.edu to find answers to all of your horticultural questions.

Photo credits: Pixabay, free photo

 

 

 

By Cynthia Kerson

I am inspired by the recent article, “The Zen of Gardening” by Edward S. Lopez in the latest issue of Spill the Beans. The author points out the positive value of gardening on our emotional well being. During my training to become a Master Gardener, I had to miss a day when the topic was about soil. I did makeup reading and video-watching and reported on the importance of soil – not just in gardening, but on our well-being and how much soil and brain ecosystems can be compared.

Soil needs major, minor and micronutrients. And, even when one carefully considers planting, the soil can, over time, become depleted. Testing soil pH level measures how acidic or basic it is, adjusting the pH can either bind or make nutrients more available to plants. pH is measured from 0-14. Under 7.0 means the soil is acidic and above means it's basic or alkaline. The middle (between 6.5 and 7.5) is neutral and what most plants prefer.

If you discover issues with your soil composition, compost may do the trick since it builds nutrients and organic matter. Compost can be made at home or purchased commercially. In the same way you're careful of what you consume, be sure to use a quality compost. The soil and the brain need quality nutrients to thrive.

In the garden and the brain, the right balance is necessary – one doesn't want to plant into 100% compost. Nor do they want to supply only oxygen or vitamin C to the brain. For soil, the combination of two inches of compost worked into six to eight inches of soil is the correct amount. For the brain? Oh, that's much more complex and beyond the scope of this article.

To be sure to combine soil and compost at the optimal combination, replenish compost on a regular schedule. Here's another place to compare soil to the brain: The human cortex is the 6-layer, less than 5mm outer, “crust” of the human brain. Just like the brain, in which the cortex is the vital area that makes the person who they are, it's the topsoil that makes the garden what it is.

The brain and soil subsist in layers. Bacteria and actinomycetes live in the deepest layers of soil – similarly, the subcortex of the human brain consists of billions of microscopic neurons and cells. In soil, protozoa, nematodes, mites, springtails, rotifers and tardigrades live within the middle layers. In the brain, this would be equivalent to the deeper cortical structures – important to our emotional well-being and for the most part, the connectors between the deepest and outermost layers. In soil, the top-most layers contain insects, myriapods, spiders, diplurans, worms, snails and slugs.

Within a teaspoon of healthy soil, one can find 4-8 billion bacteria, 20 million actinomycetes, 1 million fungi, 200,000 algae, and 2,500 linear feet of fungal hyphae (transporters of nutrients). These species make up the soil food chain, such that the larger species are the predators to the smaller ones. Within the same size of the brain, there are about 100,000 million neurons. These too are a “food chain” of sorts. The larger of them “speak” louder than the smaller ones and contribute more loudly to functional processes, transcribing brain function to behavior.

The rhizosphere is the area within the soil in the vicinity of plant roots, and in which the plant lives off the microbes and nutrients discussed above. The rhizoplane is the outermost area of the root that sloughs off cells that disintegrate and mix in with the other organic matter within the rhizosphere. The arbuscular mycorrhizae connect the root with the surrounding soil and is the bridge that supplementary nutrients pass into the root from the soil. This is a symbiotic relationship in that the microbes in the soil feed off the plant's carbohydrates and the plant feeds off the microbes. Again, most of this happens within the “crust,” where there is plenty of oxygen.

Equate that to the brain: This hierarchy of patterns does not reflect the historical understanding of soil and brain health, in which deader and deader things were presented as you dug deeper into the soil or brain. In fact, one can age soil with carbon dating just because of the abundance of living matter within it. The nutrients within and added to the soil will first be taken up by the needy microbiome before being consumed by the plant. In the brain, the outer cortex similarly doesn't make the deeper and subcortical areas obsolete – it enforces their processes and feeds off of them, informing the person – in the same way the rhizosphere informs the plant.

Mycobacterium vaccae, which was first discovered in cow dung, is a bacterium that lives in the soil and can now be bought in supplement form as an antidepressant. A recent study (O'Brien, 2004)¹ looked at injecting M. vaccae into the lungs of cancer patients. This study failed to show that the bacterium increased immune function, its original goal. But it serendipitously confirmed that the presence of the bacterium improved mood and feelings of well-being.

Soil aggregates are divided by size: single grain to massive structures and the bigger they are, usually they are deeper in the soil layers. They are connected by fungal glomalin, which are the “glue” of microenvironments and the plants that inhabit the area. They connect plants and will even support nutrient transfer from one to the other as needed. Another fine example of how soil compares to the brain – in that the brain has hubs of neurons that network and relay communication, while soil has pores that allow nutrients, biome, and water pass through. The brain's glia, or “glue cells” are the fungal glomalin that binds the neurons together.

