UC Master Gardener Program of Sonoma County

University of California

UC Master Gardener Program of Sonoma County

July in Sonoma County

Visit our County Fair Demonstration Garden
County Fair Dates: August 1st to 11th

Photo from the 2018 Sonoma County Fair Demonstration Garden

This year Sonoma Master Gardeners have chosen to use their garden space to demonstrate the wonders of edible landscaping. We will be showing fair goers how easy it is to add food-producing plants into an existing landscape or to create an edible ‘food garden’ from scratch. Using food-producing plants as part of an organic landscape is a perfect way to make your landscape more sustainable. And it is a fun way to teach children to joys of sustainable organic gardening. Come join us at our new location on the east side of the Courtyard for more information or to answer your gardening questions!

Special dates: On August 3 and 4th and August 10th and 11th we will have the following information tables ranging from succulents, food gardening, Firewise landscaping, worms, bug hotels and more. Please check the schedule for more information.

The Sonoma County Fair is open daily through August 1st through 11th. You can find general fair information, such as directions, hours, and the calendar of events, at Sonoma County Fair.

Something is Eating my _____. What Should I do?

Cucumber beetles may chew holes in leaves. Photo from UC Statewide IPM project

This is a common question this time of year as newly planted vegetables and annuals grow - along with the many pests that consider them food and/or home. We encourage you to explore our Integrated Pest Management articles to learn what you can by yourself: Home, garden, turf, and landscape pests. If that doesn't provide the answer you need, then you can always call our help desk at (707) 565-2608; hours are M-F 9-12, 1-4; or send an email to: mgsonoma@ucdavis.edu.

And, never forget the benefits of adding beneficial plants to your garden: Recommended Plants for Sonoma County for Beneficial Insects.

Have a happy garden!

Food Gardening

What?! You Want Me to Think About My Fall Garden Now?

The good news is that we can food garden twelve months of the year in Sonoma County. Due to our relatively mild winters, a number of cold-hardy crops overwinter — allowing us to harvest throughout the winter and into early spring. The “bad” news is that it is time to start planning and buying seed for our fall garden NOW. Cool weather crops are started in warm weather (i.e., August and September) and mature in cool weather. Read more.

Become a Master Gardener

The application period for the 2020 class is open now and ends September 23rd. You can find the application form at MGSC 2020 class application.

Watch the new Sudden Oak Death Video

The Sudden Oak Death team at the University of California Division of Agricultural and Natural Resources has just released a new video that is well worth watching. There's a lot to learn here, all presented with great visuals to aid our understanding of Sudden Oak Death. Makes learning about SOD easy!

Growing a Thriving Vegetable Garden with Less Water

The Food Gardening Specialists (FGS) of the UCCE Sonoma Master Gardeners are excited to present water-wise food gardening strategies. Given our hot, dry summers along with the prediction of extended drought, we can’t afford to waste a drop. This video demonstrates how home and community gardeners can grow a thriving vegetable garden with less water. In addition, this video is complemented by a planting scheme and a drip system instruction and shopping list that reflect the 4x8-foot demonstration vegetable bed in the video. Click here for these documents along with additional helpful documents for food gardening with less water.

Ask a Master Gardener
Questions and Answers from the Helpline

Watch to Learn What Master Gardeners Do

Fight Invasives!

Master Gardener-staffed Help Desks are located
at Sonoma County Farmers' Markets and Fairs

Master Gardeners are volunteers trained by the UC Davis Cooperative Extension.

Sonoma County Master Gardeners will provide environmentally sustainable, science-based horticultural information to all of Sonoma County’s population. We strive for diversity and inclusion in all aspects of our organization.

UCCE Farm Advisor: Stephanie Larson, County Director

SCMG Coordinator: Mimi Enright

Workshop Calendar

Event Name	Date
Fall Food Gardening - HFH Santa Rosa	8/3/2019
Fall/Winter Food Gardening - Windsor Town Green	8/10/2019
Fall/Winter Food Garden - Bayer Farm- Santa Rosa	8/17/2019
Fall/Winter Food Gardening Workshop - Sonoma	9/14/2019

Find links to past workshop handouts under Resources/Workshop Handouts.

