A HOrT COCO New Year

Wishing You a HOrT COCO New Year

It's a slow time of the year for this blog.

The MGCC's Help Desk is closed for the holidays until January 3rd. This means I'm somewhat at a loss for timely new Help Desk problems and responses which are the source of almost all the blog posts. I gratefully thank the Master Gardeners who originally produced those MGCC Help Desk responses. All their original hard work makes my work easy. Occasionally, I do post blogs that are mine. This is one of them. However, even for this blog, most of it is from other blogs. I've gathered some hopefully interesting items for your perusal during this time of the gardening year.

While I personally don't think it's been too bad weather wise so far (maybe because I've been inside scraping popcorn ceilings), I do know that it can and probably will be much colder and wetter (hopefully) over the next several months.

So… while thinking those thoughts, how about this “meme” for the upcoming Spring?

And how about this? If you are pruning your grapes or some other thornless vines… how about making some wreathes with the prunings. Outside pruning to inside wreath making. Monterey Bay MG had an interesting how-to blog on how to do that.
//ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=22874
Wreathes of this type can be used both indoor and outdoors!

And if you are inside looking for some interesting web browsing, how about checking out the many different blogs authored by other UC venues and UC Master Gardeners?... We posted a blog on our phobia “Blog Junkie”. You might find it interesting and subscribe to some of them… Most don't post that frequently and usually not more than a 5 minute read… and can be both interesting and enhance your gardening knowledge.I find the Solano MG blog “Under the Solano Sun”… and UC Davis' “Bug Squad” especially interesting, useful, and entertaining.

Finally, despite the weather, you can always bundle up and put your boots on and maybe under an umbrella (it can get that way sometimes…) get out to the garden and get dirty… Maybe the meme below will show you how and reduce your concerns about how it might look to your neighbors?…

CHEERS

Help Desk of the UC Master Gardener Program of Contra Costa County (SIM)

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Note: MGCC's Help Desk will be closed Dec 19^th, 2016 through Jan 2, 2017. 
However, the  UC Master Gardeners Program of Contra Costa's Help Desk is usually available year-round to answer your gardening questions.  Except for a few holidays, we're open every week, Monday through Thursday for walk-ins from 9:00 am to Noon at 75 Santa Barbara Road, 2d Floor, Pleasant Hill, CA  94523. We can also be reached via telephone:  (925) 646-6586, email: ccmg@ucanr.edu, or on the web at http://ccmg.ucanr.edu/Ask_Us/ MGCC Blogs can be found at http://ccmg.ucanr.edu/HortCoCo/ You can also subscribe to the Blog  (//ucanr.edu/blogs/CCMGBlog/).