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February 23, 2008
Garden Companions of the Leggy Kind
Master Gardener Column 2/23/08
We are not alone. Someone is always checking us out, even when we think we’re checking them out. When we’re in the forest looking for elk and deer and hear the snap of a twig, we’d better know we’re being watched by that which we had hoped to watch, or, worse yet, maybe by a bobcat or a cougar. In our gardens, chances are someone or something is looking at us. As we plant, water, weed and harvest, we don’t go unnoticed.
Certainly our neighbors, inspired by our industry, may ask us questions or make comments. After all, Flagstaff has some of the most challenging gardening conditions in the West. However, I’m not referring to this kind of interest. As we lose track of time, zoning out in our gardens, small, mute creatures are watching us, a gang of miniature Big Brothers who never lose track. The wind scorpion, about which I wrote earlier, is such a creature. Another one is a mysterious, undulating denizen of the dirt – Scolopendra polymorpha – the centipede.
Centipedes sporadically occur north of the Arctic Circle, inhabit all sub arctic environments, including ours, and are abundant in desert environments where they are one of the most commonly recognized terrestrial invertebrates. Peterson’s Field Guide to Venomous Animals & Poisonous Plants reports that North America is host to hundreds of species of centipedes, ranging in colors from bright red and orange to olive brown. They’re sized from an inch to a foot. All are flat-bodied, segmented, and carry one pair of legs per segment. As these animals grow, they add segments and legs. The record number of legs, as cited on www.nadiplochilo.com, is 382 legs (191 pairs) on Gonibregmatus plurimipes, occurring in Fiji in the Pacific Ocean.
Centipedes are cunning predators, dining on other invertebrates such as insects and spiders under cover of darkness. The larger species eat small mammals, snakes, frogs, toads, and birds. Most centipedes are built for speed and are structured to minimize a swaying motion, often associated with segmentation, such as a train or a semi and trailer. They shorten and stiffen their bodies. Biologists call it tergite heteronomy.
Some may wonder if we are still lucky enough to have these leggy beasts in our gardens after our recent snows and freezes which we fear may have done them in. Amazingly, they thrive in our four-season climate. Centipedes, Scolopendra polymorpha, have many color combinations, the word polymorpha being Latin for many forms. This species has occurred throughout the world and on the Colorado Plateau as rusty brown or redwood in color. They’re usually one to four inches long. Typically secretive, when disturbed from under their habitat of wood, rock, leaf, or other debris, they rapidly flick their front antennae as they race for cover.
Wearing gloves may be wise when gardening. Although centipedes aren’t aggressive, they’re poisonous, and not only poisonous, they have specialized claws for injecting the venom. Of course, the larger the centipede the more serious is the bite. For most people a bite generates a localized skin irritation, but for an unfortunate few who are sensitive to foreign protein, it can mean a trip for medical care.
Centipedes, in spite of their daunting exterior and lightning fast movements, are beneficial to our gardens. They prey on pests and insects in the soil including beetle larvae and fly pupae. Although we generally don’t have to encourage them to take up residence, low-till gardening can maintain populations of centipedes. Admirable from a distance, these creatures are amazing agile. Not only that, they’re survivors, having been around for a long time. They’ve left evidence of their presence in the fossil records of the Cretaceous period.
Gloves or not, useful or not, on a scale of 1 to 10, these amazing creatures are a 10 on the scale of “Yikes.”
Freddi Steele is a Master Gardener volunteer. Dana Prom Smith is a Master Gardener volunteer and the coordinating editor for the Master Gardener Column. He can be contacted at stpauls@npgcable.com. For more information about the Master Gardener Program, call Hattie Braun at 774-1868 ext.17 or visit our Web Site: highelevationgardening.arizona.edu.
