Cornell Cooperative Extension Community Horticulture

This April 12, 2007 New York Times article highlights Cornell’s lawn care web page:

Read the full article

Here is an additional sidebar to the article:

Mowing Grass Without Gas: The Push Is On

Note the mantra…those who want a healthy, beautiful lawn is mow high, and let the clippings lie.

And help Cornell Cooperative Extension community horticulture learn more about NY citizens’ lawn mowing practices. Encourage those with lawns to take our very short lawn survey.

Also note that Cornell’s Turfgrass group produces this weekly newsletter called Short Cutt (pdf)

All CCE community horticulture educators should be on the mail list for this. If you are not getting it contact Frank Rossi.

Cornell research Thomas Bjorkman reports that a solid stand of buckwheat surpress annual weeds and several perennial weeds like quackgrass, nutsedge and Canada thistle.

For a “weed-free” healthy bed of soil next spring plant buckwheat seeds in early June. After 5 weeks mow and till the buckwheat under. Follow with another 5 week planting of buckwheat then oats or winter wheat for the fall.

Forests aren’t just timber:think mushrooms, ginseng and sugar

Forest Farming website uses multimedia to help landowners cultivate their forests.

See full Cornell Cronicle article.

This factsheet is from the Colorado Master Gardener Volunteer Program.

http://cmg.colostate.edu/benefits-gardening.pdf

Excellent infomation and facts for your grant proposals and efforts to communitcate the value of your programs in promoting environamntal stewardship, economic success, personal and community health…gardening a tool for meeting our societial needs!

A report from the Community Forestry Resource Center which is a project of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a Minneapolis-based nongovernmental organization.

Click here for the report.

The two chapters about open space could be of particular interest.

This article was published in the Feb 2007 edition of the Journal of Extension.

Abstract: Extension educators who depend on volunteer action to increase program impact need information on volunteer motivation and service. The objectives of the study reported here were to (1) examine volunteer motivation among Extension program graduates; and (2) examine relationships between motivation factors and service. A questionnaire sent to 374 Extension program graduates measured agreement with statements in five motivational domains. We found inconsistency between respondent rankings of factor importance and factors closely tied to level of volunteer service. Extension education coordinators who assess and address motivational factors linked to service may be able to enhance voluntary action.

Click here for full article

What do you think of their findings?
These two ideas in the conclusion jumped out at me:

…program recruitment should address the importance of personal development, perhaps by inviting participation of small groups (rather than individuals) from the same community to increase voluntary action after program completion.

…program coordinators may wish to create or support opportunities for volunteers to conduct activities in groups (during the program itself or by facilitating their knowledge of potential future project partners) to gain more consistent and possibly greater levels of volunteer service.

See USDA’s Economic Research Service Amber Waves newsletter for the full article highlighting:

The average American diet falls short of the daily recommendations for fruit and vegetables in the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans and in the supporting MyPyramid Food Guidance System. If Americans adopt diets that more closely follow the new guidelines, changes in the mix and quantity of foods produced in the U.S. would be substantial.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/April07/Findings/Meeting.htm

Extrapolating from this study, gardening could be an even greater benefit to our health if we believe it to be good exercise. Your volunteers aren’t signing up for demonstration garden maintenance they are signing up for a garden exercise class!

Want a good workout? You better believe it.
People who think they’re getting a good workout obtain more benefits than those who perform the exact same activities, but don’t think what they are doing is exercise, according to the findings of a study by Harvard researchers. These results support the idea that the benefits of exercise may involve a placebo effect.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17136113/from/ET/

This article is from the Center For Disease Control (CDC) which promote gardening a good activity for maintaining a healthy lifestyle ( a point worth highlighting in your grant proposal and program justifications).

The article is available at: http://www.cdc.gov/women/owh/gardening/index.htm

Inferring Past Pesticide Exposures: A Matrix of Individual Active Ingredients in Home and Garden Pesticides Used in Past Decades
Joanne S. Colt, Mancer J. Cyr, Shelia H. Zahm, Geoffrey S. Tobias, and Patricia Hartge

Abstract

Background: In retrospective studies of the health effects of home and garden pesticides, self-reported information typically forms the basis for exposure assessment. Study participants generally find it easier to remember the types of pests treated than the specific pesticides used. However, if the goal of the study is to assess disease risk from specific chemicals, the investigator must be able to link the pest type treated with specific chemicals or products.

Objectives: Our goal was to develop a “pesticide–exposure matrix” that would list active ingredients on the market for treating different types of pests in past years, and provide an estimate of the probability that each active ingredient was used.

Methods: We used several different methods for deriving the active ingredient lists and estimating the probabilities. These methods are described in this article, along with a sample calculation and data sources for each.

Results: The pesticide–exposure matrix lists active ingredients and their probabilities of use for 96 distinct scenarios defined by year (1976, 1980,1990, 2000) , applicator type (consumer, professional) , and pest type (12 categories) . Calculations and data sources for all 96 scenarios are provided online.

Conclusions: Although we are confident that the active ingredient lists are reasonably accurate for most scenarios, we acknowledge possible sources of error in the probability estimates. Despite these limitations, the pesticide–exposure matrix should provide valuable information to researchers interested in the chronic health effects of residential pesticide exposure.

Full research report available at:

Environmental Health Perspectives Volume 115, Number 2, February 2007 http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2006/9538/abstract.html