This workshop is an A-to-Z approach to fall/winter food gardening that covers: garden location, options for planting beds, soil including compost and mulch, crop selection and planning, irrigation, garden maintenance, pest control, harvesting and cover crops. Helpful seasonal handouts include planting dates for fall and overwintering crops, a sample garden layout, and suggested vegetable varieties for Sonoma County. NO registration required.

Fall Plant Sale: Saturday, Sep. 21st, 2019  9 am-noon

front of the Sonoma Community Center

Past Events

July 4 Parade

CONGRATULATIONS to the Valley of the Moon Garden Club for taking Second Place in the 4th of July Parade: Non-Profit Category, right on the tails of La Luz.

June 6, 2019 Meeting: Will Ackley & Nadya Clark, Honey Bees Today

Will has been a beekeeper here in Sonoma for over 10 years. Besides having kept up to 30 hives of his own, Will manages bees for other people, and does numerous extractions of hives from buildings each year.

Nadya has been a hobby beekeeper for 8 years. She has had as many as 12 hives, but usually keeps around 6. She has done a couple extractions, but prefers to catch swarms. Nadya is also the Librarian for the 450 member
Sonoma County Beekeepers Association.

The Buzz About Honey Bees

Honey bees, Apis Mellifera, are one of the hardest working and great pollinators of agricultural crops that our economy

and food for the table rely on. They provide pollination for the home gardeners vegetables, flowers, and trees.

Beekeepers know stories about their lives that can amaze us. The effects of pesticide use, beneficial trees and plants for bees, how gardeners can help ensure their survivial, and interesting details about their life cycle will be shared.

Bubbles and Blooms

Thursday June 29, 5-7 pm
246 Perkins Street, Sonoma

Summer Solstice Open House.
Free event wth plants for sale donated by the VOM Garden Club.
RSVP on the site so organizers can know who is attending.

Annual Spring Plant Sale
Saturday, May 11

Vegetables, annual and perennial flowering plants, succulents, and landscaping plants were in abundance.

May 2, 2019 Meeting: Bill McNamara
Quarry Hill: The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly of Plant Hunting

Bill McNamara, Executive Director of Quarryhill Botanic Garden, Glen Ellen will talk of the trials and tribulations of plant hunting during his 31 years and many expeditions throught Asia in search of plants for Quarryhill’s gardens. Included is a visual presentation of Quarryhill and beyond.

Human beings have been moving plants around the globe for thousands of years.  Usually this has been of great benefit, though it has not been without problems.  Today it is a great urgency to get plants and their seeds to botanic gardens and seed banks due to the severe, yet little mentioned, extinction crisis.

In company with horticulturists from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Howick Arboretum, and others, Bill McNamara has botanized extensively in the wilds of Asia.  He has ventured into the mountains of China, Japan, India, Nepal, Vietnam and Myanmar in search of plants. He has a master’s degree in Conservation Biology and has had numerous articles published, lectures widely and also holds a third degree black belt in Aikido. He is a Field Associate of the Department of Botany, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, and an Honorary Researcher of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, an Associate Member of the joint Chinese-American Committee for the Flora of China, and an Honorary Member of the Garden Club of America.

April 4, 2019 Meeting: Suzanne Clark
Urban Garden to Wildlife Habitat

March 7, 2019 Meeting: Micro Greens by Preston Raisin • Sonoma Broadway Farms

Inspired by a childhood nourished by farm-fresh vegetables and the pure, simple pleasures of growing his own food, Raisin purchased his Sonoma six-acre farm property in 2012. He envisioned the old 1946 farm on Broadway to reflect everything that mattered to him —
sustainability, community and healthy living.

As a busy father, raising five children with his wife in San Francisco, Raisin sought to create a peaceful escape from city life for himself and his family, and to pass on the farm values and lessons that had so deeply shaped him as a child and share it with his community.

Completed in November of 2016,Sonoma Broadway Farms now raises over thirty varietals of organic vegetables, along with fruit trees, herbs, chickens, ducks, honeybees, and goats. While not open every day, the farm is available for cooking demos,
workshops, pop-up farm stands (watch the sign out front), school field trips, and non-profit groups.

