A Growing Passion

Pasadena California's annual Rose Parade is world famous for spectacular floats covered in petals, seeds, leaves, grasses, and bark. We follow Cal Poly Pomona and Luis Obispo college students who design, build, and drive the Universities' 68th annual float.

Citrus is one of the crops that "made" California. We learn about its history and how Riverside County California was the seat of California's citrus industry and the wealthiest county in the country. See how citrus genetics are evaluated and preserved. We visit a "living citrus museum", a commercial grove in Pauma Valley, a citrus nursery, and learn how to plant and grow citrus in our backyards.

What's so bad about "bugs?" Some may cause problems but the majority of bugs play important roles in nature, pollinating plants, preying on pathogens, aerating the soil and more. In this episode, we explore the world of "good bugs" by visiting the pollinator garden at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, an insectary (bug farm) in Ventura, a seed company with a fly breeding program, and more.

Lawns are the thirstiest and most resource intensive plants in our gardens and frankly, they don't belong in our climate. The combination of four drought years, state mandated water restrictions, and water agency rebates have finally inspired Californians to remove their lawns. See how several home gardens each use a different method to remove their lawn to replace each with a waterwise landscape.

Once the lawn is gone, it leaves behind a blank slate ready for it to be reimagined to meet the homeowners' needs and desires. We learn about planning a new waterwise garden, the features of a waterwise garden, and watch the process of waterwise garden installation. We visit a nursery with waterwise plants and a just-planted garden to see the characteristics of these climate adapted gardens.

Algae are aquatic plants that can be a single cell, or a 20-foot long seaweed. Algae extracts are ingredients in an enormous number of products we use: foods, pharmaceuticals, biofuels, even surfboards. We'll talk about what algae are, visit research laboratories where new algae discoveries are made, see the huge desert farm that grow algae, and head to Mexico to see how algae surfboards are made.