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October 2017
Established in 1980
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In this issue you will find:
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Ready for early "trick or treating", Josephina Javelina, the Arid Garden's mascot, is dressed in her Halloween finest! |
- Message from the President
- Upcoming Events
- Member Tours & Events
- Seminars
- Feature Articles
- "In Your Plot"
- Make a Donation to GVG via AmazonSmile
- Project Updates
- Arid Garden
- Allen J. Ogden Community Garden
- Casa Memory Garden
- Desert Meadows Park
- GVG Gardens at Historic Canoa Ranch
- Committee Updates
- Seminars
- Member Activities
- Membership ~ New Members
- Fall Plant Sale
- Member Photographs
Would you like to submit an article or a photo for the November newsletter? Please submit it to [email protected] by October 27.
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MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT
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Board of Directors Election
: All members will be receiving a print ballot along with a stamped return envelope early in October. The ballot includes four members: Diane Carley, Marilee Crumley, Bill Berdine and David Duffy. I want to encourage everyone receiving a ballot to complete that as soon as possible and return them to the Election Committee. Active member participation in the Club's annual Board of Directors election is vital for the ongoing success of the Club and its various activities.
By Law amendment
: Included in your ballot is a proposed amendment to permit Club members to vote electronically rather than using the US postal service. With an annual membership of 400+/-, the cost of mailing the ballot and including a stamped return envelope has become what the Board believes to be a unnecessary cost and managerial matter. I encourage you to consider the By Amendment change and vote YES.
Big Pig Gig
: A new and novel Club activity will occur on October 8 with the hoped-to-be annual pig roast. The Big Pig Gig will be held at the Allen J. Ogden Community Garden and hosted by member gardeners from the Ogden Garden. A ninety-pound pig will be roasted, which will be enough for up to 100 member attendees. This will a good opportunity for Club members not familiar with the Ogden Community Garden to get a first-hand tour as well enjoy several activities prior to serving dinner. A complete outline of the activity can be found on our web site, and you will find additional details later in this edition of Sand 'N' Seeds.
Club Calendar of Events: If you have not looked at our website recently, please take some to time to explore its various sections and use it to update your calendars with regard to what we have to look forward to.
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Seminars
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Learn how to care for amazing adeniums at the October 12 seminar. |
- October 5 Desert Hills Seminar ~ "Sustainability in Action" ~ B. J. Cordova of Tucson Clean and Beautiful
- October 12 Desert Hills Seminar ~ "Care of Amazing Adeniums" ~ Bob Webb of Arid Lands Greenhouses
- October 26 Desert Hills Seminar ~ "Plant Sale Preview" ~ Alex Shipley of Civano Nursery
Member Activities
- October 8 ~ The "Big Pig Gig" at Ogden Gardens
- October 18 ~ Tour of a University of Arizona Demonstration Garden
Be on the lookout for separate email blasts, providing details for each of these seminars and member activities.
Visit our
website for a complete calendar of events
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| Short-day onions are juicy and sweeter than storage onions. |
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"In Your Plot"
by Lorna Mitchell
October is the beginning of our winter vegetable season. Now is the time to plant while soils are still warm so seeds will germinate and roots grow. We are fortunate to garden year round by rotating types of crops. Remember to replenish soil nutrients with amendments of steer manure, peat, and balanced fertilizer whenever you dig. Now is the time for transplants of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, Swiss chard, spinach, cilantro and kale. Put in seeds of carrots, beets, Swiss chard, kale, lettuce, spinach, cilantro, peas, radishes, kohlrabi, rutabaga, parsnips, and turnips.
Garlic goes in now and stays in till May or June. I've had good success with garlic from the 99 Cent Only Store, just pull it apart and bury individual cloves in the soil, point up, about 2 inches apart, make sure it will receive irrigation. Order interesting varieties from seed catalogs.
