Master Gardener Graduation 2012

New Master Gardeners for 2012 are:

Leroy Andrews

Timothy Bennett

Duane Maxson

Fred McGinley & Mike Jensen

Sharon Skeeles

 Yvonne Schilling

Fred Stoll

Although this blogger attended, the picture is on another camera.  Other graduates who were unable to attend are Moddie Dressell, Teresa Mariano, and Tootie Marschke.

Extension Agent Mike Jenson gave a welcome and Hal White Master Gardener President, offered additional comments.  A bring-a-dish luncheon followed with the ususal outstanding flavors and varity. 

Mike Jensen and Hal White presented official Master Gardener badges, water bottles and carry bags to the new Master Gardeners.  Many of those who are already Master Gardeners attended the ceremony to honor the new ones. 

Special thanks go to Ken and Barb Sheasley for their help in planning the celebration

Class Picnic

April 24, 2012 was our last day of class, so we had a picnic to celebrate.  Everyone brought a dish to pass and wow, such yummy dishes.  It was a very chilly day with close to record low temperatures for the time of year.  We moved our picnic tables out of the shade into the bright sun, and that helped.  Wind chill is a factor in Florida and there was plenty of wind that day too.  Still, we had great fun and enjoyed the celebration... and the end of weekly classes.

Echo Farms

What a great field trip!  Echo Farms is a gardener's delight.  Echo stands for Educational Concerns For Hunger Organization.  Their website Echo Farms states that:

The Global Farms is divided into seven main areas. Each area is managed by one of ECHO's agricultural interns who spends 12 months cultivating, harvesting, and researching numerous crops, fruit trees, and nutritious food plants. Each plot is also used to produce seeds which are ultimately packaged and sent overseas in order to be evaluated as a potential new food crop. Showcased on the various plots are affordable and sustainable farming techniques that also incorporate suitable animals and appropriate technologies.

Thanks to the friendly guidance of Vic Estoye, a 30 year Master Gardener, we toured all of them.

Master Gardener Vic

A Very Curious Goat

Methane Production.  (If the tire is inflated there's methane)

See the bottle on the roof?  It's is filled with water and used to bring light into the dark goat barn.

Ways to Grow Vegetables on a Rocky Hillside

She is not much bigger than a goat and is a cow for small spaces and sparse grazing.

No electricity to run a pump? Here is a hand cranked well system that will do the trick.

A new method of rice growing to be carefully introduced to subsistence farmers. Sudden  changes are never suggested for fear of a devastating crop failure which could mean starvation in undeveloped countries.  Instead, Echo volunteers suggest part of field as a test.

No soil for growing your veggies on that rooftop?  A five gallon bucket, an old piece of carpet and some corncobs can make it happen for you.  The bucket has a small hole in the bottom and is filled with liquid fertilizer.  The solution leaks out and wets the carpet.  Seeds are laid on the carpet, and when they sprout are propped up with corn cobs, soda cans or whatever is available to hold them upright.

 Many items can be re-purposed for growing vegetables.

Gloria, a moment after she learned that the leaf she just sampled should not be eaten raw as it turns to cyanide in your system.  Fortunately, she didn't eat enough to hurt her.

We had a great time, and many of us are planning to return to buy those lovely plants that just wouldn't fit into our vans.  We did manage to bring home a few though.  Dee Dee bought an apple tree, two of us bought passion fruit and almost all of us took home some herbs and seeds.  It's really worth the trip, so if you have the time and inclination, directions on how to get there are on the website (link at the top of the page)  Sign up for a tour to learn about their work, and I guess I don't have to encourage you to visit the nursery.  It would probably be impossible to keep you out. Enjoy!

Vermiculture... Yeah, it's Composting With Worms

Our final class in which we learned how to make worm casting compost.  If you want to try this, you will need three eight to ten gallon plastic bins, drill with 1/4" and 1/16" bits, newspaper and about one pound of red worms.  Here is link to a very good website with specific instructions about how to proceed:  Vermiculture Made Simple  We had a great hands-on demonstration from Dee Dee.

