ooseleaf - university of maryland extension€¦ · there are a couple of presentations coming up...
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LOOSELEAF HOWARD COUNTY · 3300 NORTH RIDGE ROAD, SUITE 240 · ELLICOTT CITY, MD 21043
HOWARD COUNTY MASTER GARDENERS · (410) 313-2707 · FAX (410) 313-2712
http://extension.umd.edu/mg/locations/howard-county-master-gardeners
A publication of the Howard County Master Gardeners
The University of Maryland Extension programs are open to any person and will not discriminate against anyone because of race, age, sex, color, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, religion, ancestry, national origin, marital status, genetic information, political
affiliation, and gender identity or expression.
Educating People to Help Themselves
July 2013
A note of appreciation to the following MGs who participated in the Invasive Special Forum and Field Experi-ence at West Friendship Elementary School. This was a new program at the school, and for our MGs. It was a roundtable discussion! Our thanks to Peggy Hannon, Carrie Pirie, Alison Milligan, Loren Savino-Muhr and Janice Win-ter. A note of thanks was sent by Nathan Haskins, fifth-grade Instructional Team Leader, West Friendship Elemen-tary School, acknowledging the participation of our MGs.
The Fair Planning committee meeting for the How-ard County Fair has begun the task of coming up with a theme and working out the details of the exhibit. Many thanks to Barbara Griggs, Donna LaBelle, RoseMarie Me-servey, Victor Nicholas and Michele Wright (chair) for their time, effort and creativity in working out the details. The topic is “What’s Good for the Bay is Good for All of Us”. As Michele noted in this Looseleaf, Fair dates are August 3- 10. Please help with staffing—it is a fun event.
Speaking of the Bay, if you want to check infor-mation on the stormwater utility fee. Check the county web-site, http://livegreenhoward.com/water/stormwater. Second-ly, put on your calendar the MG Continuing Education pro-gram, Tuesday, July 9, 9:30 a.m. to hear Howard County Stormwater Manager Jim Caldwell discuss the legislation and explain the program.
Hope you are enjoying the cooler weather, and some new gardening adventures.
Georgia Eacker Master Gardener Coordinator 410-313-1913 [email protected]
From Georgia’s Desk
July 2013 Looseleaf 2 Howard County Master Gardeners
July 2013 Looseleaf 1 From Georgia’s Desk
3 Mt. Pleasant
3 Grow It Eat It
4 Conservation Stewardship
5 Whipps
6 News From State Office
Please submit items for
the August Looseleaf by
Thursday, July 11
Suzette Holiday, MG, Editor
VOLUNTEER AT THE FAIR
Volunteers are needed to staff the MG exhibit titled "What's Good For The Bay, Is Good For All Of Us" at the Howard County Fair from Sunday, August 3 through Saturday, August 11. Shifts are 2 hours long starting at 11:00 a.m. and ending by 9:00 p.m. Interns will be paired with an experi-enced MG. If you would like to work one or more shifts, please contact me, Michele Wright at [email protected] or 410-465-6057 (before 9:00 p.m.)
SUBMITTED BY MICHELE A. WRIGHT
MID-YEAR REPORT FOR ASK A MASTER GARDENER
The Ask a Master Gardener program has had a good start this year – maybe our best ever. The enthusiasm by everyone working at the library tables has been wonderful. Interns have come ready to share the knowledge they already have and learn more. Active MGs have been very generous in volunteering their time to support the interns in helping How-ard County residents understand and solve gardening and environmental issues.
The new Storm Water Management tax in Howard County has prompted us to investigate more of its details to be prepared to answer questions regarding its application and exceptions. Thanks to everyone for supporting the program.
SUBMITTED BY BARBARA SMITH
COORDINATOR, ASK A MASTER GARDENER COMMITTEE
FREE STATE DAYLILY SOCIETY, 2013 EVENTS
July 7 — Bloom Show and Sale - Cylburn Arboretum Vollmer Center, 4915 Greenspring Ave., Baltimore, 12 noon to 4:00 p.m.
August 3 — Daylily Auction and Sale - McLean's Nursery, 9000 Satyr Hill Road, Parkville, MD. Sale at 11:00 a.m., auction at 12:30 p.m.
August 4 — "Day After" Sale - Benson Hammond House, 7101 Aviation Blvd., Linthicum, MD. Sale at noon.
Please contact Stan Kennedy at 410-666-2791 for any questions or addi-tional information.
