FREE Gardening Classes from Local Experts!

Gardeners and wannebe gardeners!  Mark your calendars!  Here is a list of FREE classes being offered by our local area Master Gardeners!  I can taste the freshly picked produce now...yum!

SOLANO COUNTY
Worm Composting
Date: March 17, 2011
Time: 7 - 8 PM
Location:  Vacaville Library Cultural Center
1020 Ulatis Drive
Vacaville, CA
more info...

Vegetable Gardening Seminar
Highlights: How to start a vegetable garden with information on seeds, transplanting, irrigation, double-digging and composting.
Date: March 26, 2011
Time: 10 AM - 12 PM
Location:
Benicia Community Garden
E. 2nd St. and Military East
Benicia, CA
(Behind the Heritage Presbyterian Church)
more info...

Sustainable Landscaping Seminar
Date: April 16, 2011
Time: 1 - 3:30 PM
Location:
Solano Community College
Horticulture Building 1000
4000 Suisun Valley Road
Fairfield, CA
more info...

YOLO COUNTY
Spring Plant Sale and Gardening Workshop 
Highlights:  Plant sale, basic vegetable gardening & tomato growing tips
Date: April 2, 2011
Time: 9 AM to 1 PM
Location:
Woodland Community College Horticultural Center
2300 East Gibson Road
Woodland, CA
more info...

Got Allergies?  Plants to Consider Using in Your Garden
Date: April 9, 2011
Time: 9:30 AM - 10:30 AM
Location:
Meet at the Central Park Gardens in Davis at 4th and C Streets
more info...

Backyard and Worm Composting
Date: April 16, 2011
Time: 9 AM - 11 AM
Location:
Woodland Community College Horticultural Center
2300 East Gibson Road
Woodland, CA
more info...
Still need more information about any of these events?  Contact the Master Gardener secretary at 530-666-8143.

Decorating Your Edible Garden with Alyssum!

See our gardener Pat Stoeffel trimming the white alyssum border around our tomato plant bed.

We get great feedback on how beautiful our edible garden looks. (THANK YOU!  We love to hear your feedback!)  We have our campus senior landscape designer Christina DeMartini Reyes to thank for her excellent planting plans!  She likes to use borders of different types of flowers to achieve a variety of goals.  Planting flowers around your edibles not only attracts pollinators, the colors of the flowers provide contrast to the greenery of the fruit and vegetable leaves, they are excellent around the bed borders because they define the space, AND they can act as a type of ground cover.  All of this is great for the garden, but how do you keep it looking good throughout the season?  It isn't easy!

Today when I visited the garden I noticed that our new Good Life Garden gardener, Pat Stoeffel, was trimming back a border of alyssum that was looking particularly rangy.  She had given it a trim a couple weeks ago, but here it was leggy again!  She wants to keep the area looking nice so she is shearing it back by about half to reveal the new bloomers beneath the old!  (See the photos below.)

Do you plant alyssum to attract pollinators to your garden?  Do you use it as a border?  How do you keep it looking fresh and healthy?  Let us know!

Pat trimmed this alyssum back just a couple weeks ago, but now it needs more pruning.  This photo shows a patch of half trimmed, half untrimmed alyssum.  Note how she is trimming about half of it back to reveal the newer growth underneath.

This photo shows a detail of what the new growth underneath looks like.  It looks compact and fresh doesn't it?  We want to get rid of the brown, leggy, rangy stuff to reveal the fresh flowers.  It's kind of like exfoliating your skin to reveal a new fresh layer underneath!  (Okay...maybe not!)

Pat laughs here because she's feeling more like a barber than a gardener!

This is a different patch of alyssum in the garden which nicely frames our bay laurel trees.  This patch has not needed any pruning, yet.  We think maybe it's because the fertility of the soil may not be as high as our tomato bed. 

We're Listed on ALLTOP.com's Gardening Blog Page!

For "Blog Recommendation Monday" we bring you so many gardening blogs from all over that you won't know what hit you! We bring you the Alltop.com gardening page:

ALLTOP.COM GARDENING


Above is a photo of a regal looking blue jay on top of one of a garden trellis. We're not sure why we thought this photo was appropriate for today's entry other than he or she is on top of the trellis, and the UC Davis Good Life Garden is now listed on Alltop.com. It's a stretch, we know!

What the heck is Alltop.com? Well...from one Alltop.com newbie to another (my apologies for waking up to this cool site so recently), this is the place where you can go to find out "what is happening now" on a variety of topics...like gardening. And, when it comes to gardening, UC Davis Good Life Garden is now listed with other really interesting, informative and educational garden bloggers!! We are so excited! You have to scroll all the way to the bottom, but there we are!

Check out all of the sites, you will definitely be bookmarking quite a few for future reference! If and when you do, let us know which you like!

BEETS: Our Harvest and a Pickled Spiced Beet Recipe

Today we are harvesting beets!

So what to do with all these beets? Here is a recommendation from Professor Kevin Scott, UC Davis Viticulture & Enology. He loves the spiced beet recipe he first discovered in a vintage UC Davis Extension Cookbook from about 30 years ago!

Canning is a fairly easy process once you get used to it, but you want to make sure, sure, sure everything has been sterilized and safely sealed. For more information on canning resources and how-t0s see the links below.

VEGETABLE PICKLES: SPICED BEETS (makes 6 pints)

Ingredients:
4 c. vinegar
1.5 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon whole cloves
3 quarts cooked small beets, peeled

Instructions
1. Cook beets until tender. Plunge into cold water and slip skins -- or use canned beats.
2. Mix vinegar, sugar, and cloves. Simmer 10 minutes.
3. Add beets and simmer 10 minutes more.
4. Pack beets into hot, sterilized jars and fill with liquid. Seal.
5. Process in boiling water bath for 20 minutes as directed on page 3*. (We don't have page 3, but the idea is to process the jars for their final seal and sterilization. Don't know what that means? Here are a couple resources to help out.)

SAFE CANNING RESOURCES AND INFORMATION

• University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources: Safe Methods for Canning Vegetables
• Canning 101

Did you know that cold weather makes bull's blood beets leaves turn red? If you grow this variety in milder weather the leaves stay green! The leaves that Arlene are holding below are both from the same plant. The red leaf grew in the winter whereas the green leaf grew recently. Nature is so amazing don't you think??

Harvest Sage and Serve it on Thanksgiving!

Come to the next UC Davis Good Life Garden herb harvest on Thursday, November 5 from 9:30 AM-2 PM and pick some sage that you will be able to dry and showcase by Thanksgiving!

Here is a great article from eHow.com explaining the process.