The brain matures until about 28 years old. Then it starts to die off (sad but true). Soil forms over many years as well. CLORT, the acronym for climate, organisms, relief (parent material), and time, explains the process. Climate (temperature, rainfall or other source of water) supports organic matter, which is moved around because of the terrain (relief) slope, which then creates the parent material (underlying structural minerals, chemicals and other physical characteristics) over time. Without nutritional support, soil will die off and be less supporting of plant health. So will the brain. Without healthy support, many pathologies will manifest. Soil health is expressed by healthy plants. Like with the brain, without caring for the microbiome, the plants will exhibit dysregulation. Staying healthy is not only about us – it's about our environment. We are companion ecosystems and our collective lives depend upon it.

1. https://qz.com/993258/dirt-has-a-microbiome-and-it-may-double-as-an-antidepressant/

 

Note: Beside being a recent graduate of the UC Master Gardeners of Napa training class, Cynthia Kerson is a Psychophysiologist.

Master Gardeners are following recommended social distancing guidelines that keep everyone safe. Napa Master Gardeners are available to answer garden questions by email: mastergardeners@countyofnapa.org. or phone at 707-253-4143.  Volunteers will get back to you after they research answers to your questions.

Visit our website: napamg.ucanr.edu to find answers to all of your horticultural questions.

Photo credits: Top, Pixabay; below, André-Ph. D. Picard / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

 

by Cindy Watter

Having a rat invasion is a bit like having salmonella at the potluck – someone must be blamed.  When I heard the telltale scrabbling under the floor, then later saw rat poop in the toolshed, I wondered – where did the rat come from? My neighbors to the west had renovated an old storage area, transforming it into a lovely postmodern home and possibly displacing a vermin population.  Or how about my neighbor to the south, who has not set foot in his yard for the last twenty years? Rats love undisturbed vegetation. And there is the showplace garden to the north that is so stunningly well managed that a hungry rodent would have to come over to my place to avoid starvation. Not my fault, right?

Wrong. While cleaning up my garden tool area, and organizing a tub of broken china from the earthquake that I am really, really going to use to make steppingstones this weekend, I found a tiny hole chewed into the corner where the outside walls of my sewing room and tool room meet. That precise corner had been undisturbed for years until my COVID cleanup project. The hole was small, but rats have narrow heads and no shoulders, so it was big enough. Oh, and while rooting around in the yard later that day, I saw something with a long tail make a dash for the ivy. (I should mention that rats love ivy, so there's another chore for me.) I nailed some 1/4-inch mesh over the corner and commanded my husband to set out traps. While the rat has not yet been caught, s/he has stopped leaving behind evidence of his/her presence, so that's good. I have been using peanut butter as bait; maybe I will vary that with nuts or raisins.

This is probably a roof rat, or Rattus rattus, to distinguish it from its relative, Rattus norvegicus, or Norwegian rat (which actually came to Europe from China thousands of years ago). Both abound in North America. Roof rats have the longer tail. Wouldn't poisoning the rat be easier than trapping it?  Probably, but most rat poison is actually an anticoagulant that doesn't do its work until some hours after the rat has ingested it. In the meantime, that rat could enter the food chain and be devoured by a house pet or, say, an owl or other benign form of wildlife, which would then die. Trapping is the environmentally sound choice, along with eliminating nesting places (see ivy, above). According to the Smithsonian, there is evidence that rats are developing a resistance to rat poison, so there is another reason for trapping.

I am going to keep checking the traps. Since rats can mate year round, have a gestation period of three weeks, and bear on average eight to a litter, a couple of rats can soon be a big problem.  People who own terriers generally don't have rat issues. Some cats are good rat catchers, but it is better for house pets not to have contact with rats, because they can carry disease. Which reminds me – if you feed your pet outside, do not leave food out overnight. Rats love dog and cat kibble.

Information links:

Pest Notes:  Rats, UC ANR Publication 74106

"Garden Pests – Here's A Little Help!" Napa Valley Register  UCMG column, Iris Craig,      July 22, 2018

Norway Rat – Smithsonian's Nation Zoo, nationalzoo.si.edu.animals.norway-rat

Master Gardeners are following recommended social distancing guidelines that keep everyone safe, Napa Master Gardeners are available to answer garden questions by email: mastergardeners@countyofnapa.org. or phone at 707-253-4143.  Volunteers will get back to you after they research answers to your questions.

Visit our website: napamg.ucanr.edu to find answers to all of your horticultural questions.

Photo credits: Creative Commons CC0

 

 

 

 

by Melody Kendall

Just about a year ago, we decided that we wanted to remove our inground pool.  This is the third installment of that saga.

First, after experiencing this recent hot weather my husband and I have more than once looked at each other and said, “We wanted to remove the pool...why?” But, there's no going back now.  So, planning our work in the cooler early mornings, we have continued to move forward on our project.

