SPRING ADVICE AND RECYCLING MEDICINE

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Spring advice and recycling medicine
by JANE BOGNER
SUNDAY, April 22, 2007

Happy Earth Day. If you are an early riser and missed the celebrations yesterday, you are in luck. The Vallejo Watershed Alliance is planting native plants along the shoreline in Dan Foley Park at Lake Chabot between 10 a.m. and noon today. This is a family event and there will be activities for children as well as refreshments.

Now that you are in a "take care of mother earth" mode, you won't mind tackling those weeds in your garden in a nontoxic way. All of us have a weed that drives us nuts. Mine is Oxalis, that pesky clover-like plant with the yellow flowers that we see all over Vallejo.

Cape oxalis (Oxalis pes-caprae, a.k.a. Bermuda buttercup) is one of the most common weeds in the Bay Area and one of the most difficult to eradicate.

According to Pam Peirce, who recently wrote two columns about this weed in the San Francisco Chronicle, "Cape oxalis is native to South Africa where it is considered a wildflower. It is a winter perennial that will collapse and disappear in spring and then grow again every fall. It regrows from small teardrop-shaped bulbs, each plant forming up to 20 bulbs a year."

When gardeners pull oxalis out, they should try to get as many of the tiny bulbs as possible. Alternatively, one can break off the entire top of the plant just beneath the place where the leaf and flower stems attach to the main stem. The most effective time to pull it is when it is about to bloom and has the least energy stored in the bulbs.

Smothering the plants is another method and Peirce recommends overlapping layers of wet cardboard and eight inches of mulch. This method may take a couple of years.

Peirce cautions that using Glyphosate-based herbicides, such as Roundup, will also kill lawns and other plants. Remember that all pesticides are a hazard to you, your pets and the environment. If you must use them, please follow directions on the label with care.

Do not add these plants to your backyard compost bin as it will not get hot enough to kill the bulbs. Put them in your curbside yard waste cart and let the commercial composting operators handle it.

Pam Peirce is the author of "Golden Gate Gardening" and "Wildly Successful Plants: Northern California." She teaches gardening at City College of San Francisco.

California Native Plant Sales

Solano Resource Conservation District's sale is on Saturday, April 28 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. They are located at 6390 Lewis Road, east of Vacaville.

The California Native Plant Society will hold their sale on May 5 from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Benicia Community Garden located at the corner of Military East and East 2nd Street.

Vallejo Composting Classes

VALCORE will conduct a free backyard composting class on May 12 at 38 Sheridan from 10 a.m. to Noon. Two BioStack compost bins will be give to two lucky Vallejo residents at this class which is sponsored by the City of Vallejo.

Pharmaceutical Take-Back Event

The Solano County Sheriff's Office and Department of Resource Management are sponsoring a Pharmaceutical Take-Back Event on Saturday, May 19 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Bring your expired and unwanted prescription drugs and over-the-counter medicines to the Family Health and Safety Fair which takes place at the Westfield Solano Mall (1350 Travis Blvd, Fairfield) in the upper level parking lot outside Macy's. Medicines in their original containers will be accept at the Solano County Sheriff's booth.

The purpose of this event is to educate the public about the harmful effects of flushing medicines down the toilets. Sewage treatment plants cannot remove all medicines from the wastewater which means that drugs are flowing into our rivers and are then ingested by fish and birds.
Legislation that will ban pharmaceuticals from landfills is slated for 2008.

Vallejo and Benicia residents can also take old medicines to the Vallejo-Napa Household Hazardous Waste Facility (889A Devlin Rd, American Canyon, 800 984-9661) every Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

More hazardous waste information is available on www.recycle-guide.com and in the Recycle Guide in the yellow pages of your phone book.

VALCORE Recycling Board Member Jane Bogner's "A Sorted Affair" is published every other week in the Times-Herald, Community Outlook Section. For recycling information call her at 645-8258 or visit www.VALCORErecycling.org.