Podcasts about california cooperative extension

Maurice Pitesky, poultry specialist with the University of California Cooperative Extension, has developed the Waterfowl Alert Network. The system delivers real-time data about where waterfowl are roosting and feeding.

In today's newscast, University of California Cooperative Extension researchers developed a tool that shows the real-time location of migrating waterfowl, which can carry the bird flu virus. Farmers and ranchers could use it to better protect their cows, pigs and poultry.

Today, we venture into the critical realm of invasive pests, zeroing in on the invasive shot hole borer (ISHB), a formidable newcomer from southern Asia threatening California's trees. We navigate through the fascinating biology of the ISHB, discussing its rapid spread and dire consequences for urban and native forests alike, not only threatening California's tree canopy, but over 65 species of trees throughout the country. We are joined by Dr. Beatrice Nobua-Behrmann from the University of California Cooperative Extension, who sheds light on the pest's impact to a wide variety of ornamental trees, including a very important agricultural crop, avocado trees.We will emphasize the importance of monitoring and early detection of the Invasive Shot Hole Borer, with Dr. Nobua-Behrmann outlining diagnostic signs and mitigation strategies. We highlight integrated pest management techniques and the potential of biological controls, such as the introduction of parasitoid wasps. We're podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory, it's the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let's go!Previous episodes, show notes, links, product information, and TRANSCRIPTS  at the home site for Garden Basics with Farmer Fred, GardenBasics.net. Transcripts and episode chapters also available at BuzzsproutPictured: Trunk of a heavily infested California sycamore (Photo by Beatriz Nobua-Behrmann, UC Cooperative Extension)Help Keep This Podcast Going by Supporting Our Sponsors!Smart Pots https://smartpots.com/fred/ Dave Wilson Nursery https://www.davewilson.com/home-garden/Topic Links:Introduction to Invasive Shothole Borers (Video)Invasive Shothole Borer list of susceptible treesInvasive Shothole Borer Management Tips (video)How to Spot the Invasive Shot Hole Borer (Assessment link)All About Farmer Fred: GardenBasics.net website"Beyond the Garden Basics" NewsletterFarmer Fred website: http://farmerfred.comThe Farmer Fred Rant! Blog http://farmerfredrant.blogspot.comFacebook:  "Get Growing with Farmer Fred" Instagram: farmerfredhoffman Blue Sky: @farmerfred.bsky.socialFarmer Fred Garden Minute Videos on YouTube As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases from possible links mentioned here.Got a garden question? • Leave an audio question without making a phone call via Speakpipe, at https://www.speakpipe.com/gardenbasics• Call or text us the question: 916-292-8964. • Fill out the contact box at GardenBasics.net• E-mail: fred@farmerfred.com Thank you for listening, subscribing and commenting on the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast and the Beyond the Garden Basics Newsletter.

Today, we talk with Kevin Marini, a community education specialist with the  University of California Cooperative Extension, about the topics of soil and successful gardening. We talk about the pros and cons of using native soil versus commercial soil, the importance of improving native soil, the use of bagged mixes in raised beds, and the role of organic matter and fertilizers in gardening. We also touch on the benefits of mulch and the importance of proper watering techniques. Overall, the conversation emphasizes the importance of understanding and improving your native soil for successful gardening.We're podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It's the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let's go!Previous episodes, show notes, links, product information, and transcripts at the home site for Garden Basics with Farmer Fred, GardenBasics.net. Audio, transcripts, and episode chapters also available at Buzzsprout.Pictured: Home Made Seed Starting MixLinks: Subscribe to the Beyond the Garden Basics Newsletter https://gardenbasics.substack.com Smart Pots https://smartpots.com/fred/Dave Wilson Nursery HeirloomRoses.com (with the FRED discount link)Other links mentioned in today's podcast:Farmer Fred's Ride for the Kids. Donate to help the Sacramento Children's Home Crisis NurseryBeyond the Garden Basics Newsletter, Aug. 16: Tips for Growing Rhubarb in a Hot ClimateGood quality soil moisture metersSoil Sampler ProbesGot a garden question? • Leave an audio question without making a phone call via Speakpipe, at https://www.speakpipe.com/gardenbasics• Call or text us the question: 916-292-8964. • Fill out the contact box at GardenBasics.net• E-mail: fred@farmerfred.com All About Farmer Fred: The GardenBasics.net websiteThe Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Newsletter, Beyond the Basics https://gardenbasics.substack.comFarmer Fred website:  http://farmerfred.comThe Farmer Fred Rant! Blog http://farmerfredrant.blogspot.comFacebook:  "Get Growing with Farmer Fred" Instagram: farmerfredhoffman Farmer Fred Garden Minute Videos on YouTube As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases from possible links mentioned here.Thank you for listening, subscribing and commenting on the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast and the Beyond the Garden Basics Newsletter.