Posted by maxmaddy at 8:18 PM
February 21, 2008
Join Project BudBurst Citizen Science Campaign
Project BudBurst has launched its 2008 Citizen Science Campaign. Volunteers are need to collect important weekly climate change data on the timing of leafing and flowers of native tree and flower species. Starting this week, citizen-scientist volunteers from across the country can help track trends in phenology (e.g., first leaf, first flower) on many different species and see how these relate to climate.
Last year's inaugural event drew thousands of people of all ages taking careful observations of the phenological events such as the first bud burst, first leafing, first flower, and seed or fruit dispersal of a diversity of tree and flower species, including weeds and ornamentals. The citizen science observations and records were entered into the BudBurst database.
Scientists are using the data to learn about the responses of individual plant species to local, regional and national climate variation, and to detect longer-term impacts of climate change by comparing the new observations with historical data.
To learn more about the project or to register as a volunteer, go to www.budburst.org. Registration is easy. To help you get started, the site lists the plant species targeted for our area, a plant identification guide to help you determine the phenological phase of the plant, and a link for reporting observations online.
Posted by hbraun at 1:28 PM
Permaculture Talk
Join Josh Robinson of Eden on Earth and Chuck McDougal of Mountain Meadow Farm as they discuss Permaculture with the Grand Canyon Trust. The Program is being held February 26th from 6 to 8 pm and is open to everyone. The Grand Canyon Trust is located at 2601 North Fort
Valley Road.
To learn more about Permaculture, visit the following websites:
Eden On Earth Landscaping
Mountain Meadow Farm
Posted by hbraun at 12:50 PM
February 20, 2008
Free Fruit Tree Pruning Demonstrations
It's fruit tree pruning season and The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, Yavapai County is offering three free fruit tree pruning demonstrations conducted by Extension Agent, Jeff Schalau. Come and learn why, when, and how to prune your backyard fruit trees. Fertilization, irrigation and fruit thinning will also be covered.
Three demonstrations are scheduled. The first will be held on Saturday, February 23, at 9 AM at Jordan Historical Park, 735 Jordan Rd in Sedona. The second demonstration will be held on Tuesday, February 26, at 1:30 PM Ken Girod's Orchard, 457 Quarterhorse Lane in Camp Verde. The third demonstration will be held on Saturday, March 8, at 9 am at the McLandress Home, 850 S. Maricopa Street in Chino Valley.
Signs will be posted prior to the workshops to help participants find the locations. Carpooling is encouraged as parking may be limited. Maps and directions to these workshops are also available on the Yavapai County Cooperative Extension web site
http://cals.arizona.edu/yavapai/
Posted by hargers at 4:25 PM
February 17, 2008
The Grasshopper Lady
Master Gardener Column 2/16/08
An attractive, bright-eyed, well-dressed woman stood beside her car’s trunk handing out plastic baggies filled with an unidentified herbal substance as a stream of customers forked over greenbacks. In the cushy environs of University Heights, the scene had the furtive quality of customers buying illegal elixirs from a shady entrepreneur on the mean streets of Phoenix. The woman was actually passing out baggies full of wheat bran laced with NoLo, a grasshopper bait. As I approached her, I asked her if she were “the grasshopper lady.” She stiffened and politely replied, “Yes, I’ve got the NoLo you asked about.”
When I told meine Überfrau about it, she said, “Well, just what would you expect? How would you like ‘the manure man’?” “No big deal.” “I hate to say it, D.P., but you’re really clueless.”
Jean Hockman, the woman in question, is head honcho of Flagstaff’s Garden Club, a loosely organized group of Flagstaff gardeners. They meet occasionally to share seedlings and seeds, to listen to an expert, to visit one another’s gardens, and just to hang out with like-minded people. Jean has taken it upon herself to distribute NoLo to her fellow club members in the spring of the year. My curb-side purchase was at one of the irregular meetings. The stuff’s not free. She orders it and divvies it up for Club members.
