The Real Dirt

Butte County offers an abundance of beautiful places to live. Our urban areas are surrounded by farmland, open space, foothills and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and along with this wildland interface comes wildlife.

Twice a year, the UC Master Gardeners of Butte County offer a series of workshops designed for the home gardener. The line-up for Spring 2020 includes a number of new topics, in addition to those back by popular demand. The series began February 12th with a workshop on starting vegetable seeds.

Edible flowers can be found in many backyard landscapes and herb gardens. Many annuals and perennials produce flowers with culinary potential. Roses (rosa spp.), lavender (Lavandula angustifolia), and apple blossoms are well-known perennials with edible flowers.

Heirloom tomatoes are open-pollinated varieties which were either introduced commercially before 1940, or grown from seeds that have been passed down at least 50 years through several generations of a family, religious, ethnic, or tribal group, without the plants crossing with another variety of the...

I want them to all feel like they know how to grow food, says Vicki Wonacott, describing the fundamental goal of the UC Master Gardeners of Butte County School Gardens Program. This program brings how-to horticultural knowledge to first-graders in four of our local elementary schools.