Archive Nut, Prune and Olive Programs

The National Geographic just ran a piece titled "Without Bugs, We Might All Be Dead." "There are 1.4 billion insects for each one of us," wrote Simon Worrall in reviewing the book, Bugged: The Insects Who Rule and the World and the People Obsessed with Them by journalist David MacNeal.

Vine mealybug has been found on recent nursery shipments of green-growing vines in the North Coast region. Follow the newsletter link below to learn more. The newsletter can be used as training tool for crews inspecting vines as they are received. In Napa County, staff of the Agricultural…

What a great find and it was there all along, just like a used book store can be a gold mine at times. http://www.avocadosource.com/papers/research_articles/ebelingwalter1959b.

One of Buck Owens' signature songs that never failed to please his fan base was "I Got a Tiger by the Tail." The Country-Hall-of-Fame singer, who died in 2006 at age 76, said the lyrics came to him after he noticed a gas station sign advertising "Put a tiger in your tank.

There was just a group of Florida researchers here in California sharing their experiences with ambrosia beetles and a fungal disease in avocado and other members of the laurel family. This is a pest/disease complex similar to that found here caused by a shot hole borer and fusarium.

Turning 40 can be mind-boggling. But it will be bee-boggling--all bee-boggling--when the Western Apicultural Society (WAS) meets Sept. 5-8 at the University of California, Davis for its 40th annual conference. So much to do. So much to hear. So much to talk about.

We are continuing a trial that we began last year to evaluate optimum seeding rates for grain sorghum.

Everybody eats in the pollinator garden. Everybody. The pollinators in our garden in Vacaville, Calif., sip the nectar. They include honey bees, bumble bees, carpenter bees, sweat bees, European wool carder bees, hover flies and assorted butterflies. The predators eat, too.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) is one of the agencies responsible for operating a facility that pumps water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta into the California Aqueduct. The California Aqueduct pumps water for uses south of the facilities.

There was a post written a few months ago by Rebecca Ozeran entitled A Tale of Two Grasses, describing her experiences with cheatgrass and contrasting its characteristics with another invasive annual, medusahead. It was an excellently written blog, and I encourage you to check it out! http://ucanr.