Worm Bin with Ventilation Holes

Wet Newspaper for Bedding

Food Scraps to Feed the Worms

The Worms!

Don't worry.  They're just stretched out Tootsie Rolls rolled in graham cracker crumbs.  Some of us ate them with our lunches.

Kitchen scraps in the garbage can will be a thing of the past with a worm bin nearby.  Dee Dee said she keeps hers under a kitchen island, and no one has ever questioned her about what it is.  Worms love breads and grains, coffee grounds and filters, tea bags, vegetables and fruits.   Washed egg shells are okay too. Dee Dee said hers particularly like banana peels.  Worms hate dairy products, fats, meats, feces and oils.  Here is another website with more comprehensive information about vermiculture including bins and types of worms:  Vermiculture   According to this site, Eisenia Foetida is the best one to use. Others say they are an non-native species and should not be used. Here is a website with a long list of worm farms.  Scroll down to find a Florida grower.  Where to Buy Worms

Composting

Very few places in Florida have rich, highly organic soils.  Most of us deal with sand of various kinds.  Some plants such as peaches and watermelons do well in sandy soils, but in order for them to thrive, those soils must be amended with organic materials.  You can get organic materials by buying it, which is rather expensive for any quantity, or by making it yourself.  Composting is probably the Florida gardeners' best friend.  What is composting?  "Using the natural process of decay to change organic wastes into a valuable humus-like material call compost."  How do you make it yourself?

Here is an excellent composting PowerPoint Presentation developed at Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences.  Composting  Scroll down to the presentation. 

If you can't open the PowerPoint here are some basics:  To speed up the natural decay of organic materials, you need a compost pile or bin.  In it you can control air, water, food and temperature.  You will also need decomposers and food for the decomposers.  The decomposers are the microbes, mainly bacteria and fungi that do the work for you.  Foods for them are organic materials to be composted and the right amount of air, water and warmth.  Grass clippings, used potting soil, manure, leaves, garden trimmings, kitchen scraps and even hair are food for the microbes.  Materials to avoid are oils, fat, grease, meat, fish, or dairy products and unwashed egg shells.  Dog or cat waste and diseased or insect ridden plants should also be avoided. They tend to attract pests and may introduce diseases.  Also avoid hard to kill weeds and weeds that have gone to seed.  

Bins for composting are many and varied from commercial tumblers to simple fencing circles like this from the blog; Garden Now - Think Later  When you put yours together, remember that it should be in the shade and have a nearby water source.  You will need to turn your compost pile. Be sure there is adequate room.  Your neighbors probably would rather not see it, so conceal it or be sure that it's not unsightly.  Some HOAs do not allow composting, so be sure to check.  If they don't, please work to change the rules.  Landfills get full... what then?

You should plan to give your decomposers a balanced diet of browns and greens.  Browns are high carbon materials such as leaves, straw, paper, sawdust and animal bedding with manure.  Greens are high nitrogen materials such as vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, grass clippings and manures.  The quickest way to make compost is by adding mixed browns plus greens, turning every five to seven days, controlling the water content.  When the pile no longer heats after mixing, allow it to stand without mixing for a least four weeks.  Compost is mature when the color is dark brown, crumbly, loose and humus-like, has an earthly smell, contains no recognizable feedstock and has shrunk to about 1/3 of its original size.  Put some on your garden beds to enrich them, and enjoy the feeling of making something worthwhile out of something that would have been thrown away.

Veggies!