Don't plant "winter squash"; that's a term for hard skinned squash that stores well but it is very frost sensitive and grows in the summer. Also, don't plant potatoes yet; Irish potatoes will plant in February, sweet potatoes in May.
Onions go in next month or later. Day length determines the growth of the bulb in onions. At our latitude we have short days. Be sure to get "short day" onions which bulb with only 11-12 hours of daylight, which will happen next spring. One leaf develops at a time and can take about two weeks, the goal is 13 leaves; each one turning into one layer of the onion bulb. Short day onions don't store well but are juicy and sweeter than storage onions. Long day onions store well because they are drier but that concentrates the polyphenol chemicals. Hot temperatures cause onions to bolt (sending up a flower stalk) so we grow them in the winter. Plan now to order plants.
A pest that warrants mentioning is the cabbage looper. Watch those little brassicas for the tiny green caterpillars that gobble up their leaves; treat with BT but be sure to wet the underside of the leaves also. Grasshoppers are rampant this year and are devouring everything! Shielding your young plants and seedlings with row covers and or individual covers is the best bet to their survival.
See you in the garden during the great autumn weather this month.
Those are my plot thoughts for now, Happy Gardening!
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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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Snappy yellow Mexican Sunflowers brighten a September morning
at The Arid Garden.
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Arid Garden
by Mary Kidnocker
Who says not much is blooming now? Currently full of flowers in the garden are: desert honeysuckle, Mexican honeysuckle, Mexican sunflowers, white gaura, gaillardias, black dalea bush, poliomintha, zexmenia, California fuschia, chuparosa, woolly butterfly bush, wild hibiscus, and both pink & purple ruellia.
Among volunteer plants in bloom now are: yellow rabbit broom, desert marigold, Indian mallow, and dyssodia. What a huge, colorful fall bouquet of cut flowers these could make!
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Allen J. Ogen Community Garden
b
y George Stone
Ogden gardens pizza oven: The Allen J. Ogden Community garden is beginning to develop a reputation as a "food garden". In our arsenal of cookware, we have what is known as a La Cocina pig roaster, an Oklahoma Joe off set smoker/grill, a Master built digital electric smoker, and now our Pacific Coast Pizza oven mounted on a trailer. See the pig roaster in action at the October 8th Big Pig Gig.
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Pacific Coast Pizza Oven
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Upcoming Member Activity: The Big Pig Gig will be held at the Allen J. Ogden Community Garden on Sunday October 8th, from 12:00 pm to 4 pm. This is a first-time event for the Club.
Watch for an email blast which will provide additional details about this activity.
This winter George Stone will host a "cheese smoke" at the garden. Look for that to happen in January. The trick to smoking cheese is that the smoke temperature cannot reach 90 degrees. This event will have members bring a brick or a round of cheese and we will smoke it together. If it melts, oh well!! Fondue anyone?
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Master Built smoker
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2017 Onion sale: November 8th is our target date to plant Texas Sweet onions at Ogden. We will be ordering the onions the last week of October. If you would like us to order your onions, please see George Stone at one of the seminars and he will tell you what that entails.
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Chunky caterpillar along the pathway thro
ugh Casa Memory Garden.
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Casa Memory Garden by Mary Kidnocker
During September, a small work party cut back the many red Salvia greggii plants by nearly half to encourage more autumn flowering. It was also found that local squirrels had planted a collection of pecans into our pretty cobalt containers. Amazing how fast and vigorously they grew! So it was necessary to carefully ease the small trees out from around the resident iris and agave plants... at least until next month!
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Desert Meadows Park
by Chuck Parsons
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One of the new dog bag stations. |
The check from Freeport McMoRan Foundation arrived and we are busy implementing some of our proposed enhancements to the park.
Six new dog bag stations have been installed. These are a big improvement over the three grocery bag dispensers we inherited when the Club assumed responsibility for the park stewardship. Each station can hold up to 400 poop bags. The old dispensers could only hold about 25 grocery bags, requiring refill twice a day when winter-residents were in town.
