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We are so done with 2017! For one of us, this year has for many reasons been difficult. But, as Steve Morse, our Digital Gardener tells us in his year-end column, these are our problems to solve. But gardens can be helpful in doing that. They give you time to contemplate while you are doing something useful. They give you insights into nature: its cycles and seasons, its resilience and ability to endure, its nurturing and healing powers. Gardens teach us about transience and yet, at the same, the continuity of life and our connection to past generations. They also grant us moments of amazement. At the end of the day in the garden, we can look back with satisfaction and contentment-and perhaps a touch of relief-at all the good things we have accomplished with just the simple commitment of time. That moment of rest is very sweet. But now we have come to that time of year when the garden tools are cleaned and put away, the garden's beds covered with winter crops or mulch, and autumn's leaves swept up and composted. We turn homeward, seeking family and friends in the warmth and shelter of our homes.
As we write this, Master Gardeners of Contra Costa is preparing for its annual holiday Recognition Potluck Dinner tonight, December 4. We always have lots to celebrate. Three of our many community project leaders tell us in this issue of
TLD's "Down & Dirty" of their successes this past year. We just keep expanding! Next issue, we will share more from other projects. Since we know that you finally have time to read them, we have two responses from the Help Desk from our Master Gardener all-stars, Sheila Weston and Martha Lee. Martha answers a question about what to plant in your garden with a bundle of resources. You'll want to check them out too. Equally resourceful, Steve Morse gives us a whole raft of blogs and websites to explore that will take you down that never-ending rabbit hole of gardening knowledge. We also want to extend our own congrats to Steve for the wonderful work he does on Master Gardeners of Contra Costa's blog, HOrT COCO. In the past three years, its direct hits have grown by 500%. Just imagine its impact!
If you have any comments, questions, or want to submit an article for
The Latest Dirt--we'd love that--you may contact us directly at our emails. We look forward to hearing from you or perhaps seeing you at the holiday Recognition Potluck Dinner this evening. Happy Holidays to all Master Gardeners and their families.
Liz Rottger (2007) & Ersten Imaoka (1992), Editors
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Celebrating the coming of winter and the year 2017!
Greetings, Master Gardeners, Honorary Members and New MGCC Class of 2018:
It's beginning to look a lot like...winter is coming. Outside the trees are shedding their fall leaves, creating a magical blanket over the landscape and preparing for the cold months ahead of rest and recuperation. Inside at this time, we too are taking a rest from some of this past year's activities and preparing for our end-of-the-year celebrations of times we have shared with family, friends, and the many people with whom we interacted this year.
This is the time of year we reflect on all we have accomplished over the past year, what we did well, what we could have done, or would like to do better, and to consider what new and exciting things we would like to do next year.
Tonight's 2017 Annual Recognition Dinner focuses internally on our members to recognize and celebrate our "Master Gardener Detectives" (listed at the end of this article). Those being recognized include the many individuals and project teams who devoted so much of their time, experience and energy to the Master Gardener Program, serving our communities by researching the thousands of questions we received this year from the public on home gardening. Questions like "how do I do it right from the beginning," or, "what went wrong in the garden, and how do I fix it?" Leadership of MGCC changes from year to year, but our teams simply get stronger, and keep developing new and better ways to research problems and deliver sound advice. Staying up to date is important, because scientific research keeps uncovering new information, and each year we discover new pests and diseases that present new challenges in our ever changing climatic conditions.
I am most grateful to our members for their generous gifts this past year, particularly their precious gift of time, which totaled over 21,000 volunteer hours! I am continuously reminded of how fortunate we are, as an organization, to have so many members who are committed to sharing their knowledge and vast experiences, and to help us fulfill our mission: extending UC science-based horticultural education to the public, throughout the county, in the hope of changing people's behavior for the better, making our communities healthier and more sustainable in the future.
Thank you, all, for helping to make this a better year. Be safe, enjoy your year-end celebrations, and please plan to come back next year to continue to help us enrich and strengthen the communities you love.
Katherine Alexander, 2013
President, MGCC
2017 MGCC Achievements
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Down and Dirty: News from
the Community Frontlines
IN THIS ISSUE:
- Help Desk: Collaborative Learning
- Highlights from Community Gardens 2017
- School Gardens Central County Team: Planting, Teaching, Celebrating and Consulting
Help Desk: Collaborative Learning
This past year, 31 Master Gardeners worked over 3,900 hours, handling questions by email, phone, and walk-in, and were able to help 880 clients. Ten Help Desk mentors helped new volunteers "master" the Help Desk and become part of the Help Desk team. What do they do exactly when they 'work' the Help Desk? They routinely answer questions that require research and thoughtful writing about a myriad of topics. There are seasonal questions like what's eating my tomato plant and what to do about peach-leaf curl. Less common are questions such as identification of a suspected bed bug or how to grow an exotic, tropical rambutan tree (cousin of the lychee --see photo above for its fruits).
The Help Desk also collaborates with the Contra Costa Agriculture Department where we staff a help desk there one afternoon a week. Four Master Gardeners take turns answering home gardening questions and helping identify pests brought in by the public. In turn, we send difficult problems to them, such as the identification of a possible bed bug or diagnosing a potentially new plant disease.
