Master Gardener Meeting Minutes 5/9/2013
Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church
1601 N. San Francisco
Announcements:
Grants for approved master gardener projects – Deadline
May 31, application is available on the blog under Master Gardener Association
Documents and Forms.
Submit your photographs for the 2014 Master Gardener Calendar! Submit 4x6 inches prints. The theme for
the calendar is Flagstaff- a
horticultural perspective: Garden-related photographs of things that
grow in and around Flagstaff. Pictures may also include places and things that
represent Flagstaff such as the mountains in the background or the trains, etc.
The deadline for receiving photos is May 15. As an incentive, those who submit a photograph that is used in the
calendar will receive a free calendar.
Farming your Front
Yard - Julie McDonald
Julie McDonald gave a lively talk about growing
vegetables in your front yard. She
started thinking about growing vegetables in her front yard after a foreign
visitor asked why people had so much grass in front of their house when they
could be growing food. Another
trigger was watching a garden show that showed how to kill grass without
chemicals. The show used
newspapers but Julie soon realized that newspapers easily blow away in
Flagstaff’s winds so she tried cardboard boxes and found they worked much
better so her front yard gardening began.
Her front yard is now full of vegetables like squash, chard, beans and
asparagus mixed with flowers like daffodils and gladiolas. It is quite beautiful and
productive. For more information,
get her book, “Farm Your Front Yard”.
Many thanks to Irene
Matthews for the wonderful refreshments.
Business Meeting –
Debi Stalvey
MGA Plant and
Garden Related Items Sale, June 2, 10-3, 2200 E. Cedar Ave.
Volunteers are needed to help with the sale. We have three volunteers so far but
need more for the day of and to help with the planning. Please contact Debi
Stalvey, debistalvey@msn.com to offer
assistance.
Arboretum and
Plant Sale: July 13, 10-4
Volunteers are needed to staff the Master Gardener table
at the sale. We will be answering
gardening questions like at the community markets. Contact Ann Eagan, ann.eagan@nau.edu, or sign-up at the June
or July Master Gardener meeting.
T-shirts
fundraiser
Sherry Markel embroiders garden designs on t-shirts,
towels, tote bags and more! You choose the design and she will do it for
you. She donates $5 of every
purchase to the Master Gardener Association. She sold about twenty t-shirts at the meeting. She will be displaying her designs at
future meetings as well.
Financial report – Linda Guarino/Crys Wells
A lot of memberships were accepted at the meeting. The
current balance of the Association checking account is $2297. Linda warned that
the amount will decrease as the master gardener grants are distributed.
MG Program Happenings (class) – Hattie
Braun
Four
students in the master gardener class attended the meeting!
Committee Reports:
Continuing
Education – Jim Mast
The education committee has booked speakers for the
Master Gardener meetings through February 2014, with the exception of
November. Jan Busco will talk
about native plants in your garden in June, July will be on entering vegetables
and flowers in the county fair and August is Todd Cislo on season
extenders. Some suggestions for
the November program included the use of decorations in the garden, what fruits
can be grown in Flagstaff, and forest health. Jim also thanked Julie Holmes for her work on the committee.
Community Markets
– Sherline Alexander
The community markets will be starting soon and
volunteers are needed to staff the Master Gardener table. For the Sunday
market, we will be staffing at least the first three Sundays and the last three
Sundays. Sunday markets are from 8 a.m.- noon. The Sunday market runs May 29-Oct. 13 and takes place at the
Flagstaff City Hall parking lot.
The Wednesday market is June 26-September 11, runs 4-7 p.m. and is located in the St. Pius Church
parking lot at the corner of Cedar Ave. and 4th St. We will be
staffing the booth every other week starting June 26. Sherline is looking to get one experienced master gardener
paired with a less experienced one to staff each market. The community markets
are fun, a great way to meet people and get your volunteer hours in! Contact Sherline, sherline.alexander@nau.edu, if you
are interested in volunteering.
Volunteer Support
– Crys Wells
In April, there were 504 volunteer hours and 79.75
education hours. For the year so
far: 922.25 volunteer hours and 311.25 education hours.
Other Business
The city is updating the Regional Plan and are seeking
input from the public. There are
sections that are of interest to gardeners so please take a look at the plan
and comment on it. The plan can be
found at http://www.flagstaffmatters.com/.
Gardening
Questions?
Q: Does anyone
have any ideas on how to get people to stop putting salt on the roads? There
are a lot of trees dying because of it.
A.
Both the Arizona Department of
Transportation and the city have been using salt, mainly because of budget
cuts. They had been using a
chemical that generally was less damaging but it cost more. The city council may be discussing it.
Someone else suggested looking at the Flagstaff Regional Plan, speaking at
public meetings and contacting city council members.
Q. What should
you plant after cabbage has been planted?
A. You should
always rotate all of your vegetables so that you are not planting vegetables
from the same family in the same place.
Good plants to follow cabbage would be beans or peas or perhaps root
vegetables.
Q. This is a
question received at the Earth Day booth.
How do you make your soil more acidic? The questioner wanted to plant
blueberries. She was also using chicken manure for her garden and had some
problems with growing plants in general.
A.
Essentially, no matter how much you amend your soil you cannot adjust our very
alkaline soils to be acidic enough for blueberries. Plant them in containers with an appropriately acidic
potting mix. Susan Nyoka and the
students at the SSLUG garden on the NAU campus are experimenting with planting
blueberries in containers. On
using chicken manure, several people wondered if the manure used was too fresh.
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