If you're planning to hike the hills around Bodega Head in Sonoma County, watch out for the bears. The woolly bear caterpillars, that is. Last Sunday, with the temperature hovering around 70 degrees, the woolly bears were everywhere.
A longstanding member of the UC Conservation Agriculture Systems Initiative, Monte Bottens, is featured with his father in the March 2012 issue of No-Till Farmer magazine. Monte and Bob Bottens are a father-son no-till team in Cambridge, Ill.
The UC Conservation Agriculture Systems Initiative challenges Californians to look 100 years, or even 500 years, into the future and imagine how todays common agricultural practices will have impacted the environment and society.
Bee specialists Neal Williams and Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology are among those quoted in a comprehensive news story, "Hives for Hire," published March 3 in the Los Angeles Times.
In January, Dr. Gubler and I visited a vineyard that seemed to have very clear symptoms of a trunk disease (Eutypa or Botryosphaeria). Yet when we looked closer, we determined the symptoms were not caused by a pathogen...link to the newsletter below to see photographs and read our full report.
I have to admit to having more than just a few weeds in my garden at this time of year. The most common weed is Annual Bluegrass, Poa annua which is now freely going to seed so I can plan to have another investation next spring.
It's good to see that the UC Davis campus will host its sixth annual World Malaria Day observance. This year's event, set Wednesday, April 25 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
The yellow-faced bumble bees are back! And amid the throes of winter and the promise of spring. On a trip Feb. 27 to Bodega Bay, we spotted two yellow-faced bumble bees (Bombus vosnesenskii) about two miles apart.
We've been watching the almonds budding and blossoming since late January. They're in full bloom now, but a little ragged by the recent rain. California has some 750,000 acres of almonds, and it takes two hives per acre to pollinate them.
