Ongoing research

...

The questions come in: "Why do my fruit look like this?" Well there are often simple explanations. And often there are complex ones. But one way to start looking at a piece of fruit damage is to consult this wonder color brochure put out by UC - https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/pdf/8090.

JUST HOW DRY IS IT? It really doesn't look good out there for many western alfalfa growers. Most parts of the West are currently under 'severe, extreme, or exceptional' drought. One would think that NOAA and USDA would run out of superlatives! (how about 'excruciating'?). Figure 1.

Good morning. A bracing article out of the Business Section in today's paper on rising grower interest in the use of microbes as an alternative to delivering plant nutrients which as we all know are rising a lot in price (sorry, paywall): https://www.wsj.

Melody Kendall It has been my observation that, by nature, gardeners love new plants and because of this their gardens change and evolve each season.

Woodpeckers are well known, colorful birds often found in wooded neighborhoods and forested areas.

From the Rice Notes April 2022 newsletter Kassim Al-Khatib is the Melvin D. Androus Endowed Professor for Weed Science at UC Davis and a Cooperative Extension Weed Science Specialist. Herbicide resistance is a serious problem in California rice.

Cucumbers are an easy summer vegetable to grow in Napa County gardens. I'm sure of that, because last summer I participated in the Napa County Master Gardeners' field test of three different varieties, and we had more cucumbers than we could eat for a couple of months.

Walnut scale (Quadraspidiotus juglansregiae) is a common pest of walnut throughout California's Central Valley.

Folks will do just about anything to remove cockroaches from their homes, but when it comes to UC Davis Picnic Day, you can't remove people from them. Nor would UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology want that. Roach Races are an integral part of Picnic Day.