The Help Desk is the best place to continue learning while serving the Master Gardener mission of disseminating UC research-based information to the general public. Through this research and collaboration with fellow Master Gardeners, we are able to craft good answers to give the public, and we also continue to learn.
Julie Lindeman, Help Desk Project Lead for several years, has taken a leave from her duties because of a family medical problem. We all owe a debt of gratitude to Julie for her hard work and fearless leadership. The Help Desk functions as well as it does because of Julie's leadership. We will miss her and wish her the best.
Susan Heckly, 2009
Help Desk Co-Lead
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Editor's Note:
Each month the Help Desk's Quality Assurance Team selects outstanding responses to clients and places them in the Green Folder on the Help Desk's computer's desktop for review by its volunteers. We are highlighting these responses each month in The Latest Dirt so that all Master Gardeners can learn from them. For this end-of-the-year issue, we are offering two responses which the QA Team selected as the "Interesting Problems of the Month." Why not? You should have plenty of time now to read and enjoy the outstanding work of our fellow Master Gardeners, Sheila Weston and Martha Lee.
~Liz~]
Description of the client's problem:
I know that fava beans are planted in the fall at OUR GARDEN to help the soil. I am planning to try them this year in my garden. I bought some whole fava beans at the farmer's market and my question is, do I plant then green from the pod or do they need to be dried first?
Here is the advice Sheila gave to the client:
Thank you for your question to the UC Master Gardener Program Help Desk regarding planting fava beans. Favas are a great crop to grow over the winter, and you can cut them down in the spring when they just start to flower. They are then turned into the soil or you can add to your compost pile. By doing this, you are adding nitrogen and other nutrients to your soil. You can also let some of the plants mature if you like eating the beans!
In order to produce new plants, seeds need to mature enough to germinate before collecting, so I would not advise you to plant the beans you bought as they may not be mature enough to germinate. Now is a good time to plant favas and you can find seeds at your local nursery or online. Sow seeds six inches apart and two to three inches in depth. You should also pre-treat the seed with an inoculant which you can also purchase at the nursery. This helps the plant fix nitrogen from the air. To use the inoculant which comes as a powder, you moisten the fava beans in a container and sprinkle enough powder to coat the seeds. Plant the seeds soon after, not letting the seeds sit for a long time once inoculated.
Here are some tips from Master Gardener Janet Miller on growing cover crops:
- Prepare the bed by pulling out what's growing and loosely cultivate the soil. There is no need to add fertilizer but you may want to add some compost.
- When sowing seeds, give them space to grow.
- Most grasses and grains can be broadcast over an area. Some legumes, such as fava beans, must be planted after being inoculated.
- For sown seeds, cover them lightly with compost to keep the birds from eating them.
- Keep the seeds moist until germination. In the winter, our rains should provide all the irrigation the plants will need, but during dry spells and in summer, you may need to add supplemental water.
- There are two ways to handle a cover crop. When it is ready to harvest, cut it down and chop up the plant material to add to your compost pile. Or you can chop the plants finely and turn under in the garden soil where it will compost in the bed.
- After composting in place, leave the beds alone for about three weeks to give the plant material time to start breaking down. You can then plant seedlings into your bed. If you have seeds to plant, you may want to compost the cover crops in a bin first.
- Consider if your beds have specific issues. For soil that has been fallow, growing grains and grasses might provide the best results as the deeply rooting plants will help break up the hard soil.
- If your beds are nitrogen depleted, legumes will give you the most bang for your buck.
- You can grow both in the same bed, getting the best of both worlds.
- A number of stores sell cover crop seeds. A variety of seeds is available at OUR GARDEN on Wednesday mornings. http://ccmg.ucanr.edu/OURGARDEN/.
- Here is another link with some helpful information: http://sonomamg.ucanr.edu/The_Kitchen_Garden/Additional_KG_Articles/Green_Manure_Cover_Crops/
I wish you success with planting a cover crop and let us know if you have any further questions.
Sheila Weston, 2009
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The Digital Gardener's Year-end Roundup
Hard to believe that 2017 is coming to an end. Another year contemplating successes and failures in my personal gardening endeavors. My garden is sort of hanging in there. Thank goodness for drought-resistant, low-water, and low-maintenance plants because otherwise, it could be worse as I contemplate the garden's future after five years of drought, let alone the ability to take care of it. But those are my problems to solve and I'd rather suggest/recommend some ideas for you to consider from the digital side of gardening that might interest you in your garden and Master Gardener endeavors. Several I've mentioned before in other
TLDs, but I think several areas are worth further elaboration: the MGCC's HOrT COCO blog, other "gardening" blogs, gardening podcasts, and free "gardening" ebooks and publications.
Read on...
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Published by the Contra Costa Master Gardeners Association
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75 Santa Barbara Rd
Pleasant Hill, California 94523
925-646-6586 |
75 Santa Barbara Rd
Pleasant Hill, California 94523
925-646-6586 |
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