Dan Macon University of California Cooperative Extension

Trying to manage the weeds in your vineyard? John Roncoroni, Weed Science Farm Advisor Emeritus with the University of California Cooperative Extension, Agriculture and Natural Resources covers control practices including biological, mechanical, cultural, chemical, and perhaps in the future, electrocution. Although weeds rarely compete with vines, they can host insect and vertebrate pests and get in the way of pruning crews, increasing labor costs. Listen in for John's number one tip to better manage weeds in your vineyard. Resources:         128: A New Focus on Weed Management (Rebroadcast) 26th IPM Seminar #1: Sustainable Weed Management for Vineyards and Vineyard Ponds Herbicide-resistant weeds challenge some signature cropping systems (Journal article) John Roncoroni MAINTAINING LONG-TERM MANAGEMENT: Herbicide-resistant weeds challenge some signature cropping systems Post-harvest Weed Control with Napa RCD and John Roncoroni (video) Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand – Western SARE (online courses) University of California Integrated Pest Management Integrated Weed Management Vineyard Floor Management: Steel in the Field (video) Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship - Donate SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet   Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing On-Demand (Western SARE) – Learn at your own pace Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get More Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources. Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.   Transcript Craig Macmillan  0:00  Our guest today is John Roncoroni. He is Weed Science Farm advisor emeritus with UC Cooperative Extension, UC Agriculture Natural Resources, and we're going to talk about cultural control of weeds in vineyards today. Thanks for being on the podcast, John.   John Roncoroni  0:13  Now you bet, Creg, thank you for having me.   Craig Macmillan  0:16  We met with we'll start with kind of a basic foundation, what would you say is the definition of cultural weed control? Maybe How does it differ from other forms of weed management?   John Roncoroni  0:25  cultural weed control as part of an integrated pest management program, you know, we have basically cultural mechanical, sometimes they're put together sometimes they're split, we have biological, which is much more important, I think, in insects than it is in weeds. Now, we talk about biological control of weeds just a little bit to show how it fits in with all this too, is that you know, when you see that rust growing on a malba, or cheese weed plant in California, people say, Well, maybe that can control and you can see sometimes it really weakens the weeds. But the one reason that doesn't work here very well as it does in other places is the same reason why we can grow such great grapes and make great wines in California is because it doesn't rain in the summertime, if it rained in the summertime, like it does. In many other areas, that moisture level would stay up and we probably have a better chance of controlling Malba. We do use biological control of weeds in more landscape like range land type at large areas, but really on any kind of agricultural situation where we're looking at control in one spot, it really doesn't work that well. Even with star thistle we be talking about people wanting to put our application of of weevils for start thistle. Well, they're out there, and they're on a larger scale. So that's biological, much more important in entomology than in Weed Science, a chemical control, obviously, the use of chemicals, either conventional or organic chemicals or control. And then we have mechemical or cultural you know, cultural weed control to me is using the utilizing the plants that are there or sheep in areas of the San Joaquin Valley that used to use ducks or geese to pull out Johnson grass rhizomes, yeah, we're utilizing sheep quite a bit more. Now. Of course, mechanical we're looking at when you look at something like a mower, right, a mower is mechanical and cultural because when you mow, you're leaving some plants. So you're mechanically mowing them down. But culturally, you're leaving plant where something like French flower, maybe a blade or or you know, one of the the weed knives are all the different moving wheels, maybe more considered mechanical.   Craig Macmillan  2:30  Let's talk about mechanical a little bit. There was a book I don't know if it's still in print. And it was a SARE book. And it was called steel in the field. And the author's thesis or premise or idea was if you drive around farm country, no matter what the crop is, there's always a graveyard of old implements, just parked just parked there, you know exactly what I'm talking about.   John Roncoroni  2:51  Oh, god. Yeah.   Craig Macmillan  2:54  And his his point was, all of those things were technologies that someone had come up with. And then the individual farmer, probably then made modifications to those for their site for their crop for their soil, then the herbicide era came on. And that wisdom was lost, basically. And the argument was, hey, maybe we can bring that that idea back. And I mean, this goes back to like the 80s, early 90s. It's happening, it's happened. What are some of your favorite technologies in terms of cultivation, mechanical weed control, and some of the limitations, some of the plants that works well with other situations where it doesn't? What's your experience been?   John Roncoroni  3:39  I love talking about that, Creg, is it you know, talking about using mechanical control, and then and then going into chemicals, and now going back, it's almost like I talked to people about chemical control itself. When I started, Roundup wasn't glyphosate was a new thing. And we used it very judiciously. And I tell people, it's almost like, I learned to drive with a stick shift. I had to learn all these other things. Well, after that people learned to drive automatics. Right, because they knew one way to do it. Well, now that we're back to using stick shift, it's a whole lot easier for me, because I remember now people have to read or write. It's, it's the same thing with the mechanical. And when I started a Davis, you know, in the early 80s, we probably first came to work in vineyards in Napa, close to Davis, about 85, 86. And at that point, there was a lot less drip irrigation, a lot more dry farming, and a lot more French plowed. One of the reasons was we didn't have drip irrigation. I mean, we all want deep roots, but you're going to have more shallow roots with drip irrigation. And that was one of the reasons we moved to chemicals away from this big pasture. We always had a blade, right something like to drop a name a Clemens blade, which we all know what that is. It just cuts. You know, one of the problems with that is if the soil is too moist, then it's going to cut and go right back. And there's been a lot of innovation. My colleague Marcela Moretti, a But Oregon State's done a lot of testing with different kinds of machines. You know, one of the things about mechanical or even like mowers is that so few growers have mowers?   Craig Macmillan  5:11  When you say mower? You mean an in row mower?   John Roncoroni  5:13  Yeah, I mean inrow mower. All right. And I'm sorry, I when I talk about weeds in vineyards, because I tell people I've made my whole career out of about three   Craig Macmillan  5:21  Three to six inches.   John Roncoroni  5:24  I have about a foot and a half. Right? Sometimes I'm up to four feet, right. So that's where my whole career is right there. And that we talk about when we talked about what we're doing in the middle is with cover cropping. That's a whole other podcast and probably, I mean, I've done cover crop work over the years with some large IPM grants. I did quite Elmore and some other things. Zalem and Jim McDonald Yeah, no, I'm talking about just under vine we're thinking. Yeah.   Craig Macmillan  5:53  All right we're under vine.   John Roncoroni  5:54  Talk about being a very specific expert - four feet. At the most.   Craig Macmillan  6:01  I got it. I get it.   John Roncoroni  6:02  You know, very few growers are using mowers we have the big bladed mowers and also we'll have a straight trimmer. I was trying to do some string trimmer work, but just using a little weed eater. My old friend, Mike Anderson, who was the superintendent or basically ran the oppo research station said that I could use a string trimmer in one of their vineyards over his dead body. And I was like, you don't want any girdling in those vines. So I know, there's been a lot of apprehension. There are some other kinds of mowers very, very, very few growers have mowers, from what I've just done some surveys, I've done one because you have to go back over and over and over, right? And then everything has been weighed against, well, we can just spray mowers or one, you know, there's several different and I can't remember all the trade names. But you know, there's some of the basic technology. Yes, there's some that do some stirring of the soils, you know, with blades that are perpendicular to the soil, right. So they're, they're stirring it, there's what we used to call and when I worked in bean weed control, Lilla stuns, which are wheels that turn sort of at a 45 degree angle to stir the soil. There's, you know, power driven machines, there's just ones that ride along and there's blades, there's, you know, there are so many, and it really depends on the kind of soil you have, you know, our rocky is sometimes the place where we put grapes are not a place where you could put tomatoes, right in times, shallow soil, hillsides, kind of cultivation, can you can you do cultivation? Can you do light cultivation without getting you know, soil movement? Can you even do it? Is it allowed by, you know, some rules about land use in those areas. So, there's a lot of things that go into mechanical and again, from my perspective, the weeds you have.   Craig Macmillan  7:54  I like this point here, because I think put to put things into kind of a general sense to guide things. We have blades that basically cut just below the surface. So that's cutting off the top of the plant from the bottom of it for certain kinds of plants that will kill it or control it. Then we have things like a French plow, which is a burying it's a true plow. Yeah, it's flipping soil, picking it up and flip flopping it over. Then we have the sturer. So you mentioned that little stun the central lines and other example, sun flowers. That's what they do. Yeah. Yeah. Things like that. My missing one.   John Roncoroni  8:26  mowers.   Craig Macmillan  8:27  mowers, okay. Yeah.   John Roncoroni  8:29  So that, you know, then there are a lot of variations on those combinations. It just amazing for me, and I follow a few of the manufacturers and get to see like on Twitter X, whatever, to see the videos that they're posting on LinkedIn. You know, it's just amazing to me what they're doing and the innovation that's going into those. One of the things that my again my colleague Marcel HomeReady, up at Dr. Moretti up at Oregon State talks about making sure your tractor is big enough for some of these, you know, hydraulic using, right, but one of the things we always used to talk about was, you know, the use of gas well, I know there's a lot more use and we're moving more into electric tractors, and those sorts of things. But when it comes to mechanical, really doing a good job of mechanical weed control with those some of those, you're going to have to have electric or gas you're going to have to have a big tractor. They're not going to be like a you know, a little ATV with a nifty 50 sprayer spraying herbicides right you're gonna need some hefty equipment in a lot of them not always.   Craig Macmillan  9:33  Let's start with weed knife. That's a very popular technology you see it oh yeah all over the place. What are the kinds of weeds that that's good for controlling and under what conditions it doesn't work well and under what kind of conditions does it not work well?   John Roncoroni  9:47  And I don't know the areas and passive as well as I know Napa I was brought a while but I would tell the growers you know, using a weed knife in Carneros you have about four days from when the soil goes from being too wet to being too dry. I have heavy clay soils, it holds moisture and it just. Yeah, exactly. And I'm sure there are areas like that, you know, and it can't, you can successfully cultivate down there, but it's tough, you need the timing, it's so important. If you're going to wet that soil just goes right back with that blade, right you cut through and the roots are able to tell back in, you know, if it's too dry, it's really going to be a rough ride. Because you're not going to go too deep, it's going to work well on some smaller annual weeds, which, you know, a lot of our weeds are, you know, some of the grasses with their net have a root ball sometimes are harder than just a small annual broadleaf plant, you know, you're going to have some problems, especially with something like malware, cheese weed that that grow very large. And depending on when you doing it something like cheese weed is and rye grass and Fillory, while I mentioned them are the first weeds to germinate in the fall. So by the time you get in a little bit later, they may be too big to really do a very good job on.   Craig Macmillan  10:59  Are their soils where we die for it's particularly well?   John Roncoroni  11:03  I would say you know, in less than heavy clay soil and not complete sand, a sandy loam soil, I think that holds some moisture, you know, it was able to get in anything, I think it's not a complete stand or a real heavy clay, they do a nice job, but the weeds can't be too big. And again, it's that timing and you know, with vineyards, it seems to think everything happens at once right time when you may be in having to do some sort of insect spray or mold spray, the same time you should be out there cultivating so just and it takes a while to do a good cultivation job.   Craig Macmillan  11:35  The speed that you're rolling is really important. You want to be slower ride faster.   John Roncoroni  11:40  Well, and Dr. Moretti has done this work there is an optimum speed. If you go too slow, then you really don't do a good job of cutting. If you go too fast, you miss some. And maybe this is where some of the electric AI technology can help. You don't want to cut the vines. Right, so you have this pull away, that keeps the weeds, the weeds will go right next to the vines, which you know can be a problem. We'll be talking about other situations with little vertebrate pets.   Craig Macmillan  12:06  I'm kind of getting astray here a little bit, but I No, no, but I think this is an important question. So choosing what I do and how I do it, we go back to the other technologies, Why care about weeds? Right? Why care about you know, I had I had a vineyard once that had been an oak field. And it was direct planted own rooted sprinkler system that was planted in 1976 I got the vineyard 1993 out of heavy clay soil, and I would irrigate with sprinklers twice a summer, and that oak grass would grow up into the fruit zone up into the canopy. But it would dry out. And it completely choked out everything else I had, I had no other real issues. And we would mow the middles. And I remember people going oh my god, you got all this issue, you need decent herbicide, you think grass out of the middle because the grass is gonna. And like these vines were super vigorous. They were tons of crop. I mean, I had to crop thinner. And so I started asking myself, well, how much competition? Is this really doing? Are there particular weeds that we should see? And you're like, wow, that's gonna be a competitor for water, nutrients and others where we go, No, I don't really want it there. But I'm probably not going to dig my vines.   John Roncoroni  13:13  So Craig, this is the eternal question when it comes to this. And it really depends on where you grow your grapes, right? If your goal is to get 25 tons of grapes, if you're somewhere near Bakersfield won't offend anybody, but they're looking more for tonnage. Right. And I've gotten a lot of flack for using our premium grape situations, we're not always looking for maximum tonnage. Right. And I don't know that the problem with weeds and if you hear me speak about weeds, I rarely have ever talked about direct competition between weeds and grape vines. Now, there are some exceptions, you know, when we were looking at that balance between irrigation and getting the deficit, irrigation, right, getting those maximum flavors into those grapes. So we may be right and a little low with our water in August or September, near the end. And we see that especially, I don't know so much about about I know, part of the areas where we are with the vineyard team there that they gave, we can get these howling north winds, right? Right. And you can in a very short time, you can turn some very great, expensive grapes into really great expensive raisins, right, getting that water in at that time of year. So having any kind of like flu Velen, which is really just covers the whole area of Napa and Sonoma. I know it's moving around some other areas. But you know, people say well, how much water does it use? And my old friend Rhonda Smith used always asked me well, how much water is it used? I go, we don't have crop coefficients for all the crops. It's hard to know which you know which weeds grow, how much water they use. And then the other thing too, is that if we're looking for consistency in a vineyard, and only half the vineyard is covered with that weeds where we're gonna put two too much water in one area and not enough in the other. Isn't that different? So it's competition for that sort of thing. And of course, young vines, right when we have young vines with big weeds and that that oak grass that you had, if you had young vines, you probably wouldn't have to be worried about being a grape grower very long, right?   Craig Macmillan  15:17  You have seen that young, really healthy barley cover crop?   John Roncoroni  15:21  Oh, yeah, it's it's tough for first three years. But like talking about establishments, it's really important, no matter what you do to keep the grapes sort of weed, not weed free, but really keeping the competition down. And then late in the summertime, but the rest of the time. It's other things that I've talked about these, it's one of those things where you ask people, you know, raise their hand if they have this problem. It's 50%. Yes. 50%. No. And that's voles. And I tell people, I thought that when I was in Napa, I think 30% of the growers do weed control strictly for vole protection. Because those nasty little marmots can they can girdle a grape. And I know one vineyard and Carneros they couldn't get in and do some work. Someone told me that one year they lost one in five vines. Wow. And they're not coming back. Right? That's, that's bad. Yeah. So you know, it can be a problem. We found this when we were working with mow and blow technology years ago, looking at cutting cover crop and throwing it on the vine. The Weed control was fantastic. But in my whole time, working in vines from 1985. And, you know, until today, I've never been in a vineyard, except in this trial, where I saw voles running between the rose in the middle of the day. Right, they were just happy there was so many they kind of had to get out just to get a breath of fresh air, they use those tunnels, you know, just runway so that they were protected from that, you know, the birds of prey, which you know, can help. And I people always ask about that. But again, we have that pest and prey cycle that the voles may come in and do a lot of damage, before they get a chance to be taken. And then it depends on what your neighbors doing and how effected the birds are. This is a question that I our new vertebrate pest person, Brianna Martineco in Napa who she took my office, not my place, right. So we we about a weed scientist. And one of the questions I've asked is, you know, how much of an area around the vines? Do we have to keep clean, so that the birds have a chance and the voles stay scared? You know, that's kind of question, you know, especially as an emeritus, you can ask these questions. And, you know, let the new people answer them. You know, the other thing and I've talked about this is in a rare occasion, you know, one of the things that we do you see people, anytime I'm out in the field later in the season, I talked to a grape grower, while we're out there, they're pulling those leaves off so they can get more air movement. Well, if you get some tall weeds like that, you know, the oak grass that was growing, you know, are you going to have restricted air movement? Are you going to have higher moisture content? Is that going to increase your pathogen pressure it can, doesn't always happen. The other thing too is having, you know, high grass can cause in frost prone areas, you know, if you're not getting that radiation from clean soil, and that's in the middle, not so much under the vines, you know, we can have that and sometimes on young vines near the vine itself, getting that reradiation, but again, you know, as I like to tell people, you're not going to have all these situations, and it's not going to be every year, you know, some years you're doing things you may not need to have weed control that year, but you don't know until after that year, you know, and now and I'm not I'm not a pathologist, I'm not an enthramologist, I'm not a viticulturalist I'm a weed scientist. But you know, there's been some indications that some weeds that are growing and some of the we plant and some of that we don't are having a, you know, an increase in pathogen plant pathogens that are moved by certain insects. tikka pirate likes legumes Well, you know, especially in some of our low nitrogen situations, plants that produce their own nitrogen, like Bird Clover really tend to like that situation because they have a, they have a built in advantage by making their own nitrogen. So we can in some vineyards, we can see a high population of bird clover, which may or may not cause an increase in tikka, which could cause an increase in red blotch. So, you know, when you think of weeds just specifically for competition, like when I talked to master gardeners, I say, you know, if you're growing carrot, you know why you do weed control because you want a carrot. But when it comes to a mature, you know, a 10 year old vineyard, really hard to see that weeds are going to compete on an everyday basis like they would with an annual crop, but there are other reasons why we do it. Ease of harvest, and I talked about, you know, in talking with some pruning crews, right, you know, if you have weeds growing in when you're pruning, and I tell people, if you have an area that takes an hour for let's clean, takes a pruning crew an hour to prune, if there's a bunch of weeds that they have to move around and get around, and it takes them an hour and a half. So your labor costs have gone up 50% Yeah, these are the kinds of things that as a weed scientist, I think about I tell people I really want to know two things. And when we're when we're taping this, it's the right time of year. I only know weeds in college. Basketball. So these are the only things I really know. So, you know, and I've had other I've had, you know, some people sit down and say I should have known that you have to worry about, you know, disease pressure, and getting labor contractors. And I just think about weeds.   Craig Macmillan  20:16  And let's go back to another technology that we touched on snow plows, French plow, that's a very old technology. And, you know, we just mentioned that what a plow does is it turns the soil over, so it buries the weed plants, especially when you get into the right time, what conditions are appropriate for using a French plow? What conditions maybe it's not gonna work so great.   John Roncoroni  20:41  French plow, I mean, you know, the USDA says that, you know, doing something like that the soil is never good, and you're going to mess up the microbes, especially if you're working on that lower area. But as far as just from a weed perspective, if you're dry farming, a French blot works fantastic, right? You're not looking for, in fact, you're trying to discourage as many roots at the top as you can. So doing using a French plow when you're dry farming, it's fantastic. We don't have you know, a lot of dry farms where we are looking at trying to have more consistent harvest and looking at consistent income, where you know, dry farming were at, at the will of the of the weather, that's another talk for another day with people who are doing marketing and know viticulture are better than I do. But see, I've seen more French plows as people have gone back to mechanical in the last few years, and I have in the past think there's a lot more viable options, when you're actually looking at doing some drip irrigation, then they're just by number a lot more viable options. Just by new having new machines coming out then the French plow but I was a dry farmer, my weed control would be French plow under the vines and disk in the middle because everything's you know, maybe having a little cover crop to get more penetration. But, you know, the farther north I lived, the more water penetration I would have. So I'd get more rain.   Craig Macmillan  22:00  So let's talk about drip irrigated vineyards. And you mentioned there's a suite of technologies, some are new, some are old, what are some of those technologies that have worked well in a drip irrigated vineyard?   John Roncoroni  22:12  When I got to Napa in 2007, sustainable at that point meant post emergent only and for those kind of funny now is roundup on the right no preemergent no cultivation and we were drip irrigating, we were keeping those roots at the top so we can drip irrigate. So that's where a lot of that came from. Now, you know, using something like a blade using a little Dustin with those moving things, anything that's sort of like you don't want routine, right? Again, I don't I'm not a vitaculturalist. But roots at the very top are not great, right, you're not probably irrigating correctly, if you're getting a lot of roots at the top, but you don't want to get too deep, where you're getting some of those main roots with cultivation. You know, that's one of the reasons that we do have drip irrigation. At that level. You know, I've talked to people who weren't using cultivation and ask them why their drip irrigation lines weren't closer to the soil so they're gonna have less evaporation. One of the things that we get into with grape growing or anything is that you do things because you've always done them that way, we are cultivating that we do need to keep that drip irrigation at at a higher at a high level. But I think any of those anything that's not just completely disrupting the soil. One of the things that I would like to see with with mechanical like a blade is using some electric eye, AI technologies to get closer to the vines. But right now we have to really, you know, it's all mechanical, right? If we can have these machines down in Salinas, that are taking weeds out from in between lettuce, we don't have to be nearly that technological, to get weeds right around the vine without hurting them. And we have a little bit more leeway with the vine than we do with lettuce. Even though you lose a lettuce plant here or there. You're okay. You don't want to lose too many vines. You know, I think that that's where one of the reasons that we could use more technology. One of the things again, my doctor Moretti up at Oregon State and also lenses masky. Back in Cornell, who they were both at Davis at the same time, Lynn as a postdoc, and, and Marcelo as a as a graduate student, they're working with electrocution of weeds, I think it's what they call it. And it's not just burning them off, like you would use electric light with a flamer. It actually sends electricity down into the roots. So it's, he's working on it mostly in blueberries. But the technology I just I saw his presentation at the Western society Weed Science meeting just a couple of weeks ago in Denver. It's an interesting technology. If you're like having a transformer on the back of your tractor. It's pretty cool.   Craig Macmillan  24:35  There's a there's a lot of potential here in the future for improving what we're doing now.   John Roncoroni  24:40  Oh, yeah. And I don't know how like electric is going to fit into this. But and this is the problem. We ran into herbicides. Anytime you use one technology over and over and over and over and over, you're going to choose for weeds. If you constantly mow under the vines or anywhere, right without some soil disturbance or application of herbicide, something Like Melva, low growing weeds, they'll adapt, right nature will find a way. So the biggest thing we have to do is whatever we do just don't do it all the time. That it's the right message. One of the things that I think we want to talk about was under vine cover crop. It is something for me, I've been trying to push under vine cover cropping for so long. And the problem is, is that because the seeds are expensive, I tell people that one of the one of the plants that I pushed, just because I liked the way it worked, and what I've seen is Zorro fescue. That's a brand name, it's it's rat tail fescue, you see it growing as a weed a lot of places, one of the things I like about it is that about the time we start irrigating, it's dead, it's the nest, and you can discover you can turn it over, because once it's gone to seed, you can mow it all those things. It's a it's a self receding cover crop problem is that because the seeds are fairly expensive, we planted at about eight to 10 pounds per acre and sometimes mixed with Blendo broam, which grows a little higher and stays a little greener longer than I like, because it can be some competition for water. But that's oftentimes keeps it down. But the problem is, is that first of all, how do we get it on the vines, I find people putting it out by hand, because we haven't adapted for the cedar under the vine. Second of all, it starts to reseed itself at a fairly high rate, sometimes 50 or 100 pounds the next year and the third year. So I tell people, if you can't give me three years to make it look good, then let's not start because oftentimes, you know, we started and it looks like it's not doing a very good job the first year, and it doesn't look very good. And some people who don't ask people who make decisions about vineyards who maybe work other places, then the vineyard don't like the way it looks. Right? Right, and we move to something else and they end up spraying it out or cultivating it out.   Craig Macmillan  26:55  Then this is an example of modifying the environment to address this problem and modifications to the environment take time.   Speaker 1  27:03   And this is what intrigues me about regenerative agriculture. I know this is a whole nother subject for someone who probably but as a we, as a plant biologist, and ecologist, you know, actually choosing plants that we want to be there without causing problems. Again, the voles, the legumes with maybe some other virus problems can be, but I think choosing these plants is going to be so important. But you know, it's interesting, I had someone call me and they wanted to start using regenerative agriculture. And I told them, you know, your first three years are going to be really hard I go, you have to choose the right plants, you're going to probably maybe even have some reduced yields. And they said, Well, why John, because my friend has been doing it 25 years, and he's doing great, because his soil knows what to do. So anytime we make that transition and transitioning to this under vine cover cropping. And there has been places in the past where we've tried to use a listen. But listen, because of insects and some other things. The problem with alyssum is after about three or four years, it gets to be about four feet thick. It's one of these things, it's good for a while, but after it kind of takes over, it can cause some holding in moisture and doing some other things. I mean, some people again, depending on how fertile your soil is, you know, some places it may not be a problem, but we have to look at it on a vineyard by vineyard scale. And that's been the thing about herbicides is you don't have to think about the basically the vineyard by vineyard,   Craig Macmillan  28:24  We're basically at a time but don't ask your boys. Is there one particular thing that you would say to grape growers on this topic of let's just say mechanical?   John Roncoroni  28:34  On the whole subject of weeds, Craig, I just want to say that they need to know their weeds better. Right? I know it sounds like I always have a chip on my shoulder. And now that we have to right thing about glyphosate is they really didn't have to think about didn't have to think about their weeds. So there's there's two things I want to know we're almost out of time, but we are out of time. But there's two things I want to say about this real quickly. And I know it's mechanical, but those people who are still using chemicals, they could do a better job. Right new nozzle shielding timing, think more about put as much time and effort into thinking about the weeds as you do about insects and pathogens. Know your plants. Don't just say I'm going to do this. It doesn't matter what the weeds are, know your weeds, know their biology. Know the timing, no matter what kind of control you're doing. And then once you do, get the best tool, like if you are still spraying in certain situations in certain vineyards, use new drip reducing nozzles, use shielded sprayers when you do mechanical, you know, don't just get that old thing that like you said, that's been sitting out in the back, right? Look at the kind of machine that you want to use what we do have, I think when it comes to weed control, the whole industry could do a much better job. Okay, one of the things that I put a slide up one time and I said look, I understand pathogens first and then insects, and then weeds and someone got up and corrected me and they said John, that's wrong. I said Oh really? They go? Yeah, it's pathogens, insects, fertilizers and weeds. Right so weeds and when it comes to weeds being third weeds are not just third weeds or a distant third. They only think for me about all the cons Diversity that's happened is that people have to think about weeds again, they have to go back to knowing what we knew before that before they all started using chemicals.   Craig Macmillan  30:07  So that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Our guest today has been John Ron crony. He is Weed Science firm advisor emeritus with UC Cooperative Extension, UC Agriculture Natural Resources. I followed you from afar for a long time. And I'm very excited to get you on the podcast. This has been a great conversation. Yeah, there's so much more to talk about, and I'm sure that we will, we will reconvene at some point.   Nearly perfect transcription by https://otter.ai

