• An El Niño year has been forecast for the Oregon region, which means it will be warmer and drier than usual. Prepare your garden for that now.

•  It is highly advisable to do a garden soil test, especially if you are having problems. Soil Test kits are easily available, and not very expensive.

• A question was asked about mulching the garden with straw, because weed seeds in the straw can become quite a headache. Norm came up with a great solution:  put the straw in a black plastic garbage sack and leave it out in the hot sun for a while. The high temperatures will cook the seeds, making them non-viable.

• Like the birds in your garden? A bird identification app has been produced by Cornell University. It’s called ‘Merlin.’ Turn it on and it will identify the birds in your garden or on a hike.

• There are lots of beneficial insects that need the dried stalks of plants to overwinter in. Leave those dried stalks in place in your garden until late April.  Insects–and many are highly beneficial–need homes too.

• “Cilantro taught me it’s a cool-weather crop.” (much laughter)

• Using Comfrey as a natural fertilizer has worked wonderfully for many of the people at the meeting. (Should we ask Evelyn to show us how it’s done?)

• A question was posed about Yellow Jacket traps, and how best to use them. There are evidently two stages involved. In February and March it is the larger queen wasp that is active. (Need some motivation? It was noted that a single queen can lay up to 10,000 wasp eggs in a single season.)

Place your traps about six feet off the ground for this first stage, and let the pheromones do all the attracting. The trap does the rest. 

Pheromones are not a poison—they’re chemical substances that trigger social, mating or other responses in other individuals of the same species.

The second stage attracts and traps the worker wasps. You place the traps lower, about three feet off the ground, because they forage lower than the queen wasp does. Do this about May first.