Test PB Collection: FTE

Welcome to "Thriving Forward," which is a blog dedicated to "promoting healthy people and communities.

A green bottle fly lands on a tropical milkweed, Asclepias curassavica, in a Vacaville pollinator garden.

Please see attached for the 2023 Kern County Potato Variety Trial results...

About 15 years ago, Mary Maser saw an ad in the classified section of her local newspaper for a job opening with the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program serving San Diego County.

In California, Italian ryegrass [Lolium perenne L. spp. multiflorum (Lam.) Husnot] has been around for a long time and is a major weed in orchards, vineyards, field crops, fallow fields, and so on. It grows vigorously in winter and early spring.

A nonprofit serving adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities in El Dorado County, MORE has found kindred spirits in helping their clients live fuller and healthier lives the staff and volunteers of University of California Master Gardeners and CalFresh Healthy Living, UC.

Oblique streaktail hoverflies zip from bloom to bloom wearing a wasp costume to avoid getting eaten. But it's all for show they don't even have stingers! Their fierce maggots, on the other hand, devour hundreds of insect pests. As they gorge, they help keep orange trees safe from disease.

There are around 350,000 pollinator species in the world. Though they are the most recognizable, bees are not the only plant pollinator team in town. Other insects that help to carry this responsibility are. butterflies, flies, moths and beetles.

A few years ago, I bought a few bags of glow- in- the- dark stones. My friend was making fairy gardens with her granddaughter and I thought they would enjoy the novelty of the stones. I kept a bag for myself. I don't remember being very impressed with the glow- in- the- dark capability.

Recently a fellow Master Gardener recommended I read Inherited Silence by Louise Dunlap. The book is described as an insightful look at the historical damages early colonizers of America caused and how their descendants may recognize and heal the harm done to the earth and the native peoples.