Tree planting is a tremendous investment. The details of how to plant an orchard properly can have a big impact on the bottom line. In today's episode, Dr. Brent Holtz explains the reasons that he regularly receives calls from growers about their young trees dying. These problems led Holtz to work with the Almond Board of California to create a video in both English and Spanish to highlight the most important planting considerations for both farmers and farm laborers. Holtz has been a farm advisor with University of California Cooperative Extension for about 30 years. He serves as the orchard systems and pomology advisor for San Joaquin County. In addition to tree planting, Holtz discusses some of the latest updates in his many years of work in whole orchard recycling, and why he sees a need to add a tree pruning educational video in the future. “Young tree death is probably one of the highest situations that I'm called out to as a farm advisor throughout my career. Talking to the almond board folks, that was a message that wasn't getting out and that's what led to the discussion that we need a video.” - Dr. Brent HoltzIn Today's episode: ● Meet Dr. Brent Holtz, a farm advisor with University of California Cooperative Extension for about 30 years● Explore the value offered in the new video highlighting the biggest concerns and issues related to tree planting● Learn the latest nitrogen consideration if you are replanting trees after whole orchard recyclingThe Spanish version of the tree planting video will be available later this year and both videos can be found on the Almond Board of California YouTube page under the California Almond Growers Education playlist.The Almond Journey Podcast is brought to you by the Almond Board of California. This show explores how growers, handlers, and other stakeholders are making things work in their operations to drive the almond industry forward. Host Tim Hammerich visits with leaders throughout the Central Valley of California and beyond who are finding innovative ways to improve their operations, connect with their communities, and advance the almond industry.ABC recognizes the diverse makeup of the California almond industry and values contributions offered by its growers, handlers, and allied industry members. However, the opinions, services and products discussed in existing and future podcast episodes are by no means an endorsement or recommendation from ABC. The Almond Journey podcast is not an appropriate venue to express opinions on national, state, local or industry politics. As a Federal Marketing Order, the Almond Board of California is prohibited from lobbying or advocating on legislative issues, as well as setting field and market prices.

In this Episode we speak with Dr Stephanie Larson, County Director and Livestock Range Management Advisor and Director of University of California Cooperative Extension, Sonoma County about fires in Sonoma county, rangeland management and how cattle can help.Match Graze

Looking for a tool to help you make irrigation and Nitrogen application decisions? How about one that will not cost you anything? Michael Cahn, Farm Advisor, Irrigation and Water Resources at the University of California Cooperative Extension in Monterey County explains a valuable software for farmers – CropManage. This free software from the University of California combines a wide variety of data inputs to help growers make accurate and timely irrigation and fertilization decisions based on crop-specific models. The tool aggregates data from the University of California at Davis Soil Web, weather stations, evapotranspiration, and satellite imagery. Plus, it can be integrated with a farmer's existing software. CropManage has been ground-truthed in more than 30 field trials. While the product started in lettuce, it has expanded into vineyards. Your vineyard can be a beta tester to help improve this software for the wine industry. Resources: 115: Examining Plant Nutrient Mobility with SAP Analysis 116: Using Nudge Theory to Improve Irrigation Practices 139: Vineyard Irrigation Scheduling Adapting wine grape production to climate change through canopy architecture manipulation and irrigation in warm climates CropManage “CropManage CropManage Application for Vineyard Irrigation Decision Support.” 73rd American Society of Enology and Viticulture National Conference, San Diego CA Michael Cahn's email Monterey County UC Cooperative Extension Vineyard Team Programs: Juan Nevarez Memorial Scholarship – Make a Gift SIP Certified – Show your care for the people and planet   Sustainable Ag Expo – The premiere winegrowing event of the year Sustainable Winegrowing Education On-Demand (Western SARE) – Sign Up! Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get More Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources. Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.   Transcript Craig Macmillan  0:00  Our guest today is Michael Cahn. He is Farm Adviser in irrigation and water resources with UC Cooperative Extension Monterey County. But he also works in other counties as well, as I'm sure we'll talk about. And today we're going to talk about a system a decision assistance system for a whole variety of crops called CropManage, which is free and available online. And I've been following for quite a few years. In fact, he was a speaker at one of our Sustainable Ag Expos a few years back, and at the time, I was like, this is the coolest thing ever. And I can't wait to see how it develops. Welcome.   Michael Cahn  0:29  Well, thank you for inviting me.   Craig Macmillan  0:31  So first of all, what exactly is CropManage? Well, it   Michael Cahn  0:35  is an online decision support tool that's sort of in a nutshell is how we describe it. It's essentially software that takes information from different sources, puts it through some crop models, and provide some recommendations on how long to irrigate your crops. It also for a number of crops, provides decision support on nitrogen management.   Craig Macmillan  1:03  How did this all come about? This was a really interesting project, there's a lot that goes into it, what was the genesis, the idea behind this?   Michael Cahn  1:09  The start of CropManage was in lettuce a number of years ago, we're trying to help growers be more efficient in nitrogen management. Nitrogen, as most of you know, in its mineral form, which would be mostly nitrate, is very mobile in the soil. So it seems like if we're going to manage nitrogen accurately, then we also have to manage water. So they go to hand in hand in hand. Of course, I work in irrigation water management. So I also had the interest in just using water efficiently on the Central Coast, because of our limited water supplies. You know, we could use nutrients more efficiently and water more efficiently if we had some sort of decision support tool. When I started working with the vegetable growers. I often asked them, you know, how are you making decisions on irrigation? How long to irrigate when to irrigate? And you get a variety of answers. But essentially, it came down to the experience of branch managers in irrigation farming, sort of passing that information down from one irrigator to another irrigator. One farm manager do another farm manager. And by the way, this happens at vineyards too, you know, so the question was, well, okay, are they you're getting efficiently. And so, as I started out as a farm advisor, my first question was, how do we measure how much water we apply, you have to remember back when I started, wasn't so easy. The flow meters we had available for these propeller meters, they're often inaccurate. And then to record derogations, there was no output, you couldn't hook them up to a little computer or data logger. So that came later. But once they did start monitoring water use growers, who found that if you base it on crop ET, they're putting on 200, 300% of crop at the estimate. And so, so the question was, who's right, you know, is the crop ET right or are they right? So then we start doing trials, saying, well, let's just follow this crop ET and see if that would work. It worked, you know, we never reduced yields in lettuce. So we kept the soil still with adequate moisture. At that time, it was like a spreadsheet model that we used. At the same time, we were working on nitrogen management using the soil nitrate quick test to evaluate mineral island in the soil.   How are you measuring Crop ET back then? We're estimating it, I should say.   Yeah, it's still the same way as we do it and CropManage, we developed crop coefficients. And that was a big question of growers, what is my crop coefficient, and there seemed to be a misunderstanding of that, because they thought it was one number like point seven, one, and then you use that with the referencing ET value that comes from usually a CIMIS station that California irrigation management information system. Well, it's not one number. It's based on really the fractional cover over the ground. So how much of the ground is shade by the use in in lettuce? This changes tremendously, you know, over a season, it goes from essentially no cover to full cover to about 90%. And so then the question was, okay, no cover here, but I need to irrigate Right. So we do have water loss from the soil by evaporation. So we have to model that too. So that all goes into the crop coefficient calculation. And we have that in our spreadsheet model. We based it on published work that was done in the Silicon Valley by my predecessor, and other people, that model worked fine. So it wasn't a model, I necessarily came up with the innovation was just trying it out. And validating it. That's what we did, then, you know, we got grower interest. They said, Yeah, we'd like to use this type of model for water management. We also were interested in nitrogen management using the soil nitrate quick test. And so another aspect to what we did was look at, well, how much nitrogen does a lettuce crop need as you go through the season, and we did this by brute force by harvesting lettuce at different stages, and analyzing how much nitrogen was in the above ground biomass. And that gave us the demand side of the equation. So so now we want to put it all together, and the grower interest was there. So we realized, you know, if a grower was going to use this spreadsheet, it would be a little cumbersome, because think about how many separate plantings there are on our ranch, lots of them. That's a lot of spreadsheets to keep track of. So we wanted it to be in a sense a database database that we available to a grower online. So that was the idea that we have a web based decision support tool, so it holds all the data. So once you enter it, you don't have to re enter it. There is some upfront cost and time when setting up your farm or ranch on CropManage. But once it's set up, only if you make modifications do you have to enter anything.   Craig Macmillan  7:01  Now there's a lot of inputs that go into this, I was looking at the landing page for the CropManage Site, can you tell us a little bit about all of the different parts and pieces of data and information that go into into the system?   Michael Cahn  7:08  Essentially, you're giving crop manage some information about your ranch. So all the different fields that you have, we need to be able to refer to them. So you set that out, and you associate a soil type with that, because we do have models of water holding capacity in the soil. It's based on the soil texture. Now because it is web based, we can use other tools to help you set this up. So fact crop manage links to UC Davis soil web. So you click on a Google map, find your field, you click on it and the soil type comes up, you can always modify the values there. But we bring those in, you don't have to know to use CropManage, you have to associate CropManage with some weather data. So there's the option to use the near CIMIS weather station, you can use multiple CIMIS weather stations, there's a spatial CIMIS option, which is a hybrid of satellite and weather stations. So it brings in the referencing ET data will also bring in rainfall data from the CIMIS station. Because we are working with fertilizers, you can make a customized list of the typical fertilizers that would be used at that branch. And so there is a list there. You can choose from, you can enter your own specific fertilizers that you use. Also, you'll see a place where you set up your commodity lists. No sense in having information pop up about lettuce if you don't grow lettuce.   Craig Macmillan  8:52  Exactly. And vineyards are part of the system now. Is that right?   Michael Cahn  8:57  That's right. They're in the experimental phase. And if you want to activate it, you'll see in your profile place where you check experimental commodities. And that's because we're still developing the nitrogen model for vineyards. So it's good to use for irrigation management, not put to use, for nitrogen management. We're working with other UC Davis specialists on the nitrogen.   Craig Macmillan  9:22  You're gonna have a hard time with that. Trying to get a handle on the demand side of nitrogen for vineyard stuff. I've worked on that as a as a writer. And yeah, that's that that's gonna take some work, but I'm glad that it's part of the idea. I think it's super important. I think it's something that people have overlooked. I think we've been flying blind as far as nitrogen and vineyards goes, we've gotten better in the irrigation side.   Michael Cahn  9:45  Right, right. And that's what I'm learning is the vineyard people have no agreement on a lot of these things. One of the things one of the purposes of crop damages. Well, first pivotal is public, right? It's developed by the University, it takes our science and tries to make it more available to practitioners by having the decision support models are based on our research. And as we do research, we can update these models, but also, as practitioners use crop damage, they can tell us we oh, this doesn't work, right, you know, you need to investigate X or Y. And so for developing new hypotheses or directions in our research, it's useful that way, too. So it's a two way street, I should say.   Craig Macmillan  10:44  How is this going with adoption? Why is it how's it going with communication from growers back to you? Are people picking this up? Are they giving you back the kind of feedback that you need on the growers side, how can we help you?   Michael Cahn  10:55  So for the vegetables, it's getting adopted by growers that are ready to really implement better water and nutrient management, not saying all growers adopting CropManage, but we do have growers who, and some growers, they're saying, Yeah, this is the direction we want to go. And they're in the phase of figuring out how to get it adopted on their growing operation. Because it's one thing where someone at the top or management wants to adopt it to another thing to get your irrigators to adopt it. So that's the hardest part. And then the same with the strawberries. In some ways we've been even more successful were, they were the strawberries. And then in vineyards, while we're, you know, in the beginning stages here. And so right now, what we've been doing is we have beta testers, essentially, vineyard growers that are saying, Yeah, I'm interested, what we do is we put a flow meter on a block in their vineyard. And one of the nice things about crop manages, it can take sensor data into it, just like a lot of those tools out there that are sold to, to vineyard people for soil moisture monitoring, we can also bring soil moisture, data flow meter data in you can observe it and crop manage. So we've outfitted a few vineyards in the Salinas Valley with that, and some in the Central Valley to see what CropManage estimates and terms of water use and what growers are putting on.    Craig Macmillan  12:39  Yeah, and if they tell me a little bit more about the one thing that I love about CropMnage, it's science based. And it's also ground truth. So as you've gone along, you've you've done the background work you've come up with, Okay, this looks like something that would work in terms of figuring out Kc and things like that. But then you actually have spent the time and the energy and whatnot to actually ground truth of the decision assistance model against reality, right?   Michael Cahn  13:05  Yeah, we haven't done vineyards in the way I would love to do it, which is not just compared to what a grower standard practices, but go beyond that, where we have some pre arranged treatments in compared to those treatments. So for example, vegetables, we've done replicated field trials, seeing broccoli, where we apply 50 7500 and 125 and 150% of the recommendation, then evaluate the yield. Like to do this in vineyards, that is trickier. It's a perennial crop, so you'd have to run it for several years, really, to see, you know, really what the outcome is.   Craig Macmillan  13:50  You have other variables along the way things like crop management or dropping crop they're changing cropping styles through pruning and whatnot, year to year during canopy management. I found that to be particularly tricky. If you're thinking about idea of percent cover. If you've got a California sprawl and everything's flopping all over the place then works. You push everything upright. And now you don't have as much shade, but you still have the same amount of leaves. So doing those kinds of estimates is tough. Yeah, definitely. It's on the fly. But I believe he can do it. I believe in you.   Michael Cahn  14:23  Well, we'll see. Maybe beyond my career, but someone needs to do it.   Craig Macmillan  14:30  Do you still need beta testers?   Michael Cahn  14:32  Sure. Yes. Because the more feedback we get, the better and there's different levels of they could do for the most intensive is where we put you know, a flow meter on and some soil moisture sensors. They want that in the field, and then they can follow, you know, how much water they're putting on. And what this means in terms of soil moisture, what CropManaged recommends We also take canopy photos, to adjust the canopy curve for how they're managing the vineyard. We also import automatically satellite estimates of canopy that comes from a NASA product called SIMIS satellite irrigation management system.   Craig Macmillan  15:20  Which is really cool, by the way.   Michael Cahn  15:22  Yeah. And this year seems pretty accurate, you know, very close to our estimates with ground truth, measurements of canopy. And that's going to be compared with opening ET, which is a satellite based estimate of ET, actual ET again, the nice thing about these web based tools is you, the user don't have to go to all those different websites, we can bring that data in automatically in the parts we need for your decision support, we just pull that out, you don't have to search through different places in websites to get what you want.   Craig Macmillan  16:00  Yeah, I like the way the system is, or the way the interface is structured. It's a great dashboard. It's easy to navigate around, it gives you great information easily, which is wonderful. I think I already know the answer to this question. But what would you say is the number one advantage, or the number one benefit to a grower, no matter who they are, of using CropManage?   Michael Cahn  16:23  I guess the number one benefit is they have a better understanding of really the water and the nitrogen management over a whole season, just at their fingertips. For perennial crops, you can see what you did year to year. So the record keeping, I would say, is a big benefit. Even if you don't follow any of the recommendations, just keeping records is extremely useful.   Craig Macmillan  16:49  Measure to manage.   Michael Cahn  16:50  Yeah, it's been very useful for me, in my research, it's like I built this mostly out of self interest in the sense. You can imagine if you were trying to help people doing irrigation, you need to know how much water they're applaying. And so here we have a tool where I can give them feedback right away, how much water they're applying, I used to have to calculate all those ET measurements, or estimates by hand. Well, this software does it. So it's a great extension tool. It's a great way for me to figure out who there's a gap in knowledge, and that I need to do research on. So it's helped in many ways. We have a number of farm advisors that also develop the interests of crop manage in different parts of the state. And so it's sort of the idea is spreading, I guess, you see.   Craig Macmillan  17:44  Yeah, exactly. I hope that it doesn't happen spreads amongst growers. What is the one thing that you would tell growers on this topic, broad topic?   Michael Cahn  17:54  Well, this broad topic of water management of vineyards, there's a lot of different opinions. What I see, at least in the Salinas Valley, is growers, you know, they they stress those vines a lot, a lot more than they realize a lot of their decisions come from watching the vines and how the tendrils are, you know, how they're growing. And they don't want too much canopy, so a pullback on the water. But it could be that at some point, sir overstressing the crop. And so having good sense of how much water stress that crop is experienced would be something I would like to investigate more.   Craig Macmillan  18:36  Especially if you're going into a hot spell. You know, I mean, it's one thing you Oh, hey, these vines, we want to keep the very small, we want to have stress in this. And then suddenly, next thing, you know, it's 10 days of 105. And it would have been nice for that plant to be in a little better shape going into that. But how do you know, right? That's philosophy versus prediction versus technology. But this is a great tool to help you with that.   Michael Cahn  18:57  Right. And so one feature I better talk about in the development for vineyards is you can decide what percentage of potentially ET you want to apply to your crop for each irrigation. And if you enter the amount of water you applied, or the hours you applied, we have another part of crop manage called the saltwater balance. And it will actually calculate how the soil profile will look you know, in terms of depletion of moisture, and we've calibrated that pretty well by using soil moisture sensors. For example, one vineyard we did last year, outfitted with soil moisture sensors and in ran this and it was pretty obvious from the soil moisture sensors, you know, they really depleted the lower part of the profile, you know, by July and it just never went up even with each irrigation they waited up the top foot but you know there was as much moisture down deeper. And so, you know, the soil water balance showed something very similar. We showed this data the grower, and they said, That is not what we wanted to do. We want to keep some of that deep soil moisture. You could use this as a tool to help you understand just how much you are stressing the crop.   Craig Macmillan  20:21  Where can people find out more about you and CropManage in general?   Michael Cahn  20:24  Well, we have on our website, help link, which has tutorials as introduction to CropManage, we do crop manage workshops. Usually during the winter time, where it's hands on, you bring a computer, or cell phone or whatever you want to interface with CropManage. And by the way, you don't need a computer a desktop computer, or laptop computer to use CropManage, it works just fine in tablet. And it's definitely meant to be used with a smartphone out there in the field. Because the interface reconfigures for the different screen sites. It is used in a web browser environment to be recommended using Google Chrome or Safari attending our workshop. And we also say, you know, call it the crop manage hotline, which is my office, and I'll leave us with some contact information.   Craig Macmillan  21:24   Perfect, but we're about out of time. I want to thank you Michael. Like I said, this has been a long, long road to get to this point. And I'm very happy to see the progress that's been made. And I'm happy to see that it's still going. This kind of work needs to be funded. And I know that you relied partly upon donations, and I hope that our listeners will put a couple of bucks in the hat somewhere to keep this going. We appreciate it. But it's a fantastic idea and a fantastic amount of privacy all made. Our guest today is Michael Cahn. He was former adviser for irrigation water resources UC Cooperative Extension Monterey County and other counties. Thanks for being on the podcast.   Michael Cahn  22:01  Thank you for having me.   Nearly Perfect Transcription by https://otter.ai