SUBMITTED BY CORLISS GLENNON
July 2013 Looseleaf 3 Howard County Master Gardeners
Doings at the Howard County Conservancy at Mt. Pleasant
We now have almost all of our beds fully planted and will begin filling in spots where spinach and lettuce is finishing in the hot weather. We continue to take produce to the food bank each week. Our latest partners in the garden are two 5 foot long black snakes that are discouraging the ground hog and voles. Our native plant pollinator beds are also thriving. As the weather gets warmer we will start work on Friday mornings at 8:30 a.m. and work until 10:30 to fin-ish before it gets too hot. Come join us any Friday that it is not raining.
Saturday, July 13 at 10:00 a.m. join us for “Fairy Houses: Magic in the Woods” with Florence Miller, Van Wensil and Audrey Suhr. In the spirit of “Build It and They Will Come,” bring your children and join other families to build beautiful dwellings for the fairies in the Conservancy's woodlands and stream edges. We will have bark and twigs and cones and nuts as construction materials. Before you come consider grabbing a basket and taking a walk with your children to hunt for natural building materials near your home, and bringing them with you to the program. We're sure the magic of our woods will bring the fairies to appreci-ate your constructions! We'll photograph the beautiful “country homes” and tree-side “villages” your families build, and add these images of your ephemeral master-constructions to our Fairy House Memory Book on the Con-servancy's classroom display table – where you can re-visit them. This free program is for children ages 10 and under.
The week of July 20-28- Buy Local Challenge- Join
the Conservancy as we support local famers and celebrate the Maryland "Buy Local" Challenge when local produce is booming at the end of July. Participate two ways: one, enter individually to join the statewide program, attempting to eat at least one local item every day during the challenge period of July 20-28 2013. Register at http://www.buy-local-challenge.com/contest.html. This year's challenge-theme is a “Take Local Outdoors” contest to win $200 by taking pic-tures of your outdoor meals and submitting them on the Buy Local Challenge webpage. Two, double your fun! Join the "Conservancy Team", in a parallel event on the last afternoon of the challenge on Sunday, July 28 from 2:00-5:00 p.m. Pre-pare your favorite local picnic foods for your own picnic, and enjoy them in the Conservancy's picnic grove with many of our local farmers and producers. We will be giving two priz-es: one for the best local picnic spread (meal and/or snacks), and the other for the best picnic dessert. Local farmers and producers are the judges. And, of course, if you want to come picnic with all of us without entering the state contest, just bring your best locally made dishes and join the party. Register for the date at www.hcconservancy.org.
The Conservancy continues to be open almost every day. Come out to hike the trails and see what is currently in bloom on the property. Check for additional information on upcoming activities on the website (www.hcconservancy.org).
BY JO ANN RUSSO, MG AND TABBY FIQUE, MG
A University of Maryland graduate student doing soils research had planted Diakon radishes in the fall followed by spinach in the spring. Details on yield with the decayed radishes as nourishment will be de-veloped for her thesis, but the field was available for harvesting and donation to food banks. Three volunteers picked about0 00 lbs of the spinach and donated it to two food banks. Preliminarily, Diakon rad-ish seems promising as a winter cover crop for our gardens.
There are a couple of presentations coming up for the month of July. Kent Phillips will be doing a hot composting demon-stration at the Enchanted Garden at Miller Library on July 11 at 7 p.m. On July 17 at 7 p.m. he will be doing a fall garden presentation at the Glenwood Library.
BY JERRY KISSEL, MG
July 2013 Looseleaf 4 Howard County Master Gardeners
Middle Patuxent Environmental Area Conservation Stewardship Project
Joanne Heckman (adjacent property own-er, new Master Naturalist) and Rod Valen-zuela (community volunteer) seek out plants nestled beneath a sheltering tree. The earlier rain made pulling easy.
Garlic mustard: 1st-year basal rosette
Two years ago we had a garlic mustard removal event on Wood Elves Way and happily on our May 28 return visit, this inva-sive was noticeably absent. Nevertheless, five of us managed to fill 5 large trash bags with seed-bearing plants. With diligence there should be less mustard along this short section of path each year. Although the prime pulling time is over, garlic mustard can be pulled year-round. How-ever, any plants that have flowers or seed pods must be bagged.
Extra bonuses: a beautiful, blooming, native maple-leaved Viburnum, Viburnum acerifolium, was growing along the path. This shrub has high wildlife value, notably for songbirds and small mammals.
Jewelweed/touch-me-not, Impatiens capensis, was growing just about everywhere. According to the Fish and Wildlife Native Plants guide, this orange-blossomed plant has extremely high wild-life value (songbirds, small mammals, butterflies, and humming-birds). I don’t think it is sold anywhere; I suppose you can trans-plant or maybe those exploding seeds can be captured and planted. The guide also mentions jewelweed as a remedy for poison ivy itching. I actually used it for this purpose (crush the fleshy stems and apply to your blisters). I hope you don’t have to use it.