By the way, if anyone wants to belong to a low demand, no dues club with friendly, intelligent members who love to garden, the Garden Club is a sure bet. Just email Jean at djhockman@npgcable.com to get on the club’s emailing roster.
Back to grasshoppers. They’re a formidable enemy, impervious to fear, unstoppable fanatics coming in wave after wave of mass suicide attacks. One theory about grasshopper fanaticism is their cannibalism. The front lines fear being eaten by the rear lines if they stop their forward march.
During advanced training in the army, a retired brigadier of the Irish Guards told me, “Sergeant, never underestimate the enemy. Know him like the back of your hand. Find his weakness, and when he’s on the cusp of an attack, strike at his weakness, not his strength. It’s then that he’s off-balance and the most vulnerable.” So it is with grasshoppers. Gardeners have to know them and never underestimate them, and when they begin to attack, strike at their weakness.
The first thing to know is that they are already in the garden buried in pods of eggs in the soil, laid by grasshoppers last fall. Terrorist subversives, they can’t be seen, but be assured if there were grasshoppers last fall, they’re lying low now during the winter in underground cells, waiting to attack in the spring.
Grasshoppers have two weaknesses: they’re gluttons and they’re cannibals.
NoLo, short for Nosema locustae, is bait made of flaky wheat bran, sprayed with distilled water, a sticking agent, and Nosema locustae spores. Non-toxic to human beings and other forms of life other than grasshoppers, the spores carry a disease fatal to grasshoppers. The death isn’t sudden. Once ingested, the spores pierce the mid-gut and slowly destroy their digestive systems.
In the spring before the grasshopper nymphs have hatched, the tactic of choice is to spread NoLo around the yard’s perimeter in the bare spots where the eggs have been laid. NoLo works best on grasshopper nymphs and doesn’t work as well on mature grasshoppers. As Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate cavalryman, said, “I git thar fustest with the mostest.”
As the gluttonous grasshopper nymphs hatch, they ravenously eat their favored wheat bran laced with Nosema locustae and slowly die. Since grasshoppers are cannibals, NoLo is a gift that keeps on giving as their comrades in arms eat their diseased, dead, and fallen comrades, thus ingesting the disease once again.
Since no one tactic destroys grasshoppers, one shot of NoLo won’t do the job and should be repeated every few weeks throughout the year. It’s a conflict with many skirmishes. There’s more to come on grasshopper counter-terrorism, so stay tuned. Admiral William F. “Bull” Halsey, Jr., said it best, “Hit hard, hit fast, hit often.”
Dana Prom Smith is a Master Gardener volunteer and coordinating editor of the Master Gardener Column for Coconino County Cooperative Extension. He can be contacted at stpauls@npgcable.com. For more information about the Master Gardener Program, call Hattie Braun, the Master Gardener Program Coordinator, at 774-1868 ext.17 or visit our Web Site: highelevationgardening.arizona.edu.
Posted by maxmaddy at 6:12 AM
February 15, 2008
Tax Deductions for Volunteer Time and Expenses
If you itemize deductions, then maybe this will interest you.
If you are the type that doesn't like to think about filing your tax return until after dinner on April 14th, then maybe it won't interest you.
Some of us begin putting together our returns almost as soon as the year ends. Whenever you decide to think about it, here are some reminders concerning deductions for volunteer services:
This information is taken directly from IRS Publication 526, Charitable Contributions , which you should rely upon rather than some dodgy,unreliable Blog entry.
1. Car expenses are deductible for travel directly to and from the place of your volunteer service. You can deduct either but not both: a)gas and oil directly related to the use of your vehicle in giving services, or b) deduct an amount of $0.14 per mile for the same. Note that this remains the same 14 cents as last year for volunteer activities. (Despite lipservice from congress regarding the value of volunteerism, only business travel deductions have been increasing, up to 48.5 cents per mile in 2007.)
2. Tolls and parking fees are deductible.
3. If the volunteer service required travel overnight, you can deduct lodging and meals, including tips. But the travel must be not have any significant "pleasure trip" component.