This butterfly is excited to be speaking with Dr. James Downer. Dr. Downer has 37 years of experience as a horticulture and plant pathology Advisor with the University of California Cooperative Extension in Ventura County. His research is focused on mulch, soil microbiology and disease suppression in mulched soils, diseases of shade trees, and cultural practices to maintain landscape plants. Dr. Downer is an Adjunct professor at California Polytechnic University in Pomona. He has a love of shade trees, Shinrin Yoku (forest bathing) tree work, woodworking, horses, gardening, horticulture, and the study of plants and their biology. In this episode, you will hear about the forests in Chernobyl, his work studying the nuclear effect on them, Gama Radiation, Fukushima, and more. Some notes... More about 1treellion & Dr. James Downer. To support planting all over the world, please check out this link. The great music is credited to Pixabay.

Amid extreme weather events, many grape growers ask themselves what they can do to adapt their vineyard for climate change. Chris Chen, Integrated Vineyard Systems Advisor in Sonoma, Mendocino, and Lake Counties at the University of California Cooperative Extension is exploring solutions to this question. Mediterranean climates like California, with hot and dry summers and cold wet winters, are particularly sensitive. Researchers expect temperature maximums will be higher and the minims will be lower in years to come. Chris explains a few tactics growers can use to continue farming successfully amid climate changes including rootstocks, canopy management, new scions, and most importantly trialing. References: REGISTER: 3/10/23 Canopy Management: Trellising, Sunburn, & Mechanization Tailgate Meeting | Paso Robles, CA 67: Impacts of Climate Change on Wine Production A New World of Wine: How the Viticultural Map is Changing | Greg Jones | International Masters of Wine Symposium (Video) Andy Walker, Emeritus Louise Rossi Endowed Chair in Viticulture and Enology Chen Lab Chris Chen Twitter Climate, Grapes, and Wine | Greg Jones | TEDx Roseburg (Video) Out of Sync: Vine Responses to Changing Conditions SIP Certified UCCE North Coast Viticulture UCCE Sonoma County Viticulture UCCE Viticulture Newsletters Online - North Coast Vineyard Team – Become a Member Get More Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources. Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.   Transcript Craig Macmillan  0:00  My guest today is Chris Chen. He's integrated vineyard systems advisor for Sonoma Mendocino and Lake counties with the University of California Cooperative Extension. And I think we're gonna have a very interesting conversation today, Chris has done some pretty interesting work and some pretty interesting ideas. So welcome to the podcast, Chris.   Chris Chen  0:14  Thanks, Craig. Appreciate it. Looking forward to it.   Craig Macmillan  0:16  Doing a little bit of background on you. Would you say that there's a particular thread or what the thread is that runs through your research and extension work? Because it seems like there is one to me.   Chris Chen  0:25  A lot of my work is focused on adaptation to climate change and vineyards. And it's something that goes back to when I was in grad school, you know, the, the whole climate change thing became really big and something to focus on when I entered grad school. And as I went through grad school, it became what I did. The thread here is kind of how do we adapt viticulture, to changing climates? How do we predict what a climate today is going to be in 510 years, the thread is to see how can we adapt to these changing conditions, and still keep viticulture, thriving and successful.   Craig Macmillan  0:57  What is the prediction right now, in terms of let's start with California, but we can talk about the West Coast, we can also talk about New York, and we can talk about Europe. But you work in California, what is the current picture in terms of long term climate change that might affect grapes?   Unknown Speaker  1:15  It's not really easy to say this will happen that will happen. But what we expect to see in California, it's a Mediterranean climate right now, these are very sensitive climate types, typically classified as regions with really hot, dry summers, cold, wet winters, right. And they're kind of fringe ecosystems, fringe climates. So they're on the border of, of an inland climate in a coastal climate, that means they're the most sensitive to climate change. So what we're expecting to see in California, and what a lot of researchers, climate researchers are planning on is, you know, increased temperatures, the maximums are going to be higher, the minimums are going to be lower, and those swings are going to be more drastic in between. So the diurnal temperature shift is going to be huge. You know, that is something that everyone kind of expects with climate change. It gets hotter, it gets colder, the extremes are more extreme, but what we're not really sure about is how precipitation is going to change. And in California, rainfall is such a huge thing. It's variable year to year, we have droughts for three years at a time and then one relief year, what we're really confused about is how is the rain pattern gonna change where we are today are we going to get the same rainfall and we're going to be able to support viticulture here anymore?   Craig Macmillan  2:33  Now that brings up an interesting question. I'm going to bring up Andy Walker here, Dr. Andy Walker, the very famous plant breeder and I attended a seminar that he did on rootstocks, which he's done a ton of work and many rootstocks are out as a result of his lab. And he started off the whole thing by saying, you can dry farm winegrapes anywhere in the world. And the room just went silent, like I don't think anybody was breathing. And then he says, Now you might get two clusters, providing but the plant itself is going to do what it does. It's an amazing plant. It's incredible. And then he went on and talked about being in the Andes and seeing things in different parts of the world. And I found that really inspiring because when we talk about what we're doing right now, water, obviously is probably the biggest knob. If you have all these knobs, you can twist fertilizer, whatever water is probably the biggest one. Yeah, California, you have done some work with a number of people, but also with Kaan Kutural who I love on drought tolerance, drought resistance, I would say and what kinds of things? Are you finding out what you mean? Where is it kind of leading you? Where is it? What's kind of the thought process?   Chris Chen  3:38  Andy, he was also my doctoral advisor. So I've heard his Spiel once or twice about dry farming. You know, you can do that can grow grapes in most almost all places without water there. There are grapes on islands that are irrigated with fog drip, so it's possible, but he's also right in saying that you're not going to get the yields that make you profitable. So that's concerning. And what we want to avoid, because we still need a certain tonnes per acre to reach profit margin that matters in terms of what can we do and how we're going for drought adaptation. There's the old approach of using rootstocks. And it's a very useful approach, right, these rootstocks from Andy Walker's perspective, and if you're looking at it from his lens, they have different rooting patterns. They have different water demands, and that translates to what we're growing on top. Whether it's Cab, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, whatever you want to grow on top of it, it's going to be impacted by what it's grafted to that is actually a very reasonable strategy to address drought that has its limits, you know, you still need water to grow grapes. Almost all grape vines in the wild, are only found near perennial water sources. So it's not like we can get rid of water altogether. We can't just leave them alone and expect to have any crop on them. But there's other things we can do. One of the huge management strategies that we can look at is canopy management. So canopy management in vineyards have really impacts how much water transpires and how much water evaporates from the surface of the soil. With a bigger canopy, you get less evaporation. But you also get more transpiration because there's more leaves, right. And vice versa. If you have a small canopy, you have the opposite problem that actually really impacts your fruit, your crop load, you know the quality of your fruit, the characteristics of the berries. So it's not something that everybody's going to play around with, because they want us to in the end, they want a certain kind of fruit with certain characteristics for their winery. But canopy management is a huge one as well, as rootstocks, there's also the interest in precision agriculture. So there is the spoon feeding approach where instead of irrigating large quantities at once, we can irrigate small portions at a time.   Craig Macmillan  5:43  Irrigate strategicly. I mean, I've seen some pretty interesting work from the past where it was like a 10, Vine irrigation block. And you were able to control this and that little bit in that little bit. And you could use NDVI to figure out where you want to do it. Interesting work. I'd never was convinced how practical that might be for most growers, especially if you're retrofitting their orchards.   Chris Chen  6:05  In Australia that irrigate on a tree to tree basis. So it's very doable. You know, the question is, how much water would you actually save doing that? And how much energy are you using to pump that every time?   Craig Macmillan  6:18  Exactly. Now, we're talking about rootstocks rootstock breeding back in the day, 100 years ago, or whenever it was all about phylloxera. And it was about salt. I know that Dr. Walker has done a lot of work on salt resistance. n=Nematode resistance is turned out to be a big one. If I remember that's the GRM series are specifically for nematode. Is that right?   Chris Chen  6:38  Correct. Yes. Those are anti Walker's.   Craig Macmillan  6:40  Crowning achievements. Brilliant stuff. You know, we're talking about genetic differences and rootstocks that have been bred for different conditions, including things like drought tolerance. What about what's on top, you make a point one of your articles that the landscape of wine growing is dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay, which means we have a very limited genome, essentially, of what's above ground. And we've learned from other crops that might not be such a great idea. We're talking about maybe trying to rootstock our way out of some of this. Can we variety, some of our way out of this.   Chris Chen  7:11  So the short answer to that is yes. The long answer is a bit more complex. You know, overall, all of the scions we put on are all one species Vitus vinifera, there's a few others like Vitesse labrusca, which is Concorde. And there's a there's a couple others that we use, but the majority of what we consider winegrapes is Vitus vinifera. So the genetic differences in the scions are not huge. The real differences are in the phenotyping. Right, you look at a Cabernet Sauvignon vine. And you compare that to a Tempranillo or Zinfandel, you'll see that the latter, they actually have quite larger canopies, even though they're the same species. The weird thing is they're more heat tolerant. Part of that might be their transpiration and might be for several reasons, these small changes in how they look change how they interact with their environment. So the real concern in you know, changing the scions from place to place site to site is that some places actually have latched on to a variety or two. If you think about Napa Napa, you think Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, where I work in the north coast, it's Pinot Noir, a little bit of Chardonnay, some Sauvignon Blanc and Lake County, right? It's very possible to say, you know, if we have a one, one site that increases temperatures by, you know, temperature accumulation by 20%, in 10 years, it might behoove them to go from a cold climate grapes like Pinot Noir and switch over to something like Zinfandel. The problem is, well, the market that purchases their wine actually still keep buying their wines. If they go to Zinfandel, it would be a smart move. If you're thinking about, you know, the physiology of the plant of the difficulty of managing the vineyard, all the extra things you have to do if you want to stick with that cold climate grew up in a hot climate, not to say that people don't do that we do have Pinot Noir grown in San Joaquin Valley, for instance, just not as much as up here. So it's possible one of the problems is actually picking those varieties, picking the right varieties because just because it gets hotter here doesn't mean you know, Santa Rosa has the same climate as Bakersfield. There's differences in humidity and light incidents. There's differences in just cultural practices, what people do to manage the soils what they do for fertilizing. So overall, yeah, it's possible but there's other barriers besides just switching the plant.   Craig Macmillan  9:29  It sounds like some of those barriers are the ability to make accurate predictions about what might happen if I'm planting Zinfandel in an area where it's never really had Zinfandel. I don't know exactly what's gonna go on. But then also it sounds like acceptance of the marketplace is gonna play a big role. That's that's a different conversation. Unless you have a feeling about it. I think part of what goes on is we do have information from the marketplace. We do have research, but a lot of what goes on here is growers themselves as individuals are making decisions out what's gonna happen? Right? It's not necessarily that we're getting handed down this necessarily the trend, but like, I think this is where we're gonna go. When you talk to people about this kind of thing. What kind of response do you get from growers?   Chris Chen  10:10  Yeah, you know, it depends. There are growers that are all about trying new cultivars, and they usually inhabit kind of niche markets, a lot of these growers will grow varieties that are useful for blending. So if you need some more color, if you need some more acids, they'll grow these varieties that impart that to wines that otherwise wouldn't have them. And you know, there's only so much of a market for that. I think there's also growers on the other side where they say, Well, no, in order for us to make our ends meet, we have to stick with so and so variety, we have to stay with Pinot Noir because our entire consumer base wants it. And you know, there's trends in viticulture in California as a whole that have followed these, you know, this chain of events Muscats Muscats, used to be very popular along with making a rose out of Zinfandel. Riesling was another one, people planted a bunch of these things, and then the consumer market dropped out. And they were stuck with fines that take, you know, five years to hit any kind of good crop. And within those five years, it fell out of favor. So they're selling their grapes for pennies, compared to what they would have been if had they had them at the peak of the popularity, we can't change our varieties just based on popularity, and we can't keep them just based on popularity. But there are these constants right 40% of the grapes planted in California are Cabernet Sauvignon Chardonnay, which is not a bad thing. It just means that people want it.   Craig Macmillan  11:31  use the term asynchronous or asynchrony, and viticulture. What What do you mean when you refer to that?   Chris Chen  11:37  so that's a term that I thought would be very applicable to the situation. So vineyards as a whole run on a schedule, they run on timing, and part of that is their biological timing, right? So their biological timing is based off of heat accumulation. So the hotter it is for the longer the quicker we have budbreak, the quicker we have chute growth and fruit set, and so on. So that as the climates are changing, and we know we're going to see higher temperatures in some places, then we're seeing a shift in that timing. And a shift in that timing changes a lot of things, it changes how the plants interact with insects and pests and beneficial insects, because they're also changing their timing, we're seeing, you know, some insect pests are increasing their generations. So they instead of two generations a year, they'll have three in some really hot places, for instance. But also these these beneficial insects that control the pests are switching their timing of hatching and switching their timing of maturity. And we're seeing that more and more, and we're afraid we're gonna start seeing that in agriculture relatively soon. So what all of that together means is that when you look at a vineyard, the events that you would have had for the past 100 years are not happening at the same times as they would have been in the next 10 years than they did previously. And that's a challenge actually, for you know, management as well, because labor resources are, especially in agriculture are often you know, made more available during timeframes where they're needed. And if that timeframe changes, there's gonna be a year or two where that's a problem.   Craig Macmillan  13:09  If we don't change anything, let's say we don't change varieties, we don't change the root stocks or anything, I'll get vineyards that are 10 years old now and hopefully get another decade or two out of it, or I'm making decisions 20 years from now for a variety like Cabernet Sauvignon you're in and we will talk about Pinot Noir as well that I think that's an important one. But I want to start with Cab, in your experience, let's say things get warmer and colder. And then we don't know what's going to happen with weather. So let's just leave rainfall out of it for now. But just the swings in the higher the highs and lower lows, what impact do you think that's gonna have on wine quality or yield? How are these things going to change? Do you think as a viticulturalist?   Chris Chen  13:45  Especially wine grapes really need that big swing in temperature, so they need that diurnal shift that's really hot summer days and really cold summer nights. That really helps them develop their flavonol profiles, their tannins, their anthocyanins, anthocyanins more so about, light, you know, incidents light exposure, but that's beside the point. So it's actually kind of a good thing. The problem is when we hit these limits, right? So when we hit these limits of it's too hot. So now instead of accumulation of these compounds, what we're seeing is a degradation of them. So they're accumulating in the grapes faster throughout the year. So again, this is that asynchrony, right. So as you get closer toward the traditional historic harvest time, you think, okay, these grapes are still accumulating their tannins, or they're still accumulating their flavonols or their their anthocyanins are not degrading it. But what we're seeing is that increase in the growing degree days or heat accumulation is actually decreasing the amount of stable compounds in the grape that we want. So we're seeing especially with color, we're seeing a degradation in color. anthocyanins are degrading, much sooner and to higher degrees in these really hot summers, especially when We have these heat waves that we had last year. These heat waves are terrible for these things. But we don't know which varieties are going to be tolerant to this and can can withstand these changes in extremes. So the increases in high temperatures, the decreases in low temperatures, the low temperatures aren't really a problem unless we get freezing temperatures which we shouldn't in summer, but it's not impossible.   Craig Macmillan  15:23  Not impossible could happen. What about Pinot Noir, famously very sensitive, very narrow range that it likes. Right. I got you on the spot here.   Chris Chen  15:32  Yeah, I can't speak to that too much. Because all of the trials that I've done and I've seen have been with Cabernet Sauvignon, one of the most popular red varieties in the world, I can't say that it's more or less sensitive to these changes Pinot Noir. But based on its classification, as a region, one region two cold climate grape, it's likely to be more sensitive to these extreme highs in summer and degrade faster. We do know that Pinot Noir ripens sooner than Cabernet Sauvignon does, on average, you know, put them in the same spot and your Pinot is going to be done. I don't know spitballing number here two weeks before the Cabernet is so you harvest the two weeks ahead of time. That means if you're harvesting it at the same time as Cabernet, you're getting more degradation in those anthocyanin. So that would be the theory behind why Pinot Noir might be more affected by these high temperatures. But I don't have anything to cite for you at the moment.   Craig Macmillan  16:25  Sure, sure. But I think that your insight there is useful in that. Okay, maybe we don't know what's gonna happen. We can kind of guess at some things that might happen. But if we know kind of where things might end up, or how the vine might repond, I might change my winemaking, I might change my canopy management style, right? I knew a guy who was an old school farmer, and he refused to put in drip irrigation even in new vineyards. And I asked him about it. And he said salts, that's the way to go. That's it only way to do it. And I was like, well, that's 1974 It's not 1974 anymore. And he goes looks listen in the middle of a day, it's 105 I can turn on those sprinklers. And I can cool that canopy and I can avoid stress. I said we're gonna overwater, you're gonna do it, because you just gotta know what you're doing son, like just, I can put it out there. And I can manage this a more effective tool for me. I watched him over the years and saw what he did. He had it really dialed in. But he had a totally different approach to what tool he wanted to use to deal with whatever the environmental condition was. And I thought that was really interesting and very clever. Are there things that we can learn from other parts of the world? Because obviously, there's differences in climate different places to Australia, you know, very different interestes and very warm areas there, if I understand correctly, are we gaining knowledge, we gained some guidance from other parts of the world on this topic?   Chris Chen  17:42  If we're not we should be there's this popular topic that England United Kingdom can grow grapes now, and they can grow good grapes now. And that's new. That never used to be the case. And you know the story of I don't know if this is true. But the story of why Brut champagne or Brut sparkling wines called Brut is because the French made it for the English and they didn't like them. No, I mean, we do have things to learn. Yeah, we do have things to learn from other people, especially places that are really hot. South Africa, Australia, these, you know, these locations are, a lot of them are dealing with conditions that, you know, we see here as well, but they're dealing with it on a much larger scale. So we see, you know, really hot temperatures in the San Joaquin Valley, Sacramento Valley. But we grow grapes there. And we're good at it. You know, in Australia, that's a huge swath of land that's in those kinds of conditions. But then the one where it gets really sensitive is when we get to the coast when we get to colder climates, like where I work where I operate. So it's going to be, you know, the coastal regions that really are impacted more, because they don't have the infrastructure, they don't have the cultivars to really tolerate that heat. And what we need to do is look at places that are experiencing this change before we're experiencing it. And often these are Mediterranean climates, also, right, New Zealand, Australia, South America, Chile, and see what they're doing, see how they're adapting to it and what cultivars they're planting. You know, I'm not saying that all of Mendocino County should be planting Sheraz or Sahra. But you know, it might be good for some growers to try it out and see what's going on. I've been advocating for a lot of growers that, you know, if you're replanting, and vineyard, plant a few other cultivars somewhere and just see how they do, you know, it's not really great for if you're harvesting with the machine, because you end up knocking those into the same bin as all the other grapes. But if you could, you know, find an area where it's isolated and far enough away that you're not going to mix them up might be good to plant five, five to 10 vines of something else and see how it does because each each region is going to be different. Each region is going to have to have a different response because climate change is very regional.   Craig Macmillan  19:53  But the good news is that we are pretty clever. As an industry we've come up with all kinds of solutions to all kinds of problems over the years. without the folks like you have made that possible. We're running out of time. But I want to ask you one very simple and very short question. And that is based on everything that we've kind of talked about what one piece of advice or what one takeaway would you give a grape grower?   Chris Chen  20:16  I would say the most important thing is to do really good monitoring practices to really get out there and see how your vines are changing, and how your site is changing. You can you can try new cultivars, you can try, you know, different root stocks, you can try different canopy management practices. But if you don't keep track of how things are changing in response to that, then there's no point, right? There's a lot of really good tools out there. There's a lot of new things coming out that you can you can, you know, remotely sense and identify diseases, changes in stomatal conductance in different physiological measurements that are really important to developing a grapevine. Just look at these new monitoring solutions. Be wary of ones that may or may not work, you know, don't don't put all of your your eggs in one basket, that kind of thing. But get out there and monitor.   Craig Macmillan  21:06  I think that's great advice. And I think that applies to a lot of things. Where can people find out more about you?   Chris Chen  21:10  I have a website. If you go to Google, and you type in UC AND Chris Chen, it should bring up my bio, and there's a link to my lab page there, has a bunch of resources has a bunch of links and papers. And I think you know, especially if you're in the North Coast region and the counties I work in, you can just give me a call. You know, most people can just call me anyways, I work for University of California. So it's, you know, quasi public domain. Yeah, please feel free to reach out.   Craig Macmillan  21:38  Fantastic. So our guest today has been Chris Chen. He's an integrated vineyard systems advisor for Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake counties with the University of California Cooperative Extension. Thanks for being on the podcast. Chris. This is really fun.   Chris Chen  21:50  Thanks for having me. Craig. Enjoyed it.   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

[wordpress] Niamh Quinn is the Human-Wildlife Interactions Advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension and is based at the South Coast Research and Extension Center in Irvine. Her role is to foster communication and information sharing among university academics, CE advisors, and community members. Niamh focuses on coordinating CE programs addressing human-wildlife conflicts, especially…

On this week's Walnut Wednesday episode, we review the top walnut article for this month's edition of West Coast Nut magazine as well as other top tree nut articles. Additionally, Kylie Harlan recaps University of California Cooperative Extension's first-ever hemp-related field day that was recently held in Davis.   Supporting the People who Support Agriculture Thank you to our sponsors who make it possible to get you your daily news. Please feel free to visit their websites. The California Walnut Board -  https://walnuts.org/ PhycoTerra® - https://phycoterra.com/ Verdesian - https://vlsci.com/ BeeHero - https://www.beehero.io/

A California study shows benefits of drip irrigation for growing sweet corn, and brewer's yeast benefits in livestock feed found in California Cooperative Extension study.

June 7, 2022--Join us for Part 2 of 3 of the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council Radio Hour's Special Series for Fire Season. Fire Safe Council Executive Director Scott Cratty leads a discussion about wildfire policy and preparation with Yana Valachovic, the Forest Advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension in Humboldt and Del Norte Counties.

On this week's Walnut Wednesday episode, University of California Cooperative Extension's Kat Jarvis-Shean breaks down changing winter chill accumulations and solutions. Additionally, Patrick Cotter reports on new funds to support groundwater-reliant communities.   Supporting the People who Support Agriculture Thank you to our sponsors who make it possible to get you your daily n|ews. Please feel free to visit their websites. The California Walnut Board – https://walnuts.org/ Phycoterra –https://phycoterra.com/ Verdesian - https://vlsci.com/ Rango - http://www.rangonow.com/

Lenya Quinn-Davidson is a fire adviser with the University of California Cooperative Extension and director of the Northern California Prescribed Fire Council.I think it's really important for Californians in general to build comfort with fire–to build a relationship with it, to get out and see what it actually looks like on the ground. That's a big part of the work that I do. Notes and references from this episode: Fire in California - University of California Cooperative ExtensionNorthern California Prescribed Fire Council - home pageMeet the People Burning California to Save It - NY Times / YouTubeBackpacking To Morris Meadow - Inga's AdventuresEpisode 11: Jaime Lowe - What is California?=====Produced, hosted and edited by Stu VanAirsdaleTheme music: Sounds SupremeTwitter: @WhatCaliforniaSubstack newsletter: whatiscalifornia.substack.com Email: hello@whatiscalifornia.comPlease subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you liked What is California?, please rate and review What is California? on Apple Podcasts! It helps new listeners find the show.