Finally, Yellow archangel, Lamiastrum galeobdolon, a mint, carpeted the area adjacent to the foot- bridge, forming a mon-oculture similar to the lesser celandine infestation in Patapsco Park. This plant is considered a noxious weed. It reminded me of some of the popular ground covers or weeds) like creeping Charlie/Jenny.
Joanne Heckman’s garlic mustard bouquet
Reminder! On June 25 bring your teens and neighbors to see Towson’s Dr. Vanessa Beauchamp demonstrate a high-tech method for tracking wavyleaf basketgrass using the app downloaded from the www.towson.edu/wavyleaf web site to your Android smartphone (if you have one). This new citizen’s initiative resulted from the confer-ence “Need for an Organized Effort to Effectively Address Wavyleaf Basketgrass in the Mid-Atlantic Region of the U.S.” It will provide data to the state and hopefully underscore the need for continued eradication efforts and research. Meet at the MPEA’s Trotter Road entrance at 9:00 a.m.
In a related area, there is a push to restore and expand federal research on host-specific biological controls of Japanese stiltgrass. Introduced diseases have successfully kept purple loosestrife, garlic mustard, and mile-a-minute under control in some areas and die-back to a varying degree is expected over the next few years. However, years of detailed research were needed to ensure the control agents did not harm our native species.
BY AYLENE GARD, MG
Photographs: Aylene Gard
July 2013 Looseleaf 5 Howard County Master Gardeners
Strolling through the Whipps Garden
Spring 2013 has been a very busy season at Whipps Garden Cemetery, starting with Daffodil Day on Saturday, March 30. The cool days slowed many of the spring bulbs from opening before Daffodil Day. Instead we had to rely on an assortment of potted bulbs—tete-a-tete daffodils, tu-lips, hyacinths, Virginia bluebells, hellebores, Easter lilies and hydrangeas to add color for the celebration. The day was cool and sunny, but it brought out the visitors early. Our flowers were sold quickly. Presentations were given by Judy Petersen, Joe DiGiovanni and Barbara Sieg.
Immediately, we started gearing up for our annual plant sale. Again this year, the two day event was held at the First Lutheran Church on Friday, May 10, and Saturday, May 11. The plant sale included numerous donations from our Master Gardeners as well as many hard-to-find plants from a local nursery. For the first time this year, we shared a few plants (hosta, Celandine poppy, oakleaf hydrangea, white violets, and roses) from the Whipps Gardens. Volun-teers met several days to dig, pot, label and price these items. All donations were transported to the church on Thursday evening, making it easier to organize the layout before the purchased plants arrived. Even with a hard rain Friday night and intermittent showers on Saturday, both days were ex-tremely successful. Many repeat community and master gar-deners returned to help make this plant sale the best ever.
A special thanks goes out to all our Master Gardener colleagues, who helped coordinate, transport, set up, manage and tear down the sale. Special thanks go to Betty Rice for her Ostrich ferns and many perennial donations. Other fea-tured plants included registered daylilies as well as worm compost tea. We were fortunate to have no many wonderful donations, but a bit overwhelmed with a huge collection of solid green hostas. By mid Saturday, we found homes for them by giving them away for Mother’s Day gifts.
Joan Bielski and Valerie Butler were available for Ask a Master Gardener and a presentation on Growing Herbs was given by Anne Roy. It was a huge undertaking done very well. Thanks to all, it was FANTASTIC. THANKS ONE AND ALL for your donations of time, purchases and donations. All proceeds will go toward maintenance at Whipps Cemetery.
Volunteers Janine Grossman, Karen Palm, Pam Pe-ters, Phyllis Yigdall, Nancy McEvoy, Ethelyn Bishop and
Susan Aldape represented Whipps Garden Cemetery at the Howard County GreenFest on April 13.
Our next big project was creating the rose gar-den. Approximately 30 new roses, all repeat bloomers, fra-grant, and disease resistant arrived, much smaller than antici-pated, and needed time to grow in pots. This gave us time to provide the final touches to the rose garden. Paul Kozjar, with the help of Bill Denning, installed the trellis for a bor-der of climbing roses. Joe DiGiovanni helped establish the pathway. Roses were planted by Aleta Gravelle, Robin Crosby, John Crosby, Jake Ahlquest, David Weeks, Carolyn Cradler and several Glenelg Country School students.
Included in the collection are: Belinda’s Dream, Climbing Pinkie, Comte de Chambord, Darlow’s Enigma, Peggy Martin, Green Ice, Loretta Lynn, Mrs. B.R. Cant, Peach Drift, Perle d’Or, Quietness, R. Hugonis, and Spice. The selection and rose garden layout was suggested by Nick Weber of Heritage Rosarium in Brookville, Maryland.