4. Personal expenses are not deductible, except meals associated with overnight travel.
5. Personal time or labor is not deductible.
6. You must use Form 1040 to itemize. Deductions are handled differently, depending on the total amount. Deductions up to $500 are submitted on Schedule A, Itemized Deductions. Over that, they are submitted in section A of Form 8283, Noncash Charitable Contributions. There are limits on total deductions, and different categories, too. Consult IRS Pub 526 to see the breakdown and requirements for each category.
7. You must keep records. The requirements are no more than what your 7th grade teacher asked from your notes. Include the name of the "qualifying" charitable organization, time and dates, mileage and costs. Have receipts (photocopies okay). Entries need to be made at or near the time of the expenditure. I create my own table for mileage and expenses and print it directly on a 6x9 envelope to put my receipts in. Generally, I keep one envelope for each organization that I support.
Posted by hargers at 4:07 PM
February 14, 2008
Seed, Plant and Tool Resources for 2008
It is the time of year that most gardeners begin to get anxious to get their hands in the dirt. To satisfy that need, you can begin transplanting cuttings or repoting houseplants, or begin perusing those wonderful seed and plant catalogs. Attached is a large file (4 pages) of resourses that you can view or print. If you have any deletions or additions please advise Loni Shapiro (maxmaddy@infomagic.net).
Happy Gardening.
Loni Shapiro
Posted by maxmaddy at 7:15 AM
February 8, 2008
Olivia White Hospice Garden Project
We have already had two planning meetings for the 2008 garden season for the Olivia White Hospice Garden. The worse the weather the more we enjoy talking about the upcoming season.
We will continue to meet monthly until April when hopefully we can begin some clean-up in the garden (dates to be advised later). Work for 2008 will include:
Finishing burying our drip lines in the south garden
Weeding and deadheading
Reinstalling our hardscape (repairing if needed)
Planning several summer events (10% day at Warners/Summer Garden Party –
Aug. 17th)
Planting annuals (flowers & vegetables) in pots, raised beds, troughs
Caring for existing perennials
Continuing development of Tea & Faerie Gardens
Finishing pathway on north end of home
Begin creating a Native Garden after pathway is completed
Creating a Rock Garden
Creating a brick pad for a new arbor bench
Re-staining the gazebo (May)
Shelving the greenhouse
Working a new compost pile
Including residents in garden as appropriate
County Fair entries?
Xeric Garden entry in city contest?
If any of these interest you specifically or you just want to help in any way you can please call or e-mail Loni Shapiro (522-8635 – maxmmaddy@infomagic.net). Our regular workdays will be Thursday mornings from 8am-12pm. This year we will do one Saturday each month (April 26, May 24, June 28, July 26, August 23 - 4th Sat. of each month). Starting date in the garden for Thursdays will depend on the weather. Watch this site for updates.
"Odd as it may appear, a gardener does not grow from seed, shoot, bulb, rhizome, or cutting, but from experience, surroundings, and natural conditions." Karel Capek - The Gardener's Year
Loni Shapiro
Posted by maxmaddy at 2:15 PM
Plants as Medicine
Master Gardener Column 2/9/07
Rather than back to the future, many head forward to the past, as in slow cooking instead of fast food. The more technological we become, the more we loose touch with things that make us human. We no longer speak to people on the telephone, but to machines with answers to questions we’ve never asked. An artificially automated world makes us long to touch the natural world. Particularly poignant is medicine where artificial remedies have replaced natural. As a part of the push into the past, we plan an occasional “Scarborough Fair” series on the medicinal uses of “parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.”
A case in point is Mark, my first child. Every afternoon he was colicky, crying inconsolably in pain. As evening approached, he stopped and went to sleep. Finally, the woman who cared for him while I worked told me to crush a thin layer of fennel seeds between two table spoons. After crushing the seeds, she said, “Simmer them in 8 ounces of water for 10 minutes, and after the liquid cools, strain it, and put it in a bottle for him to sip.” The next afternoon I tried it and within ten minutes he stopped crying and took a nap.