What's behind worker strikes across California in recent weeks. A discussion of the state of California wildfires. Sacramento entertainment host and ABC10 anchor Mark S. Allen returns from the Oscars. Today's Guests CalMatters Newsletter Editor Emily Hoeven provides more context into the wave of worker strikes across California in recent weeks despite signs of the state's strong economic recovery from the pandemic.  A discussion of the state of California wildfires with Scott Stephens, a professor of Wildland Fire Science at UC Berkeley, Craig Thomas with the non-profit Fire Restoration Group, and Lenya Quinn-Davidson, fire advisor with the University of California Cooperative Extension.  Longtime filmmaker, movie critic, and ABC10 anchor Mark S. Allen returns from the Oscars and highlights the biggest moments, including Sacramentan Jessica Chastain's win. 

One of the most innovative things about botanic gardens remains the incredible diversity of plants in one place. In addition to being centers for horticultural education, botanic gardens can use their living collections—often consisting of thousands of plants—to inform research and conservation. Our guest today is Dr. Ari Novy, President & CEO at San Diego Botanic Garden, previously Chief Scientist at Leichtag Foundation, and former Executive Director of the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, DC Learn more about the San Diego Botanic Garden, as well as the Pollinator Project collaboration between SDBC and University of California Cooperative Extension. See also the Breadfruit Institute at the National Tropical Botanical Garden.

We traveled to Auburn CA to talk with Dan Macon, a Livestock and Natural Resources Advisor with the University of California Cooperative Extension about his own livestock operation and his utilization of Livestock Guardian Dogs. We sat down with Dan to learn about the need for these dogs, their training and their viability in livestock operations. We were also fortunate to visit Dan's flock of sheep and meet the two dogs, Elko and Dillon, who spend their lives as an integral part of the heard preventing predation from coyotes, mountain lions, feral dogs and even bears. Livestock Guardian Dogs live with their herd day and night. In fact they often prefer the company of their herd to the company of humans.

Today's episode takes us to Maxwell, California, about halfway between Sacramento and Redding. We meet 4th generation farmer Leon Etchepare. Leon is a partner in Emerald Farms, which farms about 5,000 acres of almonds and walnuts. He has some great experiences to share about how he's adopting mating disruption technology for navel orangeworm, and how he's using soil probes and variable rate irrigation.  “Just doing the math on the cost of chemicals and the cost of diesel and the cost of equipment and the increase of yield that I have because I'm not losing hardly any to navel orangeworm and it's a no brainer.” - Leon Etchepare In Today's episode:  Meet Leon Etchepare a partner in Emerald Farms and owner of https://wellnutfarms.com (Wellnut Farms) Learn about Leon's experience with mating disruption technology and the return on investment he has seen from implementing this technology Discover how Leon is experimenting with variable rate irrigation on a block that is highly variable “We need to do a better job as an industry in getting out there why we do what we do, our stories, the challenges we face so that when the voters are voting for certain people, those people think about farming because we're getting so far away from our food.” - Leon Etchepare Contact the Almond Board field outreach team to access more available resources by sending an email to fieldoutreach@almondboard.com ABC Update Drew Wolter, pest management senior specialist at the Almond Board, shares how mating disruption can be a very important piece in an overall integrated pest management approach to navel orangeworm management. Research from the Almond Board of California has led to a number of resources for growers to learn more about this technology. See the link below for a video produced in collaboration with the University of California Cooperative Extension explaining mating disruption technologies. https://youtu.be/fHr9qmA5MDM (Mating Disruption Tools for Navel Orangeworm) The Almond Journey Podcast is brought to you by https://www.almonds.com/ (the Almond Board of California). This show explores how growers, handlers, and other stakeholders are making things work in their operations to drive the almond industry forward. Host Tim Hammerich visits with leaders throughout the Central Valley of California and beyond who are finding innovative ways to improve their operations, connect with their communities, and advance the almond industry.   ABC recognizes the diverse makeup of the California almond industry and values contributions offered by its growers, handlers, and allied industry members. However, the opinions, services and products discussed in existing and future podcast episodes are by no means an endorsement or recommendation from ABC. The Almond Journey podcast is not an appropriate venue to express opinions on national, state, local or industry politics. As a Federal Marketing Order, the Almond Board of California is prohibited from lobbying or advocating on legislative issues, as well as setting field and market prices.

The University of California Cooperative Extension has developed several drought planning tools for ranchers.

As farms in California face another extreme drought this summer, the hope is that lessons learned and policies and tools developed from the last drought can help with water management this time. During drought farms significantly increase use of groundwater and now California is focusing on monitoring, management, and recharge of this foundational water source. The impacts and actions of agriculture during drought are discussed in this episode with Heather Cooley, Director of Research at the Pacific Institute, and Ruth Dahlquist-Willard, Farm Advisor at the University of California Cooperative Extension. They discuss the variety of choices California farms will make during drought, including where to get water, how much to water crops, what crops to fallow, how to improve water efficiency, and even whether to stay in business. Find all episodes at waterloop.org waterloop is made possible in part by grants from the Walton Family Foundation and Spring Point Partners. waterloop is sponsored by High Sierra Showerheads, the smart and stylish way to save water, energy, and money while enjoying a powerful shower. Use promo code Loop20 for 20 percent off at highsierrashowerheads.com​​​

In this episode, we explore California’s history of and relationship to fire, in particular how native populations worked with fire, and how colonizers from Europe suppressed and prohibited cultural fire management with what we now know are devastating consequences.Over the past four years, the Golden State has battled ever more massive and destructive wildfires, prompting many to call out the importance of managing the land in a different way, and looking to native tribes for answers. My guests are:Rick O’Rourke - Member of the Yurok Tribe, traditional fire practitioner, and Fire & Fuels Coordinator and Project Coordinator for the Cultural Fire Management CouncilLenya Quinn-Davidson - Area Fire Advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension, and Director of the Northern California Prescribed Fire CouncilSteve Pyne - Emeritus Professor at Arizona State University, author, and fire historianPhoto Courtesy: Ken-ichi Ueda (CC BY-NC 2.0)

A firefighter conducts a prescribed burn near Monterey in 2017. Photo by Steven L. Shepard, Presidio of Monterey Public Affairs. On this show: 0:08 – For Mondays with Mitch, Brian Edwards-Tiekert talks to Mitch Jeserich, host of Letters & Politics weekdays at 10, about last week's Democratic National Convention and the upcoming Republic National Convention, which is set to start today. 0:34 – What does wildfire smoke mean for the spread of COVID-19? And what does a new Hong Kong study indicate about reinfection? John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health, joins us for COVID-19 updates to answer these questions and more. 1:08 – David King, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, discusses potential wildfire risks from a new storm coming onshore in the Bay Area. “One lightening strike can start a new wildfire,” he says — but adds that the Bay Area has largely avoided lightening from this storm, unlike last week when lightening strikes ignited devastated fires. 1:15 – Lenya Quinn-Davidson (@lenyaqd), the area fire advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension and director of the Northern California Prescribed Fire Council, joins us to analyze the wildfires through the lens of forest ecology and explain how prescribed fires work. “We need to take action to create the conditions that would make us more resilient to fire, and make our forests and landscapes more in the state that they could accept fire and not have such catastrophic results,” Lenya says. Otherwise, she says, major wildfires will become the new normal. 1:34 – The CZU Lightening Complex fires in Santa Cruz and San Mateo counties have forced thousands to evacuate. KPFA's Ariel Boone (@arielboone) and Lucy Kang (@ThisIsLucyKang) spoke to some of the evacuees — many of them from rural communities — at the Half Moon Bay High School evacuation center. 1:42 – We take calls from listeners impacted by the wildfires, and ask for input on the issues we should cover. The post Fire ecologist explains how prescribed burns cultivate forest resilience; Plus, does fire smoke facilitate the spread of COVID-19? appeared first on KPFA.

For anyone who lives in the SGV, and frankly throughout Los Angeles County,  coyotes are a regular reality. Whether hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains or walking down Valley Boulevard, hearing a coyote’s yelp or spotting its thin frame crossing a street is common. But how we should interact with these wildlife neighbors isn’t always clear. On part two of this week’s SGV Connect, we spoke with Natalya Romo, the program manager of the Neighborhood Coyote Program, and Alexander Fung, a management analyst with the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments, about how this program is engaging and educating residents to become better stewards to the coyote population. The program has been sharing with residents information about how they should act when coming across a coyote, how to report a sighting, and how residents can deter coyotes in a nonlethal way from making themselves at home in a neighborhood --- leaving pet food and water out would be a no-no. People can find this info on the SGV COG website or by calling their hotline at (626)278-8039. Residents who also want to report a coyote sighting can call the number; calls are documented and reported to the University of California Cooperative Extension’s Coyote Cacher program. The Coyote program is a pilot of 10 SGV cities which include: City of Arcadia City of Alhambra City of Azusa City of Covina City of Irwindale City of Montebello City of Rosemead City of San Gabriel City of San Marino City of Temple City Residents outside of these cities can call and will be referred to their local animal control agency or their respective government agency. Neighborhood Coyote Program Hotline: (626)278-8039, 8:00 a.m.-6:00p.m., Monday-Thursday SGV Connect is supported by Foothill Transit, offering car-free travel throughout the San Gabriel Valley with connections to the new Gold Line Stations across the Foothills and Commuter Express lines traveling into the heart of downtown L.A. To plan your trip, visit Foothill Transit. “Foothill Transit. Going Good Places.” Catch past episodes of SGV Connect and #DamienTalks on LibSyn, iTunes, Google Play, or Overcast.

Today's guest is Christopher Gomez Wong. I invited Chris to be a guest on the podcast because I wanted him to promote Calexico Farmer's market, Chris has been a huge part of Calexico's Farmers Market since day 1 and he's been doing this as a volunteer for the past 6 years. This is one of the many things Chris does for our community ... for the youth in our community. He is also the advisor for the Calexico High School Eco-Garden Club, where he also volunteers his time, Chris shows our students how to grow and maintain a small garden of an assortment of vegetables and spices that are then used by the culinary class at Calexico High. For his day job Chris works for University of California Cooperative Extension, where he works with groups in our community that fall under the SNAP-Ed program one of the most interesting parts of his job and the part he hope Calexico teachers can take advantage of is where comes in and helps teachers and students work on a small garden, teach them PE activities and also talk about healthy eating choices. Chris hopes that more Calexico teacher take advantage of this program he's working for and if you're a teacher and you're interested you can reach Chris at: (442) 265-7716 cgowong@ucanr.edu Also please make sure you follow Calexico Farmer's Market on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/clxfarmersmarket/ https://quepasacalexico.home.blog/ --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jose-alejos3/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jose-alejos3/support

Grapevine Leaf Roll-associated Virus 3 as well other virus diseases of grapevines have a profound effect on wine quality and the economic viability of a vineyard. Dr. Kari Arnold the Area Orchard and Vineyard Systems Advisor at Stanislaus County, Associated with University of California Cooperative Extension, describes the connections between the Californian plant propagation system, the movement of mealybugs both in the vineyard and across the globe, the difficulty of identifying virused plants, and practices growers can and are using to manage the spread of red leaf viruses both within and between vineyards. References:  UCCE Stanislaus County @KariDigsPlants [Twitter Controlling Mealybug Vectors of Grapevine Virus | Dr. Kent Daane (Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast) IPM Control of Vine Mealybugs | Greg Pennyroyal (Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast) Sign Up | Irrigation Efficiency Project Sustainable and Organic Control of Vine Mealybug in Vineyards: Two Growers, Two Approaches UC Cooperative Extension Find Academics and Staff UC IPM: Virus Diseases UC IPM: Vine Mealybug Get More Subscribe on Google Play,  iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn or wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources. Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org.

Problem-solvers, catalysts, collaborators, stewards and educators. Since 1913, University of California Cooperative Extension scientists, along with campus partners, have been helping make California the nation's leading agricultural state. University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources links the people of California to their great university through local expertise, nine Research and Extension Centers, and statewide programs such as Integrated Pest Management, 4-H Youth Development, and the UC Master Gardeners. Practical solutions to everyday problems. Series: "Sustainable California" [Science] [Show ID: 32405]

Problem-solvers, catalysts, collaborators, stewards and educators. Since 1913, University of California Cooperative Extension scientists, along with campus partners, have been helping make California the nation's leading agricultural state. University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources links the people of California to their great university through local expertise, nine Research and Extension Centers, and statewide programs such as Integrated Pest Management, 4-H Youth Development, and the UC Master Gardeners. Practical solutions to everyday problems. Series: "Sustainable California" [Science] [Show ID: 32405]

