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Sparkle and Shine!
It's not "Rise and Shine!" any more.
It's "Sparkle and Shine."
"Sparkle and Shine," a yellow rose related to the Julia Child Rose, drew quite a bit of attention at the UC Davis event, "Roses: the "Eyeconic Weekend," sponsored May 4-5 by the California Center for Urban Horticulture (CCUH) at Foundation Plant Services, 455 Hopkins Road, west of the central campus.
Participants loved it--and so did the honey bees. The bees--probably from the nearby Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility--beelined to that floribunda, but they also foraged on many other roses.
CCUH executive director Dave Fujino described the event as quite successful. The good news is that some of the roses are still available for sale. An online rose catalog depicts such roses as Yabba Dabba Doo, Big Momma, Tiddly Winks, Wild Blue Yonder, McCartney Rose, Passionate Kisses, and Oh My!
You can email Fujino at dwfujino@ucdavis.edu with your rose request (and ascertain the availability) and then purchase the roses at the Foundation Plant Services site, corner of Hopkins and Straloch roads, from 4 to 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 8 and Friday, May 10, Fujino said. (From west Hutchison Drive, take Hopkins Road and then Straloch Road. See map.)
Then it's gearing up for next year's rose days. The event (free admission) is always held the first weekend of May, right before Mother's Day. Guests look forward to touring eight acres of roses, learning rose care at informational/training sessions, and gracing their gardens with their choices.
The bees foraging on the roses are "free" but they won't go home with you because they already have a home!
Honey bee foraging on a yellow rose, "Sparkle and Shine!" (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
A sign tells it all. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Dave Fujino, executive director of the California Center for Urban Horticulture with Missy Gable, newly selected statewide director of the UC Master Gardener Program. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
What's Not to Love About Roses?
I never promised you a rose garden
Along with the sunshine
There's gotta be a little rain sometime...
So began Joe South in his hit song, "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden," popularized by country singer Lynn Anderson in 1970.
That was Joe South's rose garden. What UC Davis has is an eight-acre field of roses, and you're invited to celebrate "Roses: the "Eyeconic Weekend" on Saturday and Sunday, May 4-5. It's a free event, with free training/informational sessions. The best part, however, is you can tour the rose field and select and buy a wide variety of container roses for your own garden.
The California Center for Urban Horticulture (CCUH), part of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at UC Davis, sponsors this annual fundraiser.
The rose sale takes place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. both Saturday, May 4 and Sunday, May 5 at Foundation Plant Services, 455 Hopkins Road, west of the central campus.
Rose field tours will be given from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. on both days. Free mini floribunda roses will be handed out to the first 250 attendees, says CCUH executive director Dave Fujino.
Fujino invites the public to attend the free informational sessions, offered both days at the same site. No registration is required.
The agenda for Saturday, May 4 for the free informational sessions:
- 11 a.m. to noon: New rose varieties
- 1 to 2 p.m., Roses 101 (placement, planting and feeding)
- 2 to 4 p.m., Pruning
- 3 to 4 p.m.: Pest management
The agenda for Sunday, May 5 for the free informational sessions:
- 11 a.m. to noon: New rose varieties
- 1 to 2 p.m.: Roses 101 (placement, planting and feeding)
- 2 to 4 p.m.: Pruning
- 3 to 4 p.m.: Disease Identification (Bring your diseased specimens in a sealed baggie)
These "Rose Days" are what folks look forward to every year. Want to check out the beauty and fragrance? Want to learn how to prune roses? Want to ask a question about a pest or a beneficial insect? This is the place.
A rose catalog is online to aid you in your choices. There you'll see photos of such roses as Yabba Dabba Doo, Big Momma, Tiddly Winks, Wild Blue Yonder, McCartney Rose, Passionate Kisses, and Oh My!
Also available for sale ($10) will be the UC ANR book on "Healthy Roses."
No, this isn't Joe South's rose garden. This is the UC Davis eight-acre field of roses.
Yellow roses are popular at the rose sale. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
This is what you don't want to see on your rose: rose curculio or rose weevil. You can ask questions about pests at the rose event. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Vintner creates interesting new wines from research grapes
If a superb winegrape cultivar adapted to warm temperatures emerges from a research trial at the UC Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center, the state’s premiere agricultural region may be able to establish a reputation for growing fine wines.
For this reason, UC Cooperative Extension specialists in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis have teamed up with winemakers from Constellation Brands to identify a wine variety that excites the palette and flourishes in the San Joaquin Valley’s hot climate.