Keeping it in the family, my grandson Johnathon, also, cried as an infant. This time his great grandmother Ruth suggested parsley tea. She had learned about it from her other daughter’s Italian mother-in-law. I chopped up a tablespoon of parsley and poured boiling water over it as with regular tea and let it steep for 10 minutes. When it cooled, I strained, bottled, and gave it to the baby. He burped, relaxed, and went quietly to sleep. Parsley is an excellent carminative, that is, it relieves stomach pain. While useful for nausea and vomiting and as a diuretic, parsley tea works well when other remedies have failed to calm the stomach.
Native plants were used for medicinal purposes long before the arrival of “Better Living through Chemistry.” The French, as well as smart restaurants, place a sprig or two of parsley along with their entrées. Not just an adornment, a sprig when chewed, calms the stomach and clears the mouth, its high chlorophyll content refreshing the breath.
Parsley’s botanical Latin name is: Petroselinum crispum. Some varieties have small curly leaves and others broader leaves. Widely-used as a versatile herb in the kitchen, it’s also useful for medicinal purposes. As a natural diuretic, it helps relieve water retention but saves the potassium. A WARNING: too much, that is, 2 cups or more daily, can irritate the kidneys and bladder, and, in case of pregnancy, it shouldn’t be used at medicinal strength because it can cause uterine contractions.
Parsley can be made into a tincture by covering the sifted and dried stems and leaves with vodka until they float. Vodka has the right ratio of alcohol to water. Shake the bottle daily and after two weeks strain out the stems and leaves. Put the strained liquid in a brown bottle with a dropper and refrigerate. The tincture then can be added to water and used for the stomach and urinary tract.
Containing many vitamins and minerals, vitamins A and C, calcium, thiamin, riboflavin, and niacin, parsley is effective for anemia. A tea made from parsley leaves is can also be used as a tonic.
Growing the plant from seeds is sometimes difficult but worth the effort. Garden centers sell parsley seedlings. Fresh parsley is a staple in local supermarkets. Pots of parsley often adorn kitchen window sills during the winter weather. A perennial, it is more often grown as an annual. While the leaves can be used anytime, during the winter the plant produces flowers and seeds with fewer leaves and stems. The leaves can be cut anytime, dried, and stored for future use.
More information about growing medicinal plants is available in Growing and Using Healing Herbs by Gaea and Shandor Weiss, Rodale Press, Emmaus, PA, c.1985.
Anyone desiring more information about using herbs medicinally may contact Sue Collins, RN, Family Nurse Practitioner and Certified Herbalist, at suecollins46@msn.com.
Susan B. Collins is a Master Gardener volunteer. Dana Prom Smith, a Master Gardener volunteer, is coordinating editor for the Master Gardener Column. He can be contacted at stpauls@npgcable.com. For more information about the Master Gardener Program, call Hattie Braun, Coordinator of the Master Gardener Program, at 774-1868 ext.17 or visit our Web Site: highelevationgardening.arizona.edu
Posted by maxmaddy at 1:37 PM
February 1, 2008
A Gardener's Help Line
Master Gardener Column 2/2/08
After my daughter gave birth to her daughter, she and my granddaughter came to live with me for a short time. The morning after she arrived, I left early in the morning to go to UCLA’s Neuro-psychiatric Institute where I was an intern. When I returned home that evening, my daughter detailed a laundry list of anxieties at being left alone with her baby even though her mother and several of her friends had spent the day with her. The baby, my namesake, is now a law student at Loyola School of Law in Los Angeles.