Now I would like to remind you that if you are enjoying the podcast, you can donate through Patreon for as little as one dollar a month. You donation will help to cover the expenses of hosting for the podcast.   Just Visit http://www.hareoftherabbit.com On this weeks episode, we cove the American Sable rabbit, the news, the word Admire and plant of the week: Lettuce, as well as another rabbit folk tale - Rabbit gets his split lip.   I would like to thank you for taking the time to listen to me today. American Sable Rabbit Information and History The American Sable is one of those little-known breeds that is actually very handsome and useful.   Sable rabbits were discovered in chinchilla rabbit litters separately in California and in England, and developed concurrently within their separate breeding lines on both sides of the world.  Recessive genes in the Chinchilla lines produced an entirely new colour, with a body shape that remained identical to the Chinchilla itself. The very first Sable rabbits are believed to have cropped up in the herd of Mr. David Irving, an Englishman who lived near Liverpool.   He had imported some Chinchilla rabbits from France in the mid-1910s.  The Chinchilla breed was itself still showing evidence of its newness in the various sports seen in the early litters. Shaded brown rabbits, as well as martin-patterned sports, could be found in the nestbox now and again.   The sepia-shaded bunnies in Mr. Irving’s nestboxes invariably landed in the stew pot, because he was focused on the Chinchilla color.  But there were other English breeders who were smitten by the cute-as-buttons sports.  They bred these brown rabbits together just to see what would happen.  What happened was, if the genetics were just right, they could produce more of these very attractive rabbits.   Although the color didn’t entirely breed true - it was never the only color in the nestbox - they could still standardize the type and medium sable hue of the rabbits.  Mr. Irving was instrumental in the spread of Sable rabbits, as they were eventually called, throughout Europe.   Now across the pond as they say, for the American Sables in the USA This American rabbit breed was developed independently from the Sable breed known in England in the early 1900’s.   In California in 1924, Mr. Otto Brock of San Gabriel, California, found the first shaded brown rabbits in the nestboxes of his ‘purebred’ Chinchilla rabbits. The rest of the story of American sable rabbits in California reads much as it did with the breeders in England. At first there were three different color variations among the Sables. There was a lighter brown, a medium brown, and one with tan markings. Of these three color phases, the light and medium browns were bred together to arrive a medium color, brown rabbit with darker points and the tan-patterned was developed into a separate breed called the Silver Sable Marten. With the exception of a few things, the American Sable is identical to the Siamese Sable and Sable Marten of England. The American Sable is slightly larger at an average of eight pounds of a senior buck and nine pounds for a senior doe. In England, the sizes run about two pounds smaller. The Siamese Sable is also shown in Light, Medium and Dark while in the United States, only the Medium color phase is recognized by the ARBA, the American Rabbit Breeders Association. In 1929, the American Sable Rabbit Society was formed. They named the new breed the American Sable, and called for medium-colored shading. The American Rabbit Breeders Association (ARBA) recognized the breed in 1931. Included were medium-shaded Sables, and the lighter Siamese Sables.  Tan-patterned (marten) sables were also occurring in the US, however instead of recognizing them under the umbrella of the American Sable, they were called Silver Sable Martens, and these were accepted as a new variety of Silver Marten rabbits. After the great start to a challenging breed, the sables did not fare so well, at least in the United States.  The breed never truly caught the fancy of the rabbit breeding community. Like so many breeds, the American Sable got off to a great start.  However, as more new breeds of rabbits were developed, the Sable fell by the wayside.   By 1976, numbers of the Siamese Sable variety bottomed out. The variety was eliminated. Every year the ARBA has a National Convention where thousands of rabbits are shown from all over the world. All of the recognized breeds are shown as well as breeds that are in the process of trying to be recognized as a breed. When only one American Sable was shown at the Convention, it was a wake-up call that the breed was in danger of disappearing. The lone exhibitor, Al Roerdanz, was determined that the breed was not going to die out. After searching the United States, he was able to obtain seven more American Sables. He then imported a trio of Sables from England to breed to the rabbits he already had. Because of the small gene pool, Roerdanz introduced several other breeds to his existing herd of Sables. He added Californians, Chinchillas, and Sable Silver Martens, among other breeds to bring back his breed. Adding the Californians and Chinchillas was not as strange as you might think. The Sable originated from the Chinchillas and so did the Californian breed. Each breed that was added in to the breed was added for a specific reason.     In 1982, numbers of Sables were so low that Mr. Al Roerdanz of Ohio and a few other breeders had to literally re-build the breed. Through the efforts of Al Roerdanz of Kingsville, Ohio, seven purebred American Sables were located and used to revive the breed and increase numbers of animals.  They also used British imports and the injection of new blood mainly via Sable Silver Martens, Sable Rex, Havanas, Californians, and Standard Chinchilla.I  n 1982 Mr. Roerdanz along with several American Sable fanciers formed the American Sable Rabbit Society, which included 13 charter members. That year the breed reached the required quota of animals shown to retain recognition of breed status in the Standard of Perfection, according to ARBA rules, thus saving the breed from extinction.  At the 1983 ARBA National Convention, breed numbers were sufficient to retain the American Sable rabbit breed in the Sable variety. The American Sable is still rare, however not listed as endangered The American Sable has regular commercial type, but is slightly smaller than other commercial breeds such as the Satin or Californian.   It has commercial body type and is suitable for 4-H meat pen project, if you’d like to try something different from the usual Cal’s and New Zealands.  The fur is a rollback.  The namesake feature of this breed is its lovely sable color.  The back of the rabbit is rich sepia brown, which lightens on the rabbit’s sides and darkens to nearly black on the nose, ears, feet, and tail.  This breed is not very popular, but not in imminent danger of extinction thanks to a community of breeders who call themselves “Sablers.” The American Sable rabbit has a commercial-sized body which weights anywhere from 8-10 lbs., with males usually weighing slightly less than the females. These rabbits have a rounded head with vertical, upright ears. The head is rounded, with ears that are held upright and the topline creates a long curve, from the bottom of the neck to the base of the tail. The American Sable rabbit enjoys gentle petting on its back and between its ears. The American Sable rabbit has soft, fine, dense coat that requires more grooming that the average short-haired rabbit, but less than long-haired rabbit breeds like Angoras. Because their coat is so thick, they will definitely shed more during moulting periods. Owners need to be prepared for regular brushings during these heavy shedding periods, especially if your American Sable is an indoor rabbit. Simply groom your rabbit with a slicker brush outdoors 1-2 times per week as necessary during shedding season, and once every two weeks during off-season times. The American Sable rabbit only comes in one color that is accepted by the ARBA. Their head, feet, ears, back and top of tail are a dark sepia color, while the rest of their coat fades to a lighter tan, like a Siamese cat. The Sable coloration is caused by a gene called “chinchilla light,” symbolized by cchl or cch1.  This gene is incompletely dominant over the two below it (Himalayan and REW.)  When a rabbit has two copies of cchl, it looks so dark brown as to be almost black.  This color is called seal.  A correctly colored sable has one copy of cchl and one copy of a lower C-series allele: Himalayan or REW.   Therefore, breeding two correctly colored sables can result in seal, Himalayan, or ruby-eyed white offspring.   The non-showable colors are useful to a breeding program, however, because breeding a seal to a himie or REW will result in 100% correct sables.  Some breeders have crossed Californians (Himalayan-colored breed) into their American Sables to improve type and add some genetic diversity.  As is the case with any crossbreeding project, you will find some people for and others strongly against this practice. American Sables have soft, fine, dense coat that requires more grooming that the average short-haired rabbit. The head, feet, ears, back, and top of the tail are a dark sepia, while the coat fades to a lighter tan over the rest of the body, similar to the coloring of a Siamese cat. The breed's eyes are usually dark with a ruby hue. The eyes are dark but because of a recessive albino gene, the pupils reflect a ruby reddish glow. Kits are born white, silver, or gray.   This extraordinary breed has brown eyes that will appear red when reflected by light. This rabbit carries an albino gene which causes this red glow and also why some kits are born white. Let’s take a closer peek on how the breeders achieved this kind of coloration for the sables. A gene that is called ‘chinchilla light’, which is symbolized by cchl or cch1, causes the coloration of American Sable. This gene, being incompletely dominant over the Himalayan and REW gene, which are below the chinchilla light, causes the darkish brown coloring of the rabbit. It’s so dark that it’s almost black already. This color that stands between dark brown and black is called seal. Ideally, an American Sable with a correct coloring has one copy of cchl and one of either the Himalayan and REW. This also means that for a successful breeding of two correctly colored American Sables, a breeder can achieve a seal, Himalayan or ruby-eyed white offspring A perfectly colored Sable is difficult to produce. Any blotchiness of shading –which can be easily caused by sunburn or molt — is a fault.  The eyes must possess a ruby glow to avoid disqualification on the show table.  A white toenail is also cause for disqualification. There are 4 color variations that possibly will be in an American Sable nest box. 1) Seal which has 2 copies of the c(chl) gene giving it a dark coloration - almost black color. 2) Sable (sometimes referred to as Siamese), this is the accepted show color. 3) Pointed white - Californian or Himi marked - has 2 copies of the ch gene or a ch gene and a c gene. 4) Albino (REW). Breeding a Seal to a Pointed White or an Albino will produce a litter of all show colored Sable. Some kits born white can turn to the gray color which usually occurs 3 days after birth. Those born with the silver-grayish coat are those used for showing. The fur is silky and fine but has coarser guard hairs. The Sable will change colors for many weeks after birth and will begin to molt at approximately 4 months of age. Breeders prefer to keep their Sables in cooler environments and shaded as the heat and sun can cause the sable coloring to lighten. The Standard of Perfection describes the gradations of shading without actually specifying the intensity of hue, other than the "rich sepia brown on the ears, face, back, legs, and upper side of the tail." Weights: Senior Bucks: 7-9 lb: 3.2 – 4.5kg Senior Does: 8-10 lb The UK’s national organization, the British Rabbit Council (BRC), lists their breeds as the Marten Sable and the Siamese Sable. Weights for both varieties: 5-7 lb (2.26 - 3.17 kg) In the UK, both Marten Sables and Siamese Sables come in Light, Medium and Dark shading, the main differences being "width of saddle, in tone and intensity of sepia colours." Judges are instructed to "award the appropriate number of points for shadings and penalise those exhibits which lack shadings, i.e. are self coloured" (BRC-Marten Sables). Care Requirements An American Sable’s diet is like any other rabbits in that it should consist mainly of hay (70 percent), while the rest should be a healthy mix of pellets, leafy greens, fruits, and vegetables. Limit the amount of fruits that are high in sugar. Make sure to stay clear of iceberg lettuce, as it contains too much water and too little fiber to count as a good meal. Fresh pellets should also be made available daily – choose a pellet high in fiber and avoid mixes that include other foods like corn, seeds, or dried fruit. Fresh foods are also an important part of your rabbit’s diet. Dark, leafy greens like kale, romaine lettuce, spring greens, and some spinach should make up approximately 75% of the fresh food given to your rabbit daily, with vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, bell pepper, and summer squash making up the other 25%. Fruits and starchy vegetables should be limited in the diet, but make great treats! Make sure that all fresh foods are washed thoroughly, and uneaten fresh foods should be removed at the end of the day. Fresh water should always be available, either from a sipper bottle or in a stable water bowl. Do not feed your rabbit yard clippings as grass is usually treated with fertilizer, insecticides, pesticides, and other chemicals that can harm your rabbit. Always research, and/or ask your veterinarian about your rabbit’s diet. When it comes to enclosures, this particular rabbit breed can live in either an indoor or outdoor enclosure, so long as they are not exposed to extreme weather temperatures or conditions. Outdoor enclosures need to be raised off the ground to protect them from predators such as racoons, coyotes, wolves, and should be made of wood or metal. A good rule is one square foot per pound of rabbit, so a nine pound rabbit will be comfortable in a hutch that’s 3ft x 3ft – double it if you have two bunnies. It should also be high enough for him to stand up in. The hutch should be placed in a sheltered area and it must be completely weatherproof. The top should be covered from the elements and depending on where you live, it may need to have 3/4 sides covered to protect them from extreme snow and allow air circulation. Indoor enclosures should be made of wire and have a metal or plastic bottom to allow bedding to be laid (wire bottoms are not comfortable for long periods of time and are taxing on your rabbit’s feet). The bedding needs to be spot-cleaned every day and completely replaced at the end of every week. Health issues? American Sables are energetic rabbits who will happily run round inside or out.  All rabbits are susceptible to developing overgrown teeth – the American Sable is no different. This problem is caused by a diet that lacks a proper balance of hay, which is used to slowly grind down teeth naturally. Overgrown teeth can grow into a rabbit’s jaw and face. In order to prevent this condition, make sure to check your rabbit’s mouth regularly for overgrown teeth and always make sure they have a proper diet consisting of mostly hay. Ears should also be checked periodically for ear mites, especially for rabbits who spend most of their time outside. Like most rabbit breeds, the Sable can suffer with a number of health conditions that any responsible owner should look out for and prevent if possible. No rabbit should be housed in quarters with a mesh floors unless they are provided with a resting board. The mesh can wear away the protective fur on the ends of the feet –the hocks – which will in turn expose the delicate skin underneath. This can become raw and broken and causes great discomfort and even infection. The rabbit must be monitored for symptoms of flystrike – particularly in the warmer months. He shouldn’t be allowed to become overweight and unable to groom himself as this will make him susceptible to flystrike. Temperament/Behavior The American Sable rabbit enjoys gentle petting on its back and between its ears.  In order for your rabbit’s personality to flourish, American Sables need to have plenty of time outside of their enclosures.   This attractive rabbit has an equally attractive personality: friendly, mellow, and calm.  American Sables are energetic rabbits who will happily run round inside or out, and once they’ve been tuckered out, will enjoy the company of their human.  They make great pets for singles, couples or families with children, and can live in apartments or homes with or without backyards.  They also can make wonderful companions for seniors.  Most Sable rabbits are placid and friendly (although it must me noted there can be aggressive animals in any breed) and make great pets. They seem to enjoy the company of other pets and will relish having a rabbit friend to lark about with. They also thoroughly enjoy the company of humans and will enjoy playtime immensely. The American Sable enjoys the company of other rabbits. It is generally docile, spending most of the day sleeping. Typically they enjoy the companionship of their owner, but on their own terms. When distressed, the American Sable will make a grunting noise or will, like many other breeds, thump its back foot on the ground in an attempt to scare whatever it is that is bothering them. Rabbits tend to be a little harder to litter train than other animals such as cats and dogs, but it is possible.  