Growing a great vegetable garden in Florida is possible, practical and rewarding.  You will have great bragging rights, fruits and vegetables for your table and to share.  If there is an over-abundance, you can freeze or can the excess to enjoy throughout the year.  Florida has two seasons in which you can grow a vegetable garden, spring and fall.  It's important to realize which vegetables grow best in which season. Many will do well in either season, but some, like eggplant, squash and melons will do best in a spring garden.  Spinach and most leafy greens will like the cooling weather of a fall garden. Our summer is like winter in the north, a time to rest your vegetable garden or perhaps solarize it and plan your fall and spring gardens. 

Our teacher for this session was Ed Thralls Master Gardener Program Coordinator for Orange County, among other duties. The Orange County Extension has demonstration gardens at their 6021 S. Conway Rd., Orlando location, and Ed invited Master Gardeners to visit.  Call ahead first.  Here is the number 407.254.9200.  He gave us two great handouts, Florida Vegetable Gardening Guide and Managing Insects in the Home Vegetable Garden. The guide has information on when to plant and what varieties do best in Florida.  Look for those with high resistance to insects and diseases.  We do have our share of insects don't we? One of our instructors mentioned that bugs like Florida as much as we do and for the same reasons. How true!

A very important item to consider when planning your garden is sunlight.  It must have at least six hours of full sun a day.  Access to water is also important.  If it's difficult to water, it probably won't be. Good soil and a willingness to work in it and tend it are also needed. That means watering and feeding when needed, inspecting for insects and diseases, controlling them and generally making sure your garden is growing well.  For a great garden test your soil, amend as needed, and add organics.

 Raised beds will reduce some of the major problems of Florida gardening.  In them, you can control the soil structure, provide water more easily and save your back from bending so far. They can also be a very nice addition to your landscape.  Raised beds can be made from many different materials.  They can be very elaborate or as simple as some decorative picnic ice buckets from Walmart like mine.  This is their second season, and they are holding up well.

Some have said that gardening improves the neighborhood, and I agree.  Having tomatoes to share is a great way to get to know your neighbors.  Maybe they will get interested in growing a garden too and eventually share something that you don't grow with you.

.

Landscape Weeds to Know and Not to Grow

Most of us have said unpleasant things about weeds as we pull them from our gardens, and I'm sure that most of us have wished that the desirable plants flourished as well as the weeds.  Brent Sellers UF Extension Weed Specialist, is the weed expert in our area. He is an Associate Professor at the UF Range Cattle Research and Education Center in Ona.  Here is a link to his UF web page:  Brent Sellers.   He brought along a selection of weeds for us to examine and gave a good grounding in weed control and why it's important.  Some weeds are toxic to cattle and humans, and most of the residents of Highlands County live near agriculture or pasture land.  Since weeds tend to be prolific seed bearers and can spread rapidly all of us share a responsibility to manage them. 

Herbicides are one of the ways to manage weeds, but the right herbicide must be used, and it must be applied correctly.  The question of herbicide safety was almost immediately raised.  Brent laid that question to rest rather quickly, and here is quote from the paper:  Herbicides: How Toxic are They by Fishel, Farrel, MacDonald and Sellers.  

     Although there have been pesticides that were toxic and dangerous to handle, most of these products are no longer used and have been replaced by newer chemistry. Pesticides now must go through rigorous testing by EPA before they can be sold. This has led to many herbicides that possess little or no mammalian toxicity and are less harmful than many everyday household products. Surprisingly, household chemicals that many of us store under the kitchen sink pose more risk to the handler than herbicides.  Herbicide Toxicity

As always, caution should be used when applying chemicals and care should be take that only the weeds to be destroyed are treated.  Some plants are extremely sensitive to herbicides.  For instance, tomatoes and certain other vegetable crops are very sensitive to 2, 4-D.  Be careful with sprays so that they don't drift on to desirable plants.   Here is a link to Brent's weed identification chart.  Weed Identification  Some plants such as Beauty Berry are desirable plants frequently used to attract birds in the garden, but they are considered undesirable weeds in pasture and agriculture lands.  In this instance it's true that a weed is just a plant growing in the wrong place.