At the outset, the researchers were searching for blending varieties that would make San Joaquin Valley wines with familiar names more interesting. Vintners may use up to 25 percent of the grape volume to impart distinctive color, flavor, and structure to a varietal wine without calling it a blend. The winegrapes being studied at Kearney, the researchers believed, could add a certain flavor note or deep color to a San Joaquin Valley Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, or Chardonnay.
Moreover, changing demographics may present opportunities for new varietal wines, especially for the newest generation of potential wine drinkers, the generation known as “millennials,” only about half of whom have turned 21.
“We have a group of wine consumers coming through who are more accepting of different varieties than their parents were,” says James Wolpert, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Viticulture & Enology at UC Davis. “We are poised to have a real renaissance in the wine business.”
Currently, 80 percent of California wine is made from fewer than 10 types of winegrapes. Most of the popular wine varieties in California – among them merlot, cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay – are at their best in somewhat cooler climates. The researchers are looking for grapes that make superior fruit in warm climates.
“You wouldn’t plant a palm tree in Michigan. So why would you plant merlot in the desert?” asks Oren Kaye, a research and development winemaker at Constellation Brands. “The San Joaquin Valley has never established itself as a ‘destination’ wine region because we have always been chasing the wrong grapes.”
The unsuitability of California’s most popular winegrape cultivars to the Central Valley’s climate is reflected clearly in industry statistics. The San Joaquin Valley is California’s largest grape growing district in terms of production, but lowest in terms of price. According to the California Department of Food and Agriculture 2011 Grape Crush Report, District 13 – which includes the counties of Madera, Fresno, Alpine, Mono, and Inyo; and parts of Kings and Tulare counties – had the largest share of the state’s crush, at 1,495,027 tons. District 13’s average price per ton in 2011 was $324.26. In contrast, the value of the crush in District 4 – Napa County – was $3,258.88 per ton.
Matthew Fidelibus, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at UC Davis, attributes the 10-fold price differential in part to the impact of weather on particular winegrape varieties. In grape varieties adapted to a cooler climate, some biological pathways are stifled at elevated temperatures. As a result, some important flavor compounds develop out of sync with sugar accumulation, and the grapes may not attain their potential flavor peak before it is time to harvest.
Anthocyanins, for example, give red wines their characteristic deep scarlet to purple color, but high temperatures suppress anthocyanin accumulation in some varieties.
“We would like to identify a winegrape in which anthocyanins accumulate at higher levels in San Joaquin Valley,” Fidelibus says. “We have no problem getting enough sugar in the grapes. But other desirable compounds may be deficient.”
To find new varieties suitable for warm, dry weather, the scientists turned to Foundation Plant Services (FPS) at UC Davis, which manages the National Grapevine Importation Program, the largest program for importing grape selections into the U.S.
FPS enables grape growers, nurseries, researchers, and wineries to bring valuable new selections into the U.S. without the threat of importing foreign exotic pests and diseases that could cause serious damage to the industry. From 1995 through 2006, over 640 new selections were imported.
Wolpert, the Kearney project’s initial principal investigator, selected 55 winegrape cultivars from Spain, Greece, Italy, and other areas where the climate is similar to the San Joaquin Valley’s.
It used to take 15 years to bring in new varieties,” Wolpert recalls. “FPS got that down to five. They have stuffed the pipeline full of interesting grapes, some you cannot find on the East Coast (of the U.S.).
The varieties chosen for the project are not exactly “new,” Wolpert clarified. Some are 1,000 years old, but are new to California.
Fidelibus, now the principal investigator on the grape production side, is gathering data on each variety’s yield potential, cluster architecture, amenability to mechanization, and other viticultural characteristics. The research vineyard contains 50 vines of each variety on 1103P rootstock. The rootstock was planted in 2008 and was budded to 55 varieties in spring 2009 with some re-budding in 2010. Vines were trained to bilateral cordons on trellises with a cordon wire 48 inches above the soil surface, and two foliar catch wires on a 10-inch wide cross arm, about 15 inches above the foliage catch wire. Vines were drip-irrigated, at about 60 percent ETc, and spur-pruned with approximately 15 shoots per meter of cordon. They were allowed to retain their entire crop, which ranged from 2.3 to 33 kg of fruit/vine, depending on the variety.
