Napa Master Gardener Column

I love salads. A salad with my dinner is almost as essential as a glass of wine. When most of us think of a green salad we think of lettuce. Lettuce has been cultivated for thousands of years. The word lettuce comes from the Latin for milk, due to the milky liquid it produces when a leaf is broken.

Every gardener has the ability to have a positive and significant influence on earth's warming climate. Improving soil by adding organic material like compost helps the life in earth's over-tilled and compacted soil. Try thinking of the soil in your garden as a living body.

Last January I decided to pull out the thicket of wild blackberries that took up 25 percent of the backyard.

Six weeks ago, I dug up my undies. Earlier this year, I decided to repeat an experiment that the new class of Napa County Master Gardeners had conducted last winter: I buried my underpants. Why do such a thing? The results will tell you how active the residents of your soil are.

Can we improve our soil and manage insect pests with techniques that slow and maybe even ultimately reverse the human damage to natural resources? Practices that started innocently enough to improve and simplify food production have turned into a huge problem.