Unlike cats, rabbits may need to have a few litter boxes spread out across the house. Rabbits have unique and dynamic personalities and can form close, loving bonds with their owners. Many can be trained to use a litterbox, come when called, and may even enjoy learning tricks. Coupled with the fact that they’re quiet, require relatively little space, and are very low odor, it’s not hard to see why rabbits have become the third most popular pet in the United States and Great Britain. Rabbits May be a poor choice as a pet for young children. They may be soft and cute, but rabbits are easily stressed and frightened around loud noises and activity. Many rabbits do not enjoy being held or cuddled and may bite or kick to get away, and rabbits or the handler can easily be seriously injured in such a struggle. The American Sable rabbit is a meat rabbit breed. They have good body size and very suitable for commercial meat production. With proper care these small animals make excellent and adorable pets. The British Sable Rabbit Club was established in November, 1927, and the British Fur Rabbit Society accepted Sables in both Marten and Siamese varieties. The British Rabbit Council (BRC) is a British showing organization for rabbit breeders. Originally founded as The Beveren Club in 1918, its name first changed to British Fur Rabbit Society and finally to The British Rabbit Society. Today, the BRC among other things investigates rabbit diseases, maintains a catalog of rabbit breeds, and sets rules for about 1,000 rabbit shows annually in the UK. Owners of house rabbits are also encouraged to join the organization to learn how to care optimally for their pets.  The American Sable Rabbit Association was founded in 1929 and the breed was accepted by the American Rabbit Breeder’s Association (ARBA) two years later in 1931.  The American Sable is a rabbit breed recognized by the American Rabbit Breeders Association (ARBA).  This is a tricky one for ARBA royalty participants, who must remember that although a fairly large rabbit, it is actually a four-class breed.  From what I could tell, the Royalty contest is for youth to compete on multiple levels.   The darkest period in the breed’s history was in the early eighties, when it would have probably been dropped from the ARBA standard if not for the dedicated effort of an Ohio breeder, Al Roerdanz.  Ohio remains one of the strongholds of the American Sable today.  According to the American Rabbit Breeders Association (ARBA) report in 2005, there are 500 to 800 American Sables in the United States. The American Rabbit Breeders Association (ARBA) maintains the breed standard for all of the recognized rabbit and cavy breeds for it's international membership.  Recognized breeds are eligible for Registration and Grand Champion recognition. The AMERICAN RABBIT BREEDERS ASSOCIATION, INC. is an organization dedicated to the promotion, development, and improvement of the domestic rabbit and cavy.  With over 30,000 members throughout the United States, Canada, and abroad, its members range from the pet owner with one rabbit or cavy to the breeder or commercial rabbit raiser with several hundred animals.  Each aspect of the rabbit and cavy industry, whether it be for fancy, as a pet, or for commercial value, is encouraged by the organization. Once bred for its fur and meat, the American Sable has made a tremendous comeback over the last 30 years. This is due to determined breeders who refused to let this breed die out, so that future generations can still appreciate the American Sable not only in the show ring but as a loving companion. The American Sable is 1 of 16 breeds that are considered endangered in the United States.  While the American Sable is still around today, it is on the rare rabbit list at number 10. It is a strikingly beautiful rabbit and it would be a real loss to have this breed fade out. If you are interested in helping to save this beautiful breed, visit a rabbit show to learn more about them. http://rabbitbreeders.us/american-sable-rabbits http://www.petguide.com/breeds/rabbit/american-sable-rabbit/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Sable_rabbit http://www.raising-rabbits.com/american-sable-rabbit.html http://www.pets4homes.co.uk/breeds/rabbits/sable/ https://rightpet.com/breed-species/small-exotic-mammal/rabbits/american-sable-rabbit https://mysmelly.com/content/small_animals/american-sable.htm http://www.albc-usa.org/cpl/americansable.html http://mosaicrabbitry.weebly.com/american-sable.html http://knowledgebase.lookseek.com/American-Sable-Rabbit.html http://www.hotots-satins.com/as.html http://www.second-opinion-doc.com/the-american-sable-rabbit.html http://www.roysfarm.com/american-sable-rabbit/ http://www.second-opinion-doc.com/rabbit-breed-profile-american-sable.html http://www.adoptarabbit.com/breeds/american-sable/ How Rabbit Came by His Split Lip http://umaine.edu/folklife/publications/northeast-folklore-2/passamaquoddy-tales/#Rabbit Note: All of the following tales were found among the E. Tappan Adney Manuscripts in the Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. All of them were collected by Adney from Governor William Neptune of Pleasant Point Reservation, Maine, in the early 1940’s. Some of the manuscripts were in hurried pencil script, clearly Adney’s own field notes; others were in typescript but appear to be no more than typed-out field notes; still others had obviously been worked over. One Sunday Rabbit start cruisin’ around. By and by see wigwam. It was Kingfisher, and he said, “Come in.” They talk and talk; by and by dinner time. Kingfisher went up brook and dive down [and] ketch big fish. Rabbit say, “Nice dinner.” [That] afternoon, Rabbit say to Kingfisher, “Come see me.” One Sunday Kingfisher come up and find [Rabbit’s] wigwam. Rabbit say, “Come in.” They talked a while. By and by, [Rabbit get] all rigged. [8] A spruce tree lean out over stream. It pretty near dinner time and he walk up tree and, lookin down, he said he’d do same as Kingfisher. By and By Rabbit dove down [and] struck [a] rock and split his lip. Kingfisher heard him call for help. He nearly drown. That’s how Rabbit got split lip. This old Indian story. News! New Orleans Fire Department Captain Ross Hennessey will receive the House Rabbit Society's inaugural Amy Espie Hero Award Sunday (March 19) after he rescued a lop rabbit named Pierre from a house fire in New Orleans last November. Wilborn P. Nobles III, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune New Orleans Fire Department Captain Ross Hennessey was amazed when a lop rabbit named Pierre regained consciousness moments after he rescued the bunny from an Uptown house fire last year. The firefighter said Pierre survived because he was on the floor, and "the difference between the floor and five feet above the floor might be 300 degrees." Hennessey's actions will be honored Sunday (March 19) as the House Rabbit Society plans to give Hennessey its first-ever Amy Espie Hero Award. The nonprofit's award commemorates those who do something extraordinary to help rabbits. The organization's executive director, Anne Martin, said Wednesday that the captain's actions exemplified their award. The incident occurred on Nov. 28, 2016. Neighbors noticed a fire at the home on Calhoun Street, Hennessey said Thursday. Authorities arrived to find the top half of the house ablaze, and the neighbors told firefighters a rabbit was inside. Firefighters extinguished the flames and went through the house before they a saw cage in the corner. He went over to the rabbit and gave him a nudge when the animal suddenly moved. That's when Hennessey said "Damn, I think this rabbit's still alive." The SPCA gave the department an animal resuscitation kit several years ago that authorities had yet to use, Hennessey said. He decided to put it to use on Pierre after he brought the rabbit outside. Hennessey said Pierre "popped back up" moments after the kit delivered oxygen to the rabbit. A Tulane student who owned the rabbit managed to escape earlier and was not on scene when Pierre was rescued, he said. http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2017/03/la_fire_captain_rescues_bunny.html FARMINGTON — The city of Farmington is considering allowing residents to keep up to six chickens or rabbits on residential property. The City Council will discuss changing the code to allow chickens or rabbits during its 6 p.m. March 28 meeting at 800 Municipal Drive in Farmington. City Planner Cindy Lopez explained the number of animals was calculated using the current codes for dogs and cats, and the size of the smallest residential lots in Farmington. She said the code allows for four dogs or four cats or a combination of cats and dogs adding up to four. Currently, any city resident who wants to keep chickens or rabbits has to apply for a special-use permit. The city charges an $80 fee to process those permits and requires the applicant to go to a title company to acquire a list of nearby properties so the city can ask the neighbors for comments. That can cost residents hundreds of dollars, Lopez said during a Planning and Zoning Commission meeting Thursday. Many people who have applied for the special-use permits already have acquired chickens or rabbits without realizing it is against code. http://www.daily-times.com/story/news/local/farmington/2017/03/17/city-may-let-residents-keep-chickens-rabbits/99276864/ County ends slaughter ban in code update By Samantha Kimmey 03/16/2017 The Board of Supervisors unanimously lifted a 14-year ban on commercial animal slaughter and expanded size limits for second units on residential properties in Marin. The changes to the development code were among a suite of others  approved on Tuesday. Much of the three-hour hearing that preceded the supervisors’ vote, which followed a series of planning commission workshops and a planning commission hearing, was consumed by public comment on the animal slaughter proposal. Numerous people concerned about animal rights, the environment and property values pled with supervisors to keep the prohibition on commercial slaughter, which has been in place since 2003. But ranchers and agriculture advocates also came out to support the change, arguing that local slaughter is both more humane and in line with consumer demand that all elements of food production be as local as possible. Supervisors largely approved the planning commission versions of the code updates, which will not affect the coastal zone at this time. But they made a few notable amendments. For instance, they expanded allowable rabbit slaughter from only mobile facilities to both mobile and small-scale facilities, despite public outcry from a group called SaveABunny, which stressed that rabbits are companions and pets. A Mill Valley real estate agent with Sotheby’s International Realty, Cindy Shelton, said that lifting the ban would result in a “real estate nightmare” because it would have to be disclosed to buyers. Rabbit advocates also spoke, urging supervisors to prohibit their slaughter under the logic that they are considered companions and pets. The executive director of SaveABunny, Marcy Schaaf, expressed frustration that her group was “lumped” with other activists, like vegans. Numerous ranchers and agriculture advocates stressed the importance of allowing commercial slaughter. “It’s really important to have that option on the table,” said Loren Poncia, who ranches in Tomales. Kelli Dunaj, who has run a ranch in Marshall since 2013, said it was “unfair and hypocritical” to bring up the “bogeyman like property values” to try to stop the proposal. Landscapes, she went on, are “not just eye candy,” but working agricultural fields. Rebecca Burgess, executive director of a group of farmers and artisans called Fibershed, said her group’s mission of sourcing local fiber like wool also means supporting growing animals like sheep for meat. “To develop a sustainable fiber system, we need a sustaining food system,” she said. When public comment ended and the meeting turned back over to supervisors, some of their amendments, like allowing both accessory dwelling units and junior units, were easily agreed on. But they seemed on the fence about how to handle rabbit slaughter. Rabbit advocates had argued that there was little demand for rabbit meat, pointing to Whole Foods, which stopped selling it in early 2016. But when the board asked David Lewis of the University of California Cooperative Extension, he estimated that Marin had between five to 10 rabbit meat producers and that “demand is higher” than supply. Supervisor Damon Connelly indicated that he would support banning rabbit slaughter. Supervisor Katie Rice, who said she did not eat rabbit meat, said she believed that supporting agriculture meant supporting a “farm to table” system. She also said that if supervisors truly believe that slaughter is more humane when done more locally, it seemed improper to force rabbit meat producers to send their animals for slaughter elsewhere. https://www.ptreyeslight.com/article/county-ends-slaughter-ban-code-update The European Parliament is urging the European Commission to adopt measures that would make life better for more than 340 million rabbits raised for food every year in Europe. The parliament voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to recommend outlawing battery cages for rabbits — tiny enclosures with wire-mesh floors no bigger than ordinary letter-size pieces of paper. Animal welfare groups say rabbits are extremely sensitive animals who suffer terribly in such small spaces, with such problems as open, infected wounds, respiratory disease and even cannibalism as the frustrated animals turn against one another. Humane regulations already exist for pigs, cattle and chickens raised for food, but not rabbits. European Consumer Affairs Commissioner Vera Jourova said such standards for rabbits should not be an EU-wide concern but one for individual states. http://www.voanews.com/a/european-parliament-calls-humane-treatment-rabbits-raised-food/3766462.html INFORMATION is being sought after the theft of three pet rabbits in Tadley. On March 12, between 11am-2pm, thieves entered the front garden of the property in Swains Close and stole three rabbits from their hutches. One of the rabbits is described as large, and beige in colour. The other is a motley grey coloured lion head rabbit and the last one is also a lion head rabbit, which is descried as black in colour with very long hair. If you have seen the rabbits, or have any information, then you can get in contact with the police on 101 with the reference number 44170093121. http://www.basingstokegazette.co.uk/news/15151928.Information_appeal_after_rabbits_stolen_in_Tadley/ Japan loves its different types of bread. Melon bread, pork buns, and several other types of the delicious baked goods are well-loved in the country, as is “usagi pan,” or rabbit bread. Bakers have long created rabbit-shaped bread for some time, but there’s a new version of the rabbit-related bread in town. It can be found at a Tokyo bakery, and it’s an entire loaf that’s shaped like a bunny. That means when you slice it into individual pieces of bread; you get the perfect bunny shaped bread for yummy sandwiches! Just make sure there’s a lot of lettuce on it, for bunnies! The bakery itself is named Lepus as a reference to the rabbit constellation, which is a clever take. The bakery’s rabbit bread loaves are absolutely adorable, and practically begging you to make some particularly adorable creations with. The bakery creates about 24-32 bunny loaves each day, but now Bakery Usagi-za Lepus is seeing a surge in customers wanting the bunny loaves. That means the bakery is probably working overtime to make sure you all get the bunny bread you want and deserve! https://www.geek.com/culture/this-bunny-shaped-bread-in-japan-looks-delicious-and-cute-1692050/  A decades-old Main Line tree stump carved into a family of rabbits has been taken down. But don't worry,  a new improved version will take its place in about a month or so. Last week, crews removed the tree that sat on the former Haas mansion property at County Line at Spring Mill roads in Villanova, after it was found to be deteriorating, Main Line Media News reported. The local landmark, carved by sculptor Marty Long, was known for its festive seasonal decorations. The seven carved bunnies, which represented the members of the Haas family, were often decked out in sporty sunglasses or holding Easter baskets with colorful eggs. The Haas surname derives from the Dutch or German word for hare, according to Ancestry.com. After the Haas parents died, the family donated the 42-acre property to the Natural Lands Trust. The grounds are being converted to public open space and are expected to be completed in about a year, the paper reported. Natural Lands Trust, which now owns the Stoneleigh estate property where the rabbits stood, have commissioned Long to make a new sculpture, the paper reported. The wooden rabbits have been removed and inspected, and if possible the group plans to put some of them on display inside the Stoneleigh mansion, Kirsten Werner, director of communications with the Natural Lands Trust, told the paper. http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/real-time/Villanova-bunny-tree-removed-Haas-mansion-Stoneleigh.html A California couple who hold the Guinness world record for most bunny-related items now have so much rabbit stuff, they're packing up their floppy-hoppy collection and moving to to a bigger house. Candace Frazee and her husband Steve Lubanski run The Bunny Museum out of their home in Pasadena, Calif., where they house more than 33,000 rabbit-related knick-knacks, as well as six actual rabbits and some cats. Now the self-described "hoppiest place on Earth" is moving to a bigger location in nearby Altadena, set to open with a "grand hoppenin'" on March 20. http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-monday-edition-1.4011751/bunny-museum-owners-have-so-much-stuff-they-re-hopping-to-a-bigger-space-1.4011761 A series of rabbit holes in an England farmer's field led to a mysterious underground cave, believed to be centuries old. Historic England described the Caynton Caves in Shropshire as a "grotto" that likely dated back to the late 18th or early 19th century and included "neo-Norman decoration to bays between columns, one neo-Norman doorway with beak-heads and roll moulding; decorative quatrefoils and designs abound." http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2017/03/09/Rabbit-hole-in-England-farmers-field-leads-to-700-year-old-caves/6411489071679/  You may have heard of cat yoga or dog yoga, but now a Vancouver university is hosting bunny yoga.  Rabbits were recently added to some yoga classes at Simon Fraser University’s Burnaby campus. The idea was to help the participants relax and raise money for the Small Animal Rescue Society of B.C. The bunnies roamed free on the yoga mats as participants went through poses during hour-long classes. Participants were allowed to pet or hold the bunnies during the class. The yoga bunnies are available for adoption. http://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/downward-rabbit-bunny-yoga-lands-at-b-c-campus-1.3304440