Water is flowing in the small fountain in the Hummingbird/Butterfly Garden. We finally found a solar powered fountain pump adequate for the job. Birds will love the flowing water feature!
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| Visiting birds will love the park's flowering water feature! |
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A new wind sculpture of hand-formed copper has been added. Designed and built by Justin Loveless. A nice attraction that can be seen when walking the paths at the south end of the park, and while picnicking at either the Barrio Garden or Sunset Pavilion.
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The new wind sculpture is a nice addition to the park.
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Have you been to the park lately - if not, you're missing the butterfly action. We've been seeing the life-cycle unfold this past month. The caterpillars demolished the passion vines planted on the butterfly trellis installed last spring. A sad loss of vine, but then chrysalis was evident on the trellis - including some hanging from the steel butterflies attached to the trellis.
Plot holders are active converting over to cool season veggies now that night time temperatures have finally dropped. Mornings have been very pleasant at the park - come on over for a walk along the Anza Trail, enjoy the dog traffic or just to watch the birds, butterflies and seasonal change taking place throughout the entire park. Enjoy!
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GVG Gardens at Historic Canoa Ranch (HCR)
by Jack Davis and Raydine Taber
Grasshoppers, grasshoppers and more grasshoppers! Amazing! There were more grasshoppers around the Sr. House than we have ever seen before. Sometimes they completely covered a small barrel cactus. Oh yes, they have been feasting on our herb garden plants. Nothing has worked to deter them.
As if grasshoppers weren't enough, when walking into the Junior House living-room, something was missing. OMG!, as the younger generation would exclaim. ALL the plants in the fireplace, right side, planter are missing. Totally gone! Not a leaf to be found. Told myself don't panic. There's a reasonable explanation. As the story goes, a, or maybe more than one, pack rat got into the house and totally shredded every leaf and stem in that planter. BTW, in size, the planter is something like 3X3 or more. Also, he/they helped himself/themselves to some of the other plants but nothing like the right side, fireplace planter. Robert Vaugh told us that there were chewed up leaves all over the room. And you wonder why I dislike pack rats.
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The Grijalva House little red wagon has been redecorated for fall.
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On a happier note, we have redecorated the little red wagon at Grijaval House. Lovely fall colors for the upcoming Folkloric Exhibit beginning Sept. 30th and continuing through Anza Day on October 14th . They have been working on setting up, this exhibit, for the last three weeks. Got a sneak peek and WOW is it fantastic.
Workwise: Pulled a ton of weeds and cleared some of the summer crops readying the beds for cool weather plants. The hummingbirds are enjoying their new feeders. One of the HCR Pima County crew took a picture of five birds attacking the newly filled feeder. Junior House Courtyard is looking lush. Junior House donated Angel Wing Begonia and Inch Plants are in the RST nursery for propagation and revitalization.
Join us, or come by to see us, at the 5th annual Anza Day will be Saturday, October 14th, 9 A.M. to 3 P.M. Be there in the A.M. for the Anza Coalition Color Guard reenactment or just enjoy the vendors, Folklorico entertainment, food and exhibits available throughout the day. Docents will be available with stories and information. Come out to the ranch; see how GVG contributes to the restoration of the Historic Hacienda de la Canoa at Raul M. Grijalva Canoa Ranch Conservation Park, 5375 S I-19 Frontage Rd. (South of Green Valley Hospital).
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SEMINARS
by Judy Christensen and Pat Pearson
Our seminar series continues with three more great presenters:
On October 5th we are pleased to have B.J. Cordova from Tucson Clean & Beautiful. He will educate us on Sustainability. "Sustainability - improving our environment, economy, and quality of life - is an ongoing journey, and it starts with learning more!"
October 12th features Bob Webb from Arid Lands Greenhouses. He will inform us all about Adeniums, sometimes known as the Rose of the Desert. Come learn more about their care, and the amazing flowers and thick caudices.