The new trees we planted and the roses that we transplanted are doing very well and seem to enjoy their new locations.  We have since installed irrigation in the rose garden, surrounded the area with a 2x6 raised bed and filled it with amended soil. It looks wonderful, I must say. 

Our next chore was to define the walkways and new planting bed with a metal border.  We had used a plastic bender board before and we found that it tended to fade and warp as time went by.  After much research we decided on metal bender board. We liked the neatness and the sturdiness of the support this product provided. After researching the options, we purchased a product that rusted and developed a patina over time, instead of the black variety that is more common.  As a bonus for choosing this product – the supplies cost about a third less than the black variety. 

Measuring the areas and deciding on just how much we needed to complete our project was a lesson in patience.  Since we wanted free form shaped planting areas, we needed something more flexible than the typical rigid metal measuring tape. We finally purchased one of those measuring devices that you roll along the ground while walking the perimeter and did the best we could.  Each bender board package contained five 6-inch high by 8-foot long strips for a total of 40 feet so we ordered 4 packets. Of course, we were 40 feet too short and had to order an additional package but, still, those were pretty good calculations for amateurs. 

We found out leather gloves were a necessity right away!  Just by  removing the panels from their packaging, I cut my finger on the bottom edge. Fortunately, the top edge of the panels are rolled so I don't have to worry about lacerating myself while gardening. We trenched down two inches along the lines we had spray painted to mark the planned borders, and set the panels in place.  The reason for the 6- inch panels was that we wanted to bury 2 inches and have  4 inches exposed to get the benefit of the patina. The company provided staples to hold the product but we just didn't like the way that looked so we drilled holes at each joining and put in bolts with self-locking nuts. This added stability and allowed the strip to be placed as a whole, rather than in different panels which added a more professional look.  It was a little hard wrestling those panels to get the correct location to drill but my husband and I are a good team.  With the minimum terse comments exchanged, we got all the panels in place over a period of a week doing a little each day which is an added benefit of a DIY project when you are retired: the timeline is up to you.

Our next project was to create the hardscape paths. Years ago, we purchased some manufactured stepping stones to go around the pool deck, and prior to the pool removal we had laboriously uprooted them and stacked them to the side.  In the paths for the new landscape we planned on using these stepping stones surrounded by decomposed granite with a stabilizer added instead of cement.  This would give us the desired look of a cobblestone path with the bonus of being permeable – water would pass through rather than run off. 

Formerly, the bulk of the  hardscapes created in our yards were a non-permeable material, most often cement.  Unfortunately, these non-porous materials in a city or town environment encourage the runoff of possibly polluted waters and the overflow of the storm sewers, which may cause flooding.  Additionally, because the water can't penetrate the surface, the soil dries out and moisture is unavailable to hydrate nearby plantings, thus causing the need for supplemental irrigation.  Permeable materials allow the water to slowly percolate through.  This filtration, plus natural chemical interactions and soil organisms, removes a large portion of the pollutants and allows the water to return to the aquifers much refreshed.

Gophers were frequent pests in my yard, so the first step in creating our hardscape walkways was a layer of galvanized gopher wire.  We purchased a 100-foot roll 5 feet wide with ½-inch cells. Wearing gloves and safety glasses I got to work.  I found it to be a lot like cutting shelf paper: you lay out the wire along the metal border and cut around the curves.  Wear gloves and safety glasses when working because the tendency is for the cut wire to snap back into the roll configuration and those cut edges are sharp!  After we had it all laid out we went along the edges, folded them over so no sharp edges were exposed and stomped the wire flat with our boots. 

Next, we calculated the amount of underlayment gravel we would need. Those wonderful curved garden paths do not lend themselves to easy mathematical calculations. Fortunately, my husband is a math whiz. We got it figured out and ordered the underlayment gravel to be delivered. Once you have the total square feet of the area needed, I highly recommend that you allow a professional decide how many yards of the product you will need.

We are now in the process of moving rock from the front to the back, a couple of hours each morning, filling each area two inches deep with the gravel.  We will wet each section down to help it settle and then go over it with a tamper and a roller style compactor (water filled barrel with a handle) to get it ready for the placement of the stones.  

The saga continues...

Information links:

UC Master Gardeners of Napa County Step by Step Garden Design

http://napamg.ucanr.edu/GardenDesign/

 Northern California/Nevada/Hawaii District of the American Rose Society

http://www.ncnhdistrict.org/aom/myths.html

UC Integrated Pest Mgmt

http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/GARDEN/PLANTS/rose.html

UCANR Using CCA Preservative–Treated Lumber in Gardens and Landscaping

https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8128.pdf

Univ of Maryland extension Permeable hardscapes

https://extension.umd.edu/sites/extension.umd.edu/files/_docs/publications/FS-1062%20Permeable%20Hardscapes%20%281%29.pdf

https://www.norfolk.gov/DocumentCenter/View/28747/RainscapingManualPermeableHardscapes1?bidId=