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July 2017
Established in 1980
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In this issue you will find:
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This is a sight we're all eagerly awaiting !! |
- Message from the President
- Upcoming Events
- Member Tours & Events
- Seminars
- Feature Articles
- "In Your Plot"
- Make a Donation to GVG via AmazonSmile
- Please Thank Freeport-McMoRan Foundation for Their Financial Support
- Project Updates
- Arid Garden
- Allen J. Ogden Community Garden
- Desert Meadows Park
- GVG Gardens at Historic Canoa Ranch
- Committee Updates
Would you like to submit an article or a photo for the July newsletter? Please submit it to [email protected] by July 28.
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MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT
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This past May, the Green Valley Recreation Research Foundation announced it will be developing a community focused website,
www.RetireArizona.org, to promote Green Valley as the USA's premier retirement community. The program is scheduled to be operational by October 2017. The Green Valley Gardeners, after reviewing the prototype web site and further meetings with the web site's communications director, Natalie Whitman, have agreed to participate and provide ongoing information in a blog format regarding the Club's program or events and community offerings. The cost for using the Retire Arizona web site will be $85 a year or $7.00 a month, beginning April 2018. For the period between October 2017 and April 2018, our participation as a non-profit organization will be free as we develop our blog process and become familiar with the Retire Arizona program.
While we have an existing web site,
www.GreenValleyGardeners.com, participation in the Retire Arizona program will allow the Club to be a part of a nationwide public relations program where potential newcomers will learn about our gardening expertise with regard to sustainable practices in the Sonoran region. This will be both a valuable educational effort and hopefully may add to our membership when readers make the decision to move to Green Valley. My intention is to develop a committee of Club members with interests in writing about the Club's various programs and activities and build an ongoing photographic display and print communication venue in blog format. Anyone with an interest in participating in the development of the Club's Retire Arizona blog is invited to contact me (
[email protected]) to discuss how we can best develop our involvement for the October 2017 launch. Please take some time to explore
www.RetireArizona.org and review the initial posting by Friends of Madera Canyon. Your feedback will be much appreciated.
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- Seminars will resume in September
Member Activities
- Member Activities will resume in September/October
Visit our
website for a complete calendar of events
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| Tomato hornworms can be difficult to find. |
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"In Your Plot"
by Lorna Mitchell
Water is the life-blood of the garden, and the monsoons are especially welcome after a dry spring. As I write this, the heat is ravaging and the rains are yet but a hope. Do keep your irrigation timers and tubing in good working order as the rains can be spotty and unpredictable. Tomatoes,
squash, green beans, peppers, eggplant, pumpkins, melons, and corn are abundant already, and they will flourish as the humidity climbs.
Pests can wreak havoc at any time, and will come in abundance with the rains. Tomato hornworms can devour enough leaves in one day to almost destroy the plant. Look for their signs - little black droppings on leaves and ground, or leafless sticks of tomato stems. The caterpillar itself can be very difficult to find as it is the same color as what it eats. Spray BT (follow directions on dilution) on the entire crop of tomatoes, this can be repeated up to day of harvest. BT contains bacteria that cause caterpillars to stop eating after ingesting it - which is not good for them, but it is very good for us because they stop eating our plants!
Seeds of fast-growing, heat-loving plants can go in the ground now - summer squash including pumpkins, radishes, corn, beans and melons. Transplants of tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant should give a harvest before fall, too. Accommodate them to living outdoors over a week or so before planting outside.
Now is the time to plan your cool-season garden. Think of cold nights and lots of broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower. Transplants will go into the garden the middle to end of September. If you grow your own from seed, allow at least eight weeks (or ten weeks is better) from seed to plot - that means by the second week of July your seeds are in potting soil. Keep them moist and in full sun after they get some leaves so they can be ready for life in the big outdoors. Think ahead - fresh broccoli for Thanksgiving dinner!
Those are my plot thoughts for now, Happy Gardening!
