Bohart Museum hosts afternoon of insect fun
Lady beetles may be the best known, but species of beetles cover a wide spectrum. Learn about some of them Sunday at UC Davis. Kathy Morrison
Beetles are more than lady bugs — as wonderful as those spotted insect stars are. Beetles form the order Coleoptera, the largest and most diverse group of insects, with more than 250,000 described species.
This weekend, the researchers at the Bohart Museum of Entomology will show visitors a sample of the amazing beetle species that inhabit our world.
The museum on the UC Davis campus holds its first open house of 2023 this Sunday, Jan. 22, from 1 to 4 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. (Parking on Sundays is free, too.)
This is a family-friendly event, including an arts-and-crafts activity involving a drawing of a carrion beetle.
The Bohart Museum is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, on campus. It houses more than 8 million insect specimens, as well as a live petting zoo. (Ever petted a Madagascar hissing cockroach?)
UC Davis graduate student and researcher Tracie Hayes (the artist of the carrion beetle) will be a presenter Sunday, along with beetle specialist Fran Keller, biology professor at Folsom Lake College, and Cal Fire bark beetle specialist Curtis Ewing.
For more on the Bohart Museum, go to https://bohart.ucdavis.edu/
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Food in My Back Yard Series
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March 25: Fertilizer tips: How to 'feed' your vegetables for healthy growth
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Garden Checklist for week of June 8
Get out early to enjoy those nice mornings. There’s plenty to keep gardeners busy:
* Warm weather brings rapid growth in the vegetable garden, with tomatoes and squash enjoying the heat. Deep-water, then feed with a balanced fertilizer. Bone meal or rock phosphate can spur the bloom cycle and help set fruit.
* Generally, tomatoes need deep watering two to three times a week, but don’t let them dry out completely. Inconsistent soil moisture can encourage blossom-end rot.
* It’s not too late to transplant tomatoes, peppers or eggplant.
* From seed, plant corn, melons, pumpkins, radishes, squash and sunflowers.
* Plant basil to go with your tomatoes.
* Transplant summer annuals such as petunias, marigolds and zinnias.
* It’s also a good time to transplant perennial flowers including astilbe, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, dahlias, rudbeckia, salvia and verbena.
* Feed camellias, azaleas and other acid-loving plants. Mulch to conserve moisture and reduce heat stress.
* Cut back Shasta daisies after flowering to encourage a second bloom in the fall.
* Trim off dead flowers from rose bushes to keep them blooming through the summer. Roses also benefit from deep watering and feeding now. A top dressing of aged compost will keep them happy. It feeds as well as keeps roots moist.
* Pinch back chrysanthemums for bushier plants with many more flowers in September.
* Tie up vines and stake tall plants such as gladiolus and lilies. That gives their heavy flowers some support.
* Dig and divide crowded bulbs after the tops have died down.
* Feed summer flowers with a slow-release fertilizer.
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