Over the years, as a pastor and psychotherapist I’ve heard many novice mothers voice similar anxieties. Responsibility for a new life is daunting. Far further down the scale of anxieties born of life’s demands are novice gardeners being left alone with seedlings. After buying plants at a nursery, they leave with a few words from a cashier and a plastic tag attached to the plants as the only form of support. There isn’t a Thanksgiving turkey help line, offering support to first-time and experienced cooks.
Now there is one for gardeners, both novices and veterans. It’s a local group, called Flagstaff Garden Starts CSA. CSA isn’t an acronym for Confederate States of America but for Community Supported Agriculture. Led by Anne Sheridan, the program is supported by Flagstaff Native Plant and Seed and Mountain Meadow Farm. A Master Gardener herself and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point in Natural Resource Management, Anne was an Apprentice at the prestigious Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at University of California, Santa Cruz. Any institution with such an obscure tongue-twisting title has to be worthwhile. As a peripatetic gardener, she’s gardened in such diverse places a Fairbanks, Alaska, and Hawaii, but now she’s landed in Flagstaff. As with most gardeners, her love of gardening began as a child with her mother and grandmother in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.
The program is three-fold. For a minimal fee, they will supply what are called “starts” which is a small six pack of seedlings. They offer a wide variety of vegetables and flowering plants at appropriate times throughout the growing season. Included in the small fee for the starts they also offer support for growing the “starts,” as in “how do you cook the turkey?” and “do I hold my baby when he cries?”
Lots of money is lost on plants that die once they are planted, generally because the gardeners didn’t know what they were doing. Gardening in Flagstaff is especially daunting with high winds, capricious weather, soil nearly void of organic matter, short growing seasons, and aridity. Well, here’s a program that not only sells the “starts” but also sells a program of support so that the gardeners will know what they’re doing. It’s a kind of 911 for gardeners, a physician who actually answers the phone. There ain’t nothing like human contact, especially from someone who knows what they’re talking about.
So far so good, but “the best is yet to be” as Robert Browning would have said. More often than not, gardeners learn from one another rather than experts, like the old lady next door who’s been growing really great herbs for years or the old geezer who gives away fresh flowers and vegetables to his neighbors. The argot today is “networking,” a word gone stale from overuse. The sources of gardening support are not only Anne, Nigel Sparks and his staff at Native Plant and Seed, and Chuck McDougal and his staff at Mountain Meadow Farm, but also a whole host of gardeners who know from experience what they are doing, especially in Flagstaff. One of the great things about gardeners is that they’re not given to proprietary secrecy but are willing to share what they know.
For more information, those interested can call Anne at 773-9406, email her at flaggardenstarts@yahoo.com, or go Internet at www.nativeplantandseed.com and click on “What’s New.” Indeed, there
is something new. Help.
Dana Prom Smith is a Master Gardener volunteer and coordinating editor of the Master Gardener Column for Coconino County Cooperative Extension. He can be contacted at stpauls@npgcable.com. For more information about the Master Gardener Program, call Hattie Braun, the Master Gardener Program Coordinator, at 774-1868 ext.17 or visit our Web Site: highelevationgardening.arizona.edu.
Posted by maxmaddy at 7:33 PM
Fruit Tree Pruning Demonstrations
It's fruit tree pruning season and The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, Yavapai County is offering three free fruit tree pruning demonstrations. Come and learn why, when, and how to prune your deciduous fruit trees. Fertilization, irrigation and fruit thinning will also be covered.
Times, dates and locations:
9:00 AM Saturday February 23, 2008, at Jordan Historical Park, 735 Jordan Rd, Sedona
1:30 PM Tuesday February 26, 2008, Ken Girod's Orchard, 457 Quarterhorse Lane, Camp Verde
9:00 AM Saturday March 8, 2008, at the McLandress Home, 850 S. Maricopa St, Chino Valley
You can get directions and maps for the three demonstrations by clicking on the following link: http://cals.arizona.edu/yavapai/anr/hort/pruning/index.html
Posted by hbraun at 10:49 AM