Master Gardeners - August 25, 2019


IT'S "MASTER GARDENERS" SUNDAY!



Join us on Sunday, August 25 at the Green Tent for another wonderful day with the UC/CE LA County Master Gardeners from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. They’ll be handing out free plants and free seed packets. Stop by and start your fall planting now. And they’re giving these seedlings away:


Blue Lake Green Beans and Gold Rush yellow beans — these are BUSH beans so you don’t need to trellis them. And you can serve them raw in salad or pickled or lightly steamed as a side dish.






Sunflowers are everyone’s favorite, so come and get one.  Here’s one grown by someone who stopped by and picked up a seedling at the booth months ago: 









But just for a variety, there’ll be some zinnias too!

There’s still time to grow your own pickles (well, cucumbers to be precise!)

And if they get big enough in time, there may be some basil and some cilantro.

Click HERE to learn about composting, grass recycling, water wise gardening, fire wise gardening and more.

And please remember to bring along those empty “six packs” so the MGs can plant up more seedlings for next month’s market. 

Have a Gardening Question? 
Email mglosangeleshelpline@ucdavis.edu with a description of your concern or question. Attaching photos will help the Master Gardener diagnose the problem. OR, you can phone in your concern or question by leaving a detailed message at (626) 586-1988.

Ballona Wetlands - August 18, 2019

BALLONA WETLANDS

...an environmental treasure in our own back yard 

White-tailed Kite*

You may have heard about the 600+ acres of the Ballona Wetlandsjust to the south and west of Mar Vista. But have you visited this wild habitat where so many wildlife species and rare plant populations still thrive?   One imperiled bird species that our former neighbor and beloved Councilmember Bill Rosendahl loved, is the beautiful White Tailed Kite, which needs the upland areas where small mammals live just beneath the surface and provide great meals for the Kite, as well as for Great Blue Herons and several raptors.

Image Courtesy of Craig Butler

Drop by the 

Green Tent 

on Sunday, January 20, to learn about the Ballona Wetlands Ecological Reserve, which is a fragile mosaic of different habitats: seasonal ponds, wet meadows, salt pannes, sand dunes and prairie grasslands.  

AND - learn about the imminent threat to these special lands - there is a plan to bulldoze and excavate the life-rich soils at Ballona, destroy habitat for many thousands of animals and move things 

around, as if they are decorating the place.  

In the Yerba Mansa Meadow*

One of the historical sloughs at 

Ballona Wetlands, photo by Marcia Hanscom

Great Egrets*

Audubon Cottontail Rabbits*

Biologist Roy Van de Hoek

 (perhaps you know him from the Feathers & Foliage walks in Mar Vista or have seen his Blue Bird houses in our trees

) and Marcia Hanscom, Executive Director of the 

Ballona Institute

 ,will be on hand to talk with you. Ballona Institute is known as "The Voice for Nature on the Los Angeles Coast."

Image Courtesy of Craig Butler

C

lick here

  to learn more about the treasures at Ballona. A

nd watch 

this

 video

to see just some of the miracles at the water's edge.

According to the 

Drawdown

 data, Coastal wetland ecosystems are one of the top 100 solutions for 

reversing Global Warming.

Wetlands 

sequester huge amounts of carbon in plants above ground and in roots and soils below.  

Coastal wetlands can store five times as much carbon as tropical forests over the long term, mostly in deep wetland soils.   There are also hundreds of trees on the ecological reserve - as well as grasslands, which have also been discovered to be strong in terms of helping with carbon sequestration - which could minimize impacts of predicted climate change.

Additionally

, a methane gas storage field sits beneath the wetlands on our coast - the Playa del Rey Gas Storage Field.  SoCalGas wants to install new fossil fuel infrastructure as part of the ill-conceived plans for the Ballona Wetlands.  So Ballona Institute has joined with Food & Water Watch, Indivisible and other groups like Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project to - instead - close this gas plant down and to do everything they can to protect the sensitive lands at Ballona on the Los 

Angeles coast.

Learn about Ballona Institute's latest campaigns, including the most important one of all - the threat that bulldozers we once chased from the Ballona Wetlands are threatening to return! Stop by to learn what YOU can do to help save the Ballona Wetlands again!

* 

Photos by 

Jonathan Coffin

**Photo by Marcia Hanscom

Additional images by Craig Butler

Seed Library of Los Angeles - Sunday, August 2019

SAVING SEEDS - SAVING THE PLANET

David King, SLOLA Chair, is waiting
to teach you about seed saving!

This Sunday, August 11 at the Green Tent, representing the Seed Library of Los Angeles, David King, founding chair, will have seed samples and information on upcoming SLOLA events!



SLOLA recently launched their very own blog, so click here for updates and info that you won't want to miss!


SLOLA is our local organization protecting the diversity of our food supply – come and talk to David about saving some of the remaining seeds from summer or to gear up for the coming winter harvest. You can see the seed inventory awaiting checkout at SLOLA.




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