From the UC Blogosphere...

UCCE employee shares her personal passion for plants

Los Angeles County's UC Cooperative Extension Master Gardener coordinator, Yvonne Savio, has coined a term to describe the her horticultural style: "circus gardening."

"If it's green and it grows after I've put it in, it stays," she told Pasadena Star-News reporter Michelle Mills. "You water it once or twice, and it's on its own. I tell my Master Gardeners that I've killed many more plants than they ever knew existed because I'm always playing with everything."

Mills developed a feature story about Savio, highlighting the fact that the UCCE employee, who is in charge of LA County UCCE's urban garden program, was named the 2010 Horticulturist of the Year by the Southern California Horticulture Society.

The article also ran in the Redlands Daily Facts.

Savio shared her passion for plants at her Pasadena home, which her father designed and built when Savio was 3. A backyard hillside is terraced for vegetable beds, and perennials grow on the down side of each of the terraces as a living mulch. Savio grows vegetables, fruits, annuals and drought-tolerant perennials, cactus plants, succulents, bromeliads, ground covers and roses.

At work, Savio's newest program is the Grow L.A. Victory Gardens Initiative, in which 10 Master Gardeners throughout Los Angeles County have established dozens of locations where beginning gardeners attend classes and receive a space to practice their lessons, the article said.

"It isn't just a class session," Savio was quoted. "They form a neighborhood garden circle."

Savio said her Horticulturist of the Year award vindicates her work to help more people grow their own food.

"We're talking reality, people and food and becoming more involved with our own world," she was quoted.

Yvonne Savio

Coconut Oil to Treat Varroa Mites?

Is coconut oil effective in treating varroa mites, those nasty little mites that plague our honey bees?The facts aren't in,...

Checking the hives

UC Davis bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey (far left) and UC Davis apiculturist Eric Mussen look at a bee frame with beekeeper Valerie Severson of Yuba City. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Varroa mite

VARROA mite on a honey bee pupa. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Nevada profs write the book on California ag

Two University of Nevada, Reno, professors have teamed up to produce a fact-filled, entertaining, practical guide to California agriculture, according to UNR's Nevada News. Geography professor Paul Starrs and art professor Peter Goin coauthored a Field Guide to California Agriculture, published by the University of California Press.

A paperback version of the 504-page book sells for $24.95 from UC Press; Amazon offers it for $16.47.

The authors say California has “the most dramatic modern agricultural landscape in the world."

“Believe us: we, too, try to share our love for the eccentricity and possibility of California. All those miles, all those conversations (routinely in Spanish, which we both speak with some fluency), have brought agriculture to life,” Starrs wrote in the preface.

Goin said he was particularly struck by the state's crop diversity.

"California has so many specialty crops partly because of the state’s ethnic diversity and global markets," Goin noted. "Think chili peppers, pomegranates, pistachios, prickly pear and pima cotton. It’s a visual and culinary feast.”

Why did Nevada professors write about California agriculture? Both love to travel and have roots in the state. Goin’s father worked as a seasonal farmworker in lemon groves while studying at UC Berkeley. Starrs is a resident of both Nevada and California and has spent time discovering the back roads of California, the story said.

Drone Fly: Good Pollinator

Yarrow, yarrow, yarrow.Drone fly, drone fly, drone fly.This little insect is often mistaken for a honey bee.  In the adult...

Drone Fly

DRONE FLY (Eristalis tenax) crawls on yarrow. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Side View

SIDE VIEW of a drone fly, Eristalis tenax. The insect is often mistaken for a honey bee. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

Yellow Pollen

LIKE A HONEY BEE, the drone fly (Eristalis tenax) pollinates flowers. Check out the yarrow pollen clinging to its abdomen. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

One of Life's Little Mysteries

It's an amazing migratory feat. "One generation of monarch butterflies flutters some 2000 miles between southern Canada and...

Monarch Butterfly

MONARCH BUTTERFLY in the Luther Burbank Gardens, Santa Rosa. One generation of monarch butterflies migrates 2000 miles between southern Canada and central Mexico, according to LiveScience senior writer Wynne Parry in her Nov. 4 post. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

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