Archive Nut, Prune and Olive Programs

When the annual California Ag Day takes place Wednesday, March 21 on the west side of the California State Capitol grounds, Sacramento, expect to see a lot of happy faces. This year's overall theme is "Know Your California Farmer.

Since 1910, the Citrus Variety Collection has been a resource for research, citrus breeding and educational extension activities initially for the UC Citrus Experiment Station and now for the expanded College of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at UC Riverside.

Athough not specifically a weed science opportunity, I wanted to repost an announcement for the 2012 University of California Cooperative Extension Horticulture Almond Internship Program.

The 2012 Western Society of Weed Science recently published its annual Research Progress Reports. The full set of progress reports are available online at: http://www.wsweedscience.org/Secure/editor/ResearchReports_Archive.

The development of improved cultivation technology for row crop production has been an active area of research, and has made significant progress in recent years. Currently, standard cultivation removes weeds from the majority of the bed using sweeps, knives, coulters and blades.

It's St. Patrick's Day tomorrow and time for "The Wearing of the Green." "The Wearing of the Green" is actually an Irish street ballad dating back to the Irish Rebellion of 1798. The author: anonymous. The color of choice: green.

After writing an article about natural herbicides in the December issue of this newsletter, I was asked what I thought about the iron HEDTA (FeHEDTA) herbicides that recently came on the market. These are organically acceptable products believed to have minimal human health or environmental effects.

If you've ever watched spiders trap their prey in their sticky webs, you've probably wondered: "Why don't spiders stick to their own webs?" We've watched countless spiders trap honey bees, syrphid flies and other hapless critters in their webs.

Okay, what's the heaviest insect in the world? The longest? The fastest runner? The fastest flying insect? The loudest? The smallest? The insect with the greatest wingspan?

The news headlines screamed "immoral" and "promiscuous." The story was not about a red light district or "Ladies of the Night" or even linked to humans. It was about honey bee queens. "Ladies of the Day," if you will.