Thursday, October 26th is our semi-annual visit from Alec Shipley from Civano Nursery. He will introduce us to some of the plants featured at our Fall Plant Sale.
As always, Seminars are free and open to the public. They are held at GVR Desert Hills auditorium, 2980 South Camino del Sol from 9:30 to 10:30. Doors open at 9 for coffee, cookies and conversation. Master Gardeners will be present to answer your gardening questions.
Check out the remaining fall season seminars on our
website.
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MEMBER ACTIVITIES by Marita Ramsey and Cathy Merritt
Big Pig Gig - Sunday, October 8
Please join us for an afternoon of food, fun and fellowship at the Ogden Garden's Big Pig Gig.
Lunch will be served from 1 to 4 p.m. However, the garden will open at 10 a.m. for those members who wish to come and observe the pit bosses cooking, tour the garden, visit with friends, play a game of Bocce ball, or just sit around talking BBQ. Napoleon, a whole 90-pound Berkshire hog, known for the sweet meat it provides, will be our "guest of honor".
Menu
- Whole hog, roasted to perfection at the garden and served on fresh Italian sesame seed bread
- Whole apple-smoked heritage young turkey, served as open face sandwich
- Memphis Southern red potato salad
- Creamy cabbage, carrot and apple cole slaw
- Drinks provided, but BYOB of wine or soda if desired
Note: All meats will be prepared at the garden on the day of the event.
For your entertainment, Mariachi Corazon de Tucson will perform from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Or form a team of four and challenge your fellow members to a game of Bocce ball before and after lunch. All attendees will be entered in a drawing to win a house plant valued at $50, courtesy of Desert Blooms Botanical Center.
This is a first-time event for the Ogden Garden and will be limited to 100 guests. The cost is $15.00 per person, and reservations are required.
Reservation sign up will be available at our Thursday seminars, beginning September 14, or by mail to Marita Ramsay
.
The deadline for making reservations is Tuesday, October 3 .
The Ogden Garden is located at 16331 South Santa Rita Road in Sahuarita.
Tour of University of Arizona Master Gardeners' Demonstration Gardens - Wednesday, October 18
Please join us on Wednesday, October 18, for a tour of the University of Arizona Master Gardeners' Demonstration Gardens.
There are 14 unique gardens that are sure to expand your gardening knowledge and give you many more ideas for your own landscape.
The tour will start at 9 a.m., and will last approximately one hour. We
will carpool from El Rancho restaurant, leaving at
8:15 am
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There is no charge for this tour. Sign up at either the October 5 or October 12 seminar, or by emailing
Marita Ramsey at
[email protected]
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Membership - New Members
by Mark Thompson
It seems that new members pop up when the seminars start. I wonder why? But, we are off to a great fall with 8 new members:
- Joyce Hayes
- Karen and David Workman
- Nina Hansen
- Pauline Boston
- Merrill McCarthy
- Janis Miller
- Patricia Wellman
They will be wearing their name badges soon, so please welcome them if you happen to see them around.
When ballots are mailed out in the fall, we always get some returned because of address changes. So, as a reminder, whenever you change your mailing address, email address, or phone number, please let us know so we can continue to contact you. Just email changes to:
[email protected]
. Thanks!
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Fall Plant Sale
by Kathy Stone
Our fall plant sale will be held October 26, 27 and 28 at the Continental Shopping Plaza. Set up for the sale will be Wednesday prior, October 25
th
. We will begin asking for volunteers toward the end of September.
I will be asking for extra support this time - my second time at chairing this event. In the spring, I could rely heavily on Elissa Dearing for support with all her past sale experience. She will be in Texas being a grandma during the sale this fall. Elissa not only worked the sale during the event, but helped in all the preparation and setup. Please contact me at [email protected] or 520-270-4859 if
there is a particular role you'd like to do this fall. Thanks!
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Gary Campbell took this beautiful photograph of the Desert Meadows Park Community Garden.
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