Sundays with Sue

By SCMG Sue Lovelace
Updated: July 14, 2019

Our Gardens offer so many ways to be unique and often reflect our personalities and the things we consider to be important and meaningful. Yes, they exhibit the personal plant preferences of the people who work in them, but they can also portray much more than that, by being places of solitude, togetherness, learning, celebration and important memory keeping. Gardens can be a way to honor the practices of the past, using them to keep cultural traditions alive while recognizing their stewards as mentors and visionaries.

Many gardens serve as nurturing spaces, fostering heirloom seeds that preserve taste, the ability to be true to seed and the history and memories of the places they come from. Because heirlooms are open-pollinated, we can choose to save seeds from the plants that do best in our yards, making them more reliable year after year. Perhaps, too, heirloom plants demand a bit more patience, even diligence, from us gardeners.

Gardens have the potential to perform amazing functions that allow plants to depend on one another to grow more productive, more supportive, more nutritional, and more powerful in the way they can actually change the environment we live in. We can go back thousands of years, before modern gardening, to learn how practical and knowledgeable our ancestors were in working with nature to achieve incredible results.

Our American Indians employed the concept of the “Three Sisters” as far back as 5,000 to 6,500 years ago. This gardening method features the companion planting of corn, squash and beans. The corn is planted first and when it is 6” tall, bean and squash seeds are planted in between. The squash grows and shades the roots of the beans and corn, keeping moisture in and weeds down. As the corn becomes a support for the beans to climb, the beans add usable nitrogen to the soil. I love seeing gardens where this planting or other supportive companion plantings take place. To me, they demonstrate a unique statement of respect and caring for history and the environment, plus, they are an example of what others who come after us can remember and pass on.

Loving the “Three Sisters” like I do, you can imagine how blown away I was by the concept of the “Seven Warriors” which was explained to us by Bayer Garden Coordinator, Jonathon Bravo. The inspiration for the “Seven Warriors” dates back to the Aztecs who were, and still are, the rock stars of agriculture! Because irrigation is always an issue to gardens, the Aztecs invented floating beds on lakes and other bodies of water which were called Chinampas. They were created with a rectangle of stakes bridged together then filled with mud and vegetation. At this point, they were planted with vegetables and flowers (Hello, pollinators!) and were accessed with little canals between them (permeable paths!). With the need for more food crops, came the like plantings of corn, squash, beans, amaranth, sunflowers, tomatoes, and peppers (7 Warriors) on land. Nopales (cacti) is often added to this planting, as is melon and jicama. The plantings, which are nutritionally and environmentally complementary, were called Milpas. Within the Milpas, interactions between the farmers, community and the land were as important as the crops.

Milpas are essentially gardens that combine agriculture along with the personal connections of the gardeners to their families, communities, crops, and the land. Our gardens can partly employ the uniqueness of Milpas by thoughtfully growing heirloom plants and imitating the practices of the past, while sharing that with others. When I looked at Bayer Farm yesterday, with all the neighboring plots melded together like the squares on a quilt, I thought this is surely “Milpas.”

Have a good week in your own Milpas!

“The most important thing, as I am constantly saying, is to think about small ways in which we can make a difference — every day.” Jane Goodall

Master Gardeners in Print

The Garden Doctors
Dana Lozano & Gwen Kilchherr, The Press Democrat

What are the purple-leafed shrubs that have been blooming this past month? 6/14/2019

How to grow tasty Sumo Citrus 5/31/2019

Webmasters: Kim Roche, Stan Pawlak

Website Editor: Penny Fink

Food Gardening Editor: Stephanie Wrightson

Staff Photographers and Videographers:
Cie Cary, Electra de Peyster,
Coby Lafayette-Kelleher, Laura Salo Long