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Please Thank Freeport-McMoRan Foundation for Their Financial Support
Freeport-McMoRan ran a full-page ad in the April 16 GVNews soliciting community feedback. If you have not already done so, please take a few minutes to respond and thank them for the financial support they provided our club. We received $116,000 in 2014 to build Desert Meadows Park. Yes, we've put in over 14,000 volunteer hours, but we needed their money to purchase materials. Green Valley would not yet have a park, if it weren't for their financial support in 2014.
To access the on-line survey go to
www.freeportinmycommunity.com. Look for the "Community Survey" link near the top of the page, or click
here. They accept your input through July 30th. Please do it now so you won't forget.
Towards the end of the survey you have the opportunity to make a statement about the park specifically. Please state what you like about it, how you personally have benefited from it, what you believe the park does for the community, etc. or simply say thanks for the financial support they provided to make it happen in our life-time.
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Shop AmazonSmile and Benefit the Garden Club
Green Valley Gardeners is now listed on AmazonSmile. When you shop Amazon, log into AmazonSmile, use your existing personal account login information, select Green Valley Gardeners as your non-profit of choice. The club will receive a small donation for each qualifying purchase you make. Thank you!
To shop AmazonSmile go to
http://smile.amazon.com/.
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Spider Lily
, first bloom after Sept 16 planting
of bulb from Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.
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Arid Garden
by Mary Kidnocker
Stories could be written about garden volunteers... showing up before 7 a.m. to try beating the heat, working into the triple digits until all needed tasks are finished, washing bird doo off benches, successfully scrubbing mesquite sap from walks with bleach and broom, coming by several times a week to move soaker hose to yet another tree, removing unending quantities of dead leaves from arroyos before summer rains, spraying smelly rabbit repellent around
succulent 'salad' plants, holding the garden hose until thumbs numb, feeding and weeding... even dressing Josephina Javelina appropriately to celebrate our nation's birthday. These special people know that it is each of them who contribute to keep this garden the special place it is. Thanks to you all !!
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Josephina Javelina
ready for July 4 Fest
thanks to neighbor Fran King.
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Who said Chollas aren't beautiful?
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Naima Weaver watering her green beans.
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Allen J. Ogen Community Garden
b
y George Stone
June was a great month for Ogden Gardeners, who reported bumper crops. Tomatoes, squash and zucchini were ready for harvest, and little hands were busy helping parents grow what they eat
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Haydee Hernandez with her two nieces, Alyah and
Alany
Camacho,
v
isiting from San Diego.
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Here are a few highlights from other Garden activities this month:
- The heat did not keep these ladies from a visit to the Garden. Garden club member, Sandra Haegele, made arrangements for this ladies group to visit our hummingbird feeder stations, and they were not disappointed. After touring the garden and making a stop at our chickens, the ladies enjoyed an hour watching the hummers.
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| Ladies group visiting the hummingbirds. |
- Twelve Arizona FFA teachers enjoyed a BBQ dinner at the Garden after a day of touring Arizona farms and farm-industry institutions. Rio Rico High School FFA teacher, Richard McPhearson, is leading the group for a week-long tour through Southern Arizona. Our collaboration with the educational field continues to evolve as Tucson's Davis Bilingual Magnet School teacher, Julian Barcelo, assisted with the dinner. Julian is, himself, an innovator in school gardening. Special guest Bill Berdine arrived and became available as the event's taste tester. Thanks goes out to our fellow Ogden gardeners Tim Drumm, Rita Skora and Kathy Stone who volunteered to help with the event.
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BBQ dinner served on the patio.
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Dragon fruit? What is that, you may ask. Short answer is... it's a fruit grown from a succulent native to South America and grown lots of places in the world, but not here in Southern Arizona. Well, that's about to change according to new garden member, Jerry Ildefonso. Jerry, has a deep desire to grow the Dragon fruit and wants to experiment with it in the Ogden Garden. After being assigned his plot, Jerry immediately began the construction of his shade structure.
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Jerry Ildefonso assembling his shade structure.
