Ongoing research

With drought and forecast for more of the same, it's time to think of alternative crops for our area. Pithecellobium dulce (translation: sweet monkey ear) may be a choice. Guamuchil is just one of the many names for this tree crop, including: monkeypod tree, camachile, and Madras thorn.

Do you agonize over whether a particular fruit is ready to pick? With the harvest season upon us, it pays to learn which fruits will ripen once picked, and which will not ripen beyond the stage that they had reached when harvested.

by Cynthia Kerson Being a UC Master Gardener of Napa County has many joys in volunteering to educate home gardeners. In between volunteering, our members decided to tour each others gardens during spring and summer months.

I am helping decorate for a 60th birthday party, we are talking western theme and flower arrangements. We are making them ourselves. I send a picture via text of my daylilies (Fig. 1), that I think would look good in the wine bottle centerpiece. This is the response I get: They're lethal to cats.

Hello, Friday Fly Day! It's time to post an image of syrphid fly, aka hover fly or flower fly. We took this dorsal view of a syrphid fly in January of 2009.

On any given day, air and surface temperatures tend to be higher in urban areas than in surrounding rural settings. This phenomenon is called the heat-island effect.

In This Issue Nevada County Demonstration Garden News ......2 Create Habitat with Hedgerows... 3 Hotline FAQ: Benefits of Soil Testing ................4 All-Star Western Redbud.............5 Unusual Edibles: Name Games ..5 Insect Trivia .................................

Please join us for a workshop titled, Monterey County Rangeland Carbon Sequestration: Ranchers and Rangelands Are Part of the Climate Change Solution. Discussions from this workshop will help information Monterey County's Climate Action Plan.

Zero-emission tractors perform many tasks of diesel tractors, without noise or exhaust The University of California, a national leader in sustainability, has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2025.

Informational webinars on Sept. 14, Dec.