The Master Gardeners are offering our Fall series of free workshops online via Zoom, beginning September 10.  Like the in-person, hands-on workshops offered in the past, these six classes will be packed with useful and valuable gardening information. One of the benefits of using Zoom is that there will be no limit on the number of participants, so we hope to reach more individuals than was possible with the previous in-person format. Listed below are short descriptions of the Fall workshops. For more details and to register, please visit our website. Note that registration continues to be required for all workshops.

Please Note: The September 10 workshop has been rescheduled for Thursday, October 15, 10 to 11:30am.

The Workshop Series kicks off on Thursday, September 10 from 10 to 11:30 am with Journaling with the New Garden Guide, an exploration of one of our most practical and informative tools: the newly updated and revised Butte County Garden Guide and Three-Year Journal. This invaluable resource, written and compiled by Butte County Master Gardeners specifically for our area, is full of material about our local climate, plants, and wildlife, and includes weekly tips and fun facts.  This workshop will be presented from the backyard of a Master Gardener, who will discuss and demonstrate how to use the Guide to find the best times to perform seasonal and weekly garden tasks, as well as locate useful plant, climate, and soil information for our region. An integral part of this workshop is using the Guide to record lessons learned and keep track of useful plant and weather information for your garden over the years.

The new Guide is now available for $25 and can be purchased at Magnolia Gift and Garden in Chico, as well as through our website.  If you already have one of our previously published editions, have it close by for the Zoom class!

We are excited to offer a new three-part series, Gardening from the Ground Up, which covers principles that can revolutionize the way you garden. In Part 1: Minimize Disruption, we will explore the interaction of plants and microbes and how to support the tiniest animals in your garden; examine the effects of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides; and discuss the advantages of No Till gardening. You'll come away with lots of ideas for starting your fall garden from the ground up.  In Part 2: No Bare Soil, we'll investigate compost -- What does compost do? Is all compost created equal? And then we'll dive into bacterial- and fungal-dominant composts, discuss the principle of keeping live roots in the soil, and offer examples of succession planting you can utilize this fall.  In Part 3: Diversity we'll look at the evidence supporting the values of diversity in the garden and consider what that means for the home gardener. We'll review the research on the near-magical phenomenon of quorum sensing, and then discuss cover crops, implementation plans, and the possibility of retraining your eyes.  The Gardening From the Ground Up workshops will be held from 2 to 3 pm on successive Thursdays (September 17 and 24, and October 1^st). 

Back by popular demand is our workshop on Companion Planting, offered Tuesday, October 6, from 10 to 11:30 am. Companion Planting is the art of arranging certain plants in proximity to one another so that they attract beneficial insects and pollinators, deter unwanted pests, and offer shelter and food for other critters. Companion plants provide one another with things they need, such as nutrients, shade, and physical support. We will show you how to accomplish this in the home vegetable garden, focusing on the potential symbiotic relationships between vegetable, herb, and flower combinations. We will also include time for you to analyze your own garden and consider plant combinations that can work there.

The Fall 2020 Workshop Series will conclude with an in-depth look at Plant Viruses on Tuesday, October 13, from 10 to 11:30 am. Most gardeners are aware of plant diseases that can wreak havoc in their gardens. If you grow fruit trees, you may be confronted with curled, reddened peach leaves (peach leaf curl fungus). If you grow apples or pears, your trees may sometimes look like they were scorched with a blow torch (fire blight bacterium). But did you know that viruses can also lurk in the leaves, stems, and fruit of your garden vegetables and flowers? This workshop will cover how viruses behave, how they are transmitted, and how to identify and manage them.

Please join us for any or all of these free online workshops. For more details, and to register, visit our website.  Although we would prefer to see you in person, for now we are grateful for the technology that allows us to continue our mission to extend research-based knowledge and information on home horticulture, pest management, and sustainable landscape practices to the residents of Butte County.

The UC Master Gardeners of Butte County are part of the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) system. To learn more about us and our upcoming events, and for help with gardening in our area, visit our website. If you have a gardening question or problem, email the Hotline at mgbutte@ucanr.edu (preferred) or call (530) 538-7201.