Cooperative Extension Service

Owen County

265 Ellis Highway

Owenton, KY 40359-

(502) 484-5703

Fax: (502) 484-574

extension.ca.uky.edu

Owen County Extension

Homemakers June 2021 Volume 1 Issue 6

Kendal Bowman

Owen Co.

Extension Agent

For Ag & Natural

Resources

Education

Inside this

issue:

Club

Information

2

Old Canning

Jars

2

Butterflies in

Your Garden

3

Growing Cut

Flowers

4

Money Wise 5-6

Flyers 7-11

Owen County Fair

The Owen County 4-H Fair & Horse Show will start with

events happening on Saturday, June 26th with the

beauty pageants, animal shows and Cowboy Shooters.

Sunday, June 27th will be the Community Wide Church

Service along with announcing Owen Countian of the

Year and Mother of the Year. On Monday, July 5th we

will start our cleaning of the exhibit building at 9:00 AM, with exhibits being entered

on Tuesday, July 6th. The carnival will be there starting Tuesday evening, July 6th.

Each and everyone of you know the hard work that Judy always put into the exhibit

halls and we want to continue this. With that being said, we need your help. We

are needing volunteers to help enter in exhibits at each category, help with putting

ribbons on the winners projects and help to beautifully display them. Please call

Stephanie or Emily at the office to sign up at 502-484-5703.

Homemakers Book List

You can get these books from the Owen

County Public Library!!!!

“The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill,

Family and Defiance During the Blitz” by Erik

Larson

“Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other

Lies I’ve Loved” by Kate Bowler

“The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren

Tired of the

paper

clutter??

Call us to start

receiving the

Newsletter by email.

Dear Owen County Extension Homemakers,

Don’t forget that the Owen County 4-H Fair & Horse Show will start with events on

June 26-27th with the fair starting on July 6th with entering exhibits. Make sure

you bring in your exhibits for the fair. We hope we have our exhibit buildings full

with wonderful crafts, canned food, culinary & art. The county fair book will soon

be at the office and in the newspaper. Stop by and pick one up.

Owen County Extension Homemakers

Attention Homemakers:

We have offices to fill for the upcoming year on Homemaker Council. We are in need of a Vice President,

Treasurer, and Secretary. To nominate someone please call the office at (502)484-5703. We also need

your help coming up with new fundraising ideas! If you have some new ideas to raise funds for the

homemaker council submit them to the extension office for the next meeting.

The Cotton Club

The Cotton Club will be meeting on Tuesday, June 15th at 6:00 PM at the Owen County Extension Office.

Sew All Day

If you have a project that you are needing help or finding the time to complete it, come join us at the

Extension Office on Friday, June 11th from 9:00 AM-4:00 PM.

Etiquette & Manners

In collaboration with the Owen County Summer School Programs we will be doing an Etiquette &

Manners program June 14th from 8:30 AM-Noon at the Extension Office. We are in need of some

volunteers who would like to help teach the children how to set a table & learn about manners. Please

call the office at 502-484-5703.

Memory Makers Club

The Memory Makers Club will be meeting at the Owen County Extension Office June 18-20th. Call the

office if you have any questions.

Old Canning Jars Might be Unsafe for Preserving Food

Many of us found it difficult to purchase canning supplies last year during the pandemic. With everyone staying at home and the uncertainty of the food supply, having a garden and preserving your own food seemed the way to go. Boiling water bath canners and pressure canners sold old out everywhere and you could not find a jar or box of lids. With this shortage of supplies at retail stores and online, people began purchasing jars at flea markets and antique malls. And while there is not necessarily a food safety risk in using canning jars purchased at these locations, there is a risk of breakage because of the age of the jars. Canning jars do not have a manufacture date stamped or embossed into the jar. They may have a date or even a large number (0-15) on the bottom of the jar, but that date is the patent date and the large number is the mold date. Unfortunately, neither of those reflect the year the jar was made.

The National Center for Home Food Preservation says, “Very old jars can weaken with age and repeated use; they break under pressure and heat.” Jars should always be examined carefully for cracks, nips, and chips in the body and around the sealing edge before use. It also helps to know the history of the jars and how and where they were stored. Extreme changes in temperature can weaken the glass, which cannot be seen upon visual examination.

Antique canning jars should only be used for decoration or dry food storage, not food preservation. In addition, vintage jars with wire bales and rubber rings should not be used for canning. Purchasing new jars is a better investment over time than buying used jars at a flea market or yard sale. If you take good care of your jars, always use a rack in the bottom of the canner, protect them from extreme temperatures, and avoid chipping or cracking, you can use them for many years.