Saving the Season (Knopf Publishing Group)  A stylish, richly illustrated, practical guide for home cooks and preserving enthusiasts, the first cookbook from journalist Kevin West, author of the popular blog Savingtheseason.com.  Incorporating classic favorites and new flavors, West gives us more than one hundred recipes, organized by season, for sweet preserves and savory pickles; easy-to-can vegetables and fruits; condiments such as relishes, chutneys, and salsas; and cordials, candies, and cocktails. Interspersed with the recipes are chronicles of West's travels and the history of American preserving traditions from California to New Mexico to Long Island. A witty and erudite culinary companion, West makes a rich and entertaining story of the introductions to the recipes. Also included is a primer on preserving techniques that addresses issues of food safety and nutrition.  KEVIN WEST is from rural Blount County in eastern Tennessee. He attended Deep Springs, an experimental college in the White Mountains of California, and Sewanee: The University of the South. For 13 years he was on staff at W magazine, with postings in New York, Paris, and Los Angeles, where he was West Coast editor and where he still lives. He runs the blog SavingtheSeason.com; writes about food, culture, and travel; and produces a retail collection of jams and marmalades. He is certified as a Master Food Preserver by the University of California Cooperative Extension.

Joyce Houston, Master Food Preserver, talks about the new training program for Master Food Preservers through the University of California Cooperative Extension office. Produced and hosted by Jennifer Bell, khsu.org

Joyce Houston talks about the new Master Food Preserver program offered by the University of California Cooperative Extension office in Humboldt County. Produced and hosted by Jennifer Bell, khsu.org