A special thanks goes to Jim Pede for completing the watering system, This system distributes water using pvc pipe and spigots spread throughout the cemetery under-ground and reduces the excessive number of watering hose we always got tangled and tripped over.
Whipps Cemetery observed Memorial Day by plac-ing American flags along St. John’s Lane to honor the sixty burials in the cemetery as well as our family members, our loved ones, our neighbors and our friends who have given the ultimate sacrifice.
Volunteers are needed to assist several hours with the Whipps exhibit at Hands on History at the Howard County Fair Grounds on Wednesday, August 6. Many histo-rians and people with specialties and knowledge of Howard County and beyond will set up tables for the day in the 4H Activity Building (air conditioned). If you would like to volunteer for several hours, please contact Aleta at [email protected].
If you would like to add your name to Whipps week-ly workday announcement, please send Aleta Gravelle a message. 410-465-2398 (home) or 410-274-7795 (cell) or [email protected].
SUBMITTTED BY ALETA GRAVELLE
July 2013 Looseleaf 6 Howard County Master Gardeners
MG Advanced Training Classes for July 2013
For full detail about each class and for registration forms, go to http://extension.umd.edu/mg/advanced-training .
PLANT ID TAXONOMY
If there is one class MG’s should take this is it. All MGs need to know how to use a key to identify woody plants in the landscape. This Plant ID class is being offered in 2 locations.
This course is a very important basic tool for Master Gardeners in that it teaches all of the basics needed to identify woody plants in the landscape. Being able to identify plants is the first step in knowing how to diagnose problems or give grow-ing advice. Whether you want to learn 200 plants, 20 plants, or just want to learn techniques to identify plants in the field, this is the course for you. The course will be made up of approximately 9 hours of class work with lots of hands-on prac-tice with dichotomous keys. You will also receive a specially prepared booklet of course materials.
Required Text: A Field Guide to Trees & Shrubs (Peterson Field Guide) by George A. Petrides ($16).
Certificate Information: This course helps fulfill the requirements for both the MG Plant Diagnostics Certificate and the MG Woody Plants Certificate.
PLANT DISEASES
UME Howard County (Ellicott City)
Thursday 9/5 9:30-3:30pm
Presenter: Dave Clement, Ph.D., Plant Pathologist, University of MD Extension
Registration Fee: $35; Reg Deadline: one week before class (6/4 or 8/29)
Plant diseases often seem like exotic mysteries left up to the experts to solve. Well, guess what- we MG’s can now begin to unravel some of these mysteries ourselves. In this course you’ll learn all about the bacteria, fungi and viruses that cause plant problems. You’ll also learn about their symptoms, cycles and controls. In addition to the lecture and handouts you will get hands-on training using samples. We hope that you’ll feel comfortable enough with the basics of plant diseases to be able to recognize problems in your own gardens and to use the information to competently help clients at plant clinics.
Howard County Reg Fee: $35 & required text
Weds. 7/10, 7/17, 7/24 Registra on Deadline: 7/3
UME, Howard Co. Ellico City
9:30am‐12:30pm Instructor: Wanda
MacLachlan
Montgomery County Reg Fee: $35 & required text
Mon. 7/22, Tues. 7/23, Wed. 7/24 Registra on Deadline: 7/15
UME, Montgomery Co. Derwood
10am‐1pm Instructor: Steve Dubik
Howard County Reg Fee: $35 & required text
Weds. 7/10, 7/17, 7/24 Registra on Deadline: 7/3
UME, Howard Co. Ellico City
9:30am‐12:30pm Instructor: Wanda
MacLachlan
Montgomery County Reg Fee: $35 & required text
Mon. 7/22, Tues. 7/23, Wed. 7/24 Registra on Deadline: 7/15
UME, Montgomery Co. Derwood
10am‐1pm Instructor: Steve Dubik
News From the State Office
July 2013 Looseleaf 7 Howard County Master Gardeners
VEGETABLE GARDENING CLASSES:
For full detail about each class and for registration forms, go to http://extension.umd.edu/mg/advanced-training .
Questions? Contact Robin Hessey at [email protected] or 410-531-1754.
Vegetable Plant and Pest Diagnosis
Howard Co. Conservancy
Woodstock (wait list on-ly)
Tues. 7/16
9am-3:30pm
Jon Traunfled $35
Reg. Deadline 7/9
Vegetable Plant and Pest Diagnosis
Charles Co. -La Plata (Library and Detention Facility)
Th. 7/18
9am-3:30pm
Jon Traunfled $35
Reg. Deadline 7/9
News From the State Office