Reference: National Center for Home Food Preservation, https://nchfp.uga.edu/ Source: Annhall Norris, Extension Specialist for Food Safety and Preservation

Welcome Butterflies to Your Garden

Light as air, bright as stained glass or creamy as angel wings, butterflies and moths do the important work of pollinating our plants while bringing joy to our gardens. They don’t require a lot from us hu-man caregivers — only a few host plants for the babies, a few nectar plants for the adults, a little water or moist soil, a flat rock for sunning, and they’re happy critters.

The best flowers to plant for adult butterflies are nectar-rich classics. Hybrid plants, while beautiful, are often sterile or don’t provide the largesse of nectar butterflies need. Plant sun-loving, brightly colored plants of all heights to attract the greatest diversity of butterflies and moths to your yard. Perennial plants such as coneflowers, asters, catmint and liatris are good choices. Some annuals that will attract butterflies and bees are lantana, sweet alyssum, sunflowers, zinnias and snapdragons. Most salvias, either annual or per-ennial, are pollinator magnets. Night flying moths are espe-cially attracted to white flowers, so moonflower vines, white impatiens and nicotiana are good annuals to plant.

Different butterflies are attracted to plantings of various heights. For instance, tiger swallowtails are attracted to the tall Joe Pye weed and New England aster blossoms. Least skippers enjoy low-growing plants like lavender, dianthus and low-growing asters such as Stokes’ aster. Shrubs like viburnum, sweetspire and elderberry are also good options to attract a variety of species.

You will also need to plant some host plants as nurseries for the insects. If you intermingle host plants with nectar plants, you will improve your chances of seeing generations of butterflies in your garden. Milkweed is preferred by Mon-arch butterflies, because feeding on the plant as caterpillars builds up the toxins in their bodies that make them unpalatable to their enemies. The Eastern tailed-blue butterfly likes to lay its eggs on sweet peas. The hackberry tree is a host tree to many species of butterfly caterpillars. Larvae of the black swallowtail butterfly frequent garden plants of parsley, carrot, dill and fennel—with practice their stripped caterpillars are easy to spot.

Butterflies are cold-blooded and need warmth in the morning. Placing a flat rock in a sunny spot near your flowers can give them the energy they need for a day of foraging. And leaving them a shallow pan of water filled with pebbles or sand or soil will provide them with the water and minerals they need to be healthy. Above all, do not use pesticides in your garden. Most pesticides can harm or kill butterflies and moths, as well as other important pollinators. Even organic pesticides such as neem oil or insect soap can kill them or cause disruptions in their mating or feeding behaviors. The best way to control harmful insects in your garden is to plant for diversity and let nature take care of the problem for you.

Source: Richard Durham, extension professor, Department of Horticulture

Growing Great Cut Flowers

A fresh cut bouquet of flowers can brighten any room and elicit happiness for any who see it. But as

wonderful as these arrangements are, they are even more rewarding when you grow your own! While this

may seem like a daunting task to those without much of a green thumb, there are plenty of flowers which

grow well in our climate and can be very forgiving to new growers. Some of my personal favorites are

zinnias, cosmos, and celosia (also known as cook’s comb). These three varieties are available in endless

amounts of colors, and zinnias and cosmos are know to bloom all summer long.

The best way to get started growing cut flowers is to browse online or flip through seed catalogs and pick out

the colors and varieties you would like to try your hand at growing. I have found that over the last few years

more and more seed catalogs are beginning to include flowers, with some even having their own catalog

solely dedicated to cut flowers. Generally, cut flower seeds are best to start at the same time as most of our

vegetable crops (4 to 6 weeks) before the last frost)! This way you are able to start harvesting your first cuts

by middle to late June. Both zinnias and cosmos are great flowers for producing blooms all summer long and

into fall right up until frost. The trick to keeping your flowers blooming is to keep harvesting and cutting back

the spent blooms. This promotes more branching and further bud and flower development. Zinnias and

cosmos can both be planted as bedding plants, so be sure to select seeds for long stemmed varieties when

growing for cut flowers. With this in mind, you may want to consider staking some of these flowers. Old

tobacco sticks or tomato

stakes work well for

staking. You may even

want to consider using the

Florida weave (a series of

stakes and twine) just as

you would do for tomato

trellising. If you are

planting several taller

varieties into a home

landscape as opposed to

mixing them with your

vegetable garden, as I

generally do, you may find

it nice to plant some

smaller annuals in front of

your cut flowers or mix them into you perennial beds to provide some height variation.

In addition to these annuals, many of our perennials as well as well as our tubers and bulb plants make for

great cuts as well. Some of my favorites from these categories include hydrangeas, peonies, dahlias,

gladiolus, black eyed susans, and coreopsis. What can you find in your garden and flower beds to bring

inside and brighten for day?

Owen County Extension

265 Ellis Highway

Owenton, KY 40359