February 7, 2019 Meeting: HOPS

Hops are a beautiful vine and make great beer.
Ilya Faibushevich, a hops aficionado and expert, will
show hops samples and describe their history of growing
in Sonoma County, how they are used in brewing, and
why you may want to grow them. This event will help
you as a hops grower and/or a beer maker. It will also make you appreciate more the micro brews you drink.

Ilya graduated college with dreams of being an economist. In 2010, while working on a two-year project to quantify the health impact of environmental policies in China, he got a side job working in a local brewery’s cold, dark cellar: transferring and carbonating beer, helping on brew days, and, of course, cleaning. He was immediately hooked! Since then, he has brewed for some of the country's most acclaimed beer makers, including Side Project, Perennial, Moonlight, and Cellarmaker. His travels have taken him to brew in Belgium and France at Brouwerij De Ranke and Brasserie Thiriez.

He is now the sales manager in Northern California and Nevada for Yakima Chief Hops, the biggest supplier of American-grown hops in the U.S. The company is a cooperative of 11 farmers in Washington and Oregon, created to give farmers control of their own destiny.

January 3 2019: DIY Flower Arranging

January 2018: Paola Tonelli, Beautiful Geometry in Nature

Botany has a real correlation with mathematics.  The presentation beautifully combined photos of nature with principles of mathematics and physics.

For more on mathematics in nature, watch the NOVA documentary The Great Math Mystery.
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/great-math-mystery.html

February 1 2018: Fire Safe Landscapes

Following the October Wine Country Fires, Sonoma Master Gardener Dennis Przybycien will preview the Sonoma County Master Gardeners upcoming program on fire-safe landscapes: “What Can I Do Now” to examine steps that homeowners can take to make their landscapes more fire-resistant.

Meeting Bonus

Come to the meeting to find out how to can get a free issue of Garden Design Magazine with your new subscription. Garden Design will also donate $12 back to VOMGC with each subscription.
www.gardendesign.com/clubconnect.html

March 1 2018: A Healthy Garden's Approach to Managing Weeds

Sonoma County Master Gardener DJ DeProspero's “healthy garden” approach to gardening uses Integrated Pest Management, or IPM, a method of dealing with garden pests that considers the whole ecosystem, not just the pest.

Flexible Dates: nurturing baby plants for the upcoming plant sale

Help needed to transplant seedlings and otherwise encourage our babies to grow. If you can help, please fill out the Contact form and a garden club member will get back to you. Thanks.

Thursday April 5 Meeting: Sonoma Ecology Center Community Outreach Projects

Garland Lamb and Mark Newhouser, Senior Restoration Ecologist and Project Manager of the Sonoma Ecology Center, are our special guests for the VOMGC April 5th meeting. They will discuss the various garden-related community outreach projects performed by the Center with an emphasis on native plant nurseries, water shed preservation and wild fire assessment and restoration.

Thursday April 19, 4-7 pm:  Third Annual Tomato Adoption Party

 VOMGC members’ Pot Luck. Details TBA.

Saturday April 21, 9 a.m. to noon: Public Spring Plant Sale

Sonoma Community Center, 276 E. Napa Street.

Hundreds of 4” vegetables, herbs, perennials, pollinator plants, succulents, and more. Bluebird houses in time for nesting.

Fall Garden Sale: Saturday September 15, 9 am-noon in front of the Sonoma Community Center

Monthly Meeting: Thursday October 4th

Carnivorous plants, by Bob Hornback

Anyone who has heard him speak knows we’re in for a treat. Speaking of TREATS, along with the raffle, we are asking our members and guests to create “Trick or Treat” bags with a bulb exchange in the spirit of HALLOWEEN.

Please label your contributions as such:

Plant Name: Agapanthus.
TREAT (the positives): Clump-forming evergreen w/firework explosions of long lasting flowers.
TRICK (the negatives): Can be used as snail bait.

Thursday November 1 Meeting:
The Wonder of Cover Crops