WEBSITE MONDAY! The "lawn" and short of it

Chances are, if you've got a garden or had one in the past, you've had grass.  And grass, although it's excellent for many things, can also be difficult to care for and requires lots of water, fertilizers weedkillers and pesticides.  And if you aren't using that lawn for a family game of baseball or throwing around a frisbee with your dog, maybe you can consider a lawn alternative, or a different type of grass.  If this sounds like a good idea to you, then lawnreform.org is a great resource!

This lovely garden belongs to Pam Penick, a top gardener and blogger in Austin, Texas.  Check out her site here: http://www.penick.net/digging/

According to the site, the Lawn Reform Coalition is made up of eleven writers and activists that are pooling their "knowledge of up-to-date solutions to the many problems caused by a lawn culture that demands perfection, conformity, and way too many inputs - especially water, fertilizer and pesticides."  They have links to many great resources for ideas for non-lawn alternatives as well as a section on edibles!  And if you're still attached to your grass, or like lawns in general, they include a list of ways you can improve your lawn care to make it more sustainable, and have a page on different types of grasses or lawn coverings that are more suited to particular regions.

Have you replaced your lawn with something else?  Do you have any ideas for lawn alternatives?  Post a comment and let us know!

We Got Mildew Yes We Do! We Got Mildew, How 'Bout You?

Here is an example of squash with just a few spots of powdery mildew.

 As tends to happen in the late summer, our squash is suffering from powdery mildew.  This problem is pretty easy to identify;  our plants will look like someone tossed some baby power all over them.

It starts small and then just gets worse if left to proliferate.  Powdery mildew sends little tubes into leaf cells to suck out their contents, killing the cells in the process. As leaf cells die and the leaf's surface becomes covered in the white fungus, photosynthesis is reduced and leaves may be lost. Crop volume and eating quality can be reduced.

Here the mildew has been left to keep growing!

So how do you get rid of it organically?  Well, there are quite a few options. 

PREVENTION
According to our own UC Davis Integrated Pest Management, prevention is always the best way to avoid this problem.  In other words, if your garden is prone to this kind of issue, next time you plant squash, melon, pumpkin, etc., be sure to start with a resistant variety.

CULTURAL PRACTICES

You can avoid powdery mildew my making sure your plants receive plenty of sun.  (Because of the location of these plants near the South Building of the Robert Mondavi Institute, these plants do get more shade than others.)  Also be sure to:

• Provide good air circulation by not crowding your plants
• Rotate squash beds on a minimum three-year cycle to reduce the chance of a fungal buildup or reinfection from one year to the next.
• Pull up infected plants and burn or bury them.

We got the dummy whammie--the plants need more sun and they are not disease resistant varieties--so now what?

ORGANIC FUNGICIDES
According to UC Davis Integrated Pest Management, once you have the powdery mildew problem, oils, like neem oil,  tend to work better at eradicating the issue once you have it rather than preventing the problem. 

You may also want to try a biological fungicide like Serenade Disease Control Concentrate, but like UC Davis Integrated Pest Management states, "While this product functions to kill the powdery mildew organism and is nontoxic to people, pets, and beneficial insects, it has not proven to be as effective as the oils or sulfur in controlling this disease."

HOME REMEDY
For those of you interested in home remedies, it seems that you can also try making your own spray of one part skim milk to 9 parts water.  Skim milk works just as well as other types of milk--whole, low fat etc., but no fat means no odor!  Read more about this research finding here:  Using Milk to Control Powdery Mildew.

Did you get the gift of powdery mildew this summer?  If so, what did you do to get rid of it?  Let us know!

New Developments in our Sustainable Gardening Practices

Have you seen the progress of the new winery, brewery and food processing facility on the north side of our garden?  This month the doors will open to a state-of-the art LEED platinum designed facility housing the Anheuser-Busch Brewing and Food Science Laboratory as well a teaching and research winery. 

If you have driven past the campus along 80 West or East, you may have looked over and seen these beautiful silos.  (See photo below.)  They are not for grain storage; these are rain water collection tanks! The rainwater collected here will be used to water the drought-tolerant landscape immediately surrounding this new facility in addition its use in the buildings' toilets!

Just north of the UC Davis Good Life Garden, these four rainwater collection tanks will soon provide irrigation to our edible landscape.

The UC Davis Good Life Garden is not currently part of this sustainable irrigation system, but will be soon according to director of grounds and landscape services, Sal Genito, who plans to tie the garden to the same system in the coming year.

We'll keep you updated on our progress.  In the meantime, if you come to the UC Davis Good Life Garden and notice the pinkish/purple irrigation control lids near the new facility, you'll know that the water from this source is actually 'green' in the sustainable sense because it comes directly from the rainwater collection tanks pictured above.  (See photo below.)

As irony would have it, the water from our own campus utility water system is managed under the 'green' irrigation control lids.  (See photo below.)

Do you use a rainwater collection system for your landscape or edible garden? Tell us about it!