Constellation Brands winemaking personnel are monitoring the winegrapes’ potential to produce distinctive, flavorful California wines. Of the 55 Old World winegrape varieties planted in the 1.4-acre plot at Kearney, about half displayed enough promising characteristics in 2011 to prompt Constellation Brands to make 25 small (10-gallon) lots of wine from 150 to 200 lbs of grapes.
"In 2008, we picked all red varieties at 24o Brix," recalls Kaye. "In 2011, we picked red varieties at 24o Brix and white varieties at 22o Brix."
From the winemakers’ standpoint, the next great California wines will need excellent color, superior mouthfeel, no vegetative characteristics, desirable flavors, and importantly, an elusive quality that marketers call “cachet.” Cachet is a certain, unmeasurable aplomb that confers a special status or prestige on which to build a reputation.
The Kearney wines are on the right track.
"Many of the wines turned out better than we expected," Fidelibus said. "A lot of the reds had very good color, better color than some of the traditional varieties. Some of the whites hadhigh acidity,which is a good quality for the San Joaquin Valley because high temperatures tend to reduce acidity."
At a recent tasting in Fresno, Kaye introduced winegrape growers and industry representatives to four wines made from grapes in the Kearney plot, Fiano, Biancu Gentile, Sagrantino, and Marselan Noir. Even though wine was produced in small lots and the winemaking process was not optimized, the wines have piqued the researchers’ interest.
Fiano is a white wine with a fresh, young style evoking flavors of melon and grapefruit,” Kaye says. Marselan noir is a stylistically unique red wine with bright cherry flavor that pops.
"In our internal tastings, these wines and several others showed some promise, but it is too early to know for sure,” Kaye concludes. "Constellation Wines will vet 20 to 30 varieties again in 2012. Some will be repeats. If we can eliminate half of the varieties that is progress as it will help us focus on the ones with greater potential for the San Joaquin Valley."
Fidelibus comments in the video below about the recent tasting event that featured four winegrape varieties from the Kearney trial:
Everything's Coming Up Roses--and a Few Bees
Honey bees aren't that much into roses. Wild roses, yes. Cultivated roses, not so much. Given a choice, they'll take the lavenders, mints and salvia (sage) over the roses any time.
Occasionally, however, we see honey bees foraging on roses in the UC Davis Arboretum's Storer Garden on Garrod Drive, or in the Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven on Bee Biology Road.
Ah, roses! One of life's simple pleasures. And what would Mother's Day be without them?
Speaking of roses, this weekend on the UC Davis campus is all about roses. The California Center for Urban Horticulture (CCUH) and Foundation Plant Services are teaming to present their fifth annual Rose Day on Saturday, May 5 from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Melissa "Missy" Gable, program manager of CCHU, says the May 5th event, themed "Your Sustainable Backyard: Roses," will include talks and demonstrations; a tour of the Storer Garden on Garrod Drive; a tour of the Foundation Plant Services' eight-acre rose field on Hopkins Road; and a tour of the All-American Rose Selection test garden on Hopkins Road. And it's all for $45. (See registration or contact Missy (Borel) Gable at mjborel@ucdavis.edu for more information.)
Workshop participants--as well as the general public--can not only smell the roses but buy them from 2:30 to 5:30 p.m., Saturday, May 5 at the Foundation Plant Services site at 454 Hopkins Road. Rose plants are $25 each, five or more for $22, and 10 or more for $18--cash and checks only.
Then on Sunday, May 6, the public rose sales will continue from noon to 5 p.m. at the Foundation Plant Services site. Think hybrid teas, grandifloras, climbers and landscape roses. "Four-inch Cinco de Mayo rose plants will be given out while supplies last," Gable said.
Sale proceeds will benefit horticulture education at UC Davis--a good cause.
And maybe, just maybe, you might see a few bees on the roses. You won't be charged extra!
(Directions: The Foundation Plant Services, 455 Hopkins Road, is located on the corner of Hopkins and Straloch, about a mile west of the UC Davis central campus. Take Hutchinson west of 113, turn right toward the new West Village apartments at the first traffic circle, then west again onto Hutchinson at the second traffic circle. Take a left on Hopkins at the second line of olive trees. Note: While you're in the area, you might want to stop by and see the half-acre Häagen-Dazs Honey Bee Haven, a bee friendly demonstration garden located next to the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility on Bee Biology Road, off Hopkins Road. It's open from dawn to dusk every day; admission is free.)
Honey bee foraging on a rose. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Honey bee blends into a rose. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
Honey bee working a rose. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)