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June 19-23 -- What a week!!! Our Club's very first children's classes in the Garden were a success beyond our wildest dreams. Fifteen second graders signed up for a week of gardening events, where they rotated through scientific stations. The kids did great, and never once complained about the heat. The classes were conducted by Haydee Hernandez and Julian Barcelo. This event was well received by both parents and the children, and the Club may decide to make this an annual event.
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First ever children's class in the Garden.
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- And, lastly, we're sad to report that we lost our Rhode Island Red hen to heat exhaustion. No plans to replace her at this time; perhaps when it cools down.
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Desert Meadows Park
by Chuck Parsons
Brutally hot! Volunteers have adjusted their hours and activities to accommodate. We start before the sun gets up, primarily limit our activities to keeping plants hydrated and strive to leave before the temperature hits 100. Looking forward to the monsoon season!
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Produce for the area food banks.
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Elissa and her crew of volunteers have fewer community garden plots for food bank production this summer. However, they are off to a great start. Over 500 pounds of produce was donated this month. So far, donations for 2017 are above those for 2016/2015. Recall that donations are split between the Green Valley and the Sahuarita food banks.
When you visit the park, look for the new birds in the grassland area. Two metal sculptures have been added. They were created by Justin and Carrel Loveless. The Loveless garden, and all their whimsical yard-art, was on the 2015 Spring Garden Tour.
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New additions to the park's grasslands.
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As Bill Berdine discussed in this issue's "Message from the President", GVR Foundation is facilitating a promotional website for Green Valley to be launched later this year on www.retirearizona.org. To contribute to this effort, John Bransky visited Desert Meadows Park during a Wednesday work-day this month to take some video clips of our volunteers. You can see the final product, and perhaps get a glimpse of someone you know, at https://youtu.be/-yiboj9wKYM.
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| Desperate critters ravage the East Cactus Garden. |
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GVG Gardens at Historic Canoa Ranch (HCR)
by Jack Davis and Raydine Taber
Thanks to Simon Herbert and the Site Restoration Volunteers, we have a new irrigation box for the Senior House Herb Gardens. This one is large enough for us to wrap the timer and connections with insulation during the colder months. The top is slanted, allowing rain water to run off. They also put three doors to allow us access from any side. The herb gardens and hanging baskets at Senior House are doing very well. We are waiting for the hummingbirds to discover the new feeder in the herb gardens.
We still have our ongoing issues with critter destruction in the East Cactus Garden. As you can see (above), they are not only eating the plants, but excavating soil to get to the roots, showing us how desperate the critters are to get moisture. Amazing to see that, on one plant, they actually striped off the spines get to the fleshy cacti.
The new Junior House Courtyard plants are doing exceptionally well and should be very showy with blooms through the seasons. The inside window planter box is also thriving through the June heat wave. Several months ago, a visitor to the ranch left three potted plants on the fireplace mantel - two trandescantia zebrine (wandering jew) and one Angel Wing Begonia. Maybe it was the heat, but more than likely our resident mice, who shortened the zebrine plant vines. However, they did leave stems and leaves, allowing us to regenerate additional plants to fill in the pots.
Grijalva House raised beds and the new wall plantings of tomatoes and peppers were thriving with the new irrigation system. Unfortunately, someone turned off the water faucet instead of just the hose. Right now it looks like we may have lost five tomato plants. However, Elissa Dearing told me clip them back and I might be able to get another growth from them. Thank you, Elissa.
Another "Thank You" goes to Joy Maier for covering one of my maintenance weeks. I really, really appreciate you jumping in when I couldn't get out there.
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Membership - New Members
by Mark Thompson
This hot weather slows down a lot of things, and it sure has slowed down new member recruitment. We were able to process only one new member last month and that was
Ann Goff. So, if you see Ann around town, thank her for both her membership and donation.
Speaking of donations, we have received $910 in donations alone with new or renewal memberships since the first of this year. This is almost twice what we brought in for donations through memberships in all of last year. Right now, we stand at 385 members. Perhaps membership will pick up when the monsoons show up.
Thanks for your support!
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