The Real Dirt

Are caterpillars chewing on your cabbage? Aphids browsing your Brussels sprouts? Cucumber beetles snacking on your squash? Keeping insect pests from attacking your garden veggies can be a problem, but help is on the way: Just invite your neighborhood beneficials to the banquet in your garden.

It's important to protect our bee populations because their survival and reproduction provides pollination benefits for agricultural, urban, and wildland environments. This is especially evident here when we welcome commercial bees to pollinate almond orchards each spring.

Two quotes from the leaders of the May 25 Wildtending Walk at Verbena Fields in Chico are pertinent here. Toward the end of the walk Ali Meders-Knight, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) Specialist for the Mechoopda Tribe, said The more we understand this place together, the better off we'll be.

What do those numbers on bags and boxes of fertilizer and soil amendments really mean? And what is the difference between a fertilizer and an amendment? Whether a material is considered an amendment or a fertilizer depends on its effect on plant growth.

While you might not be able to save them all, you can take precautions in your garden that will save the plants it makes sense to save, define your gardening priorities, and plan for continuing drought conditions in our Northern California Mediterranean climate.