Cornell Cooperative Extension Community Horticulture

This article from Fine Gardening might be of interest to gardeners in your community looking to use sustainable practices:

by Janet Macunovich

To stand in a garden is to be surrounded by constantly moving water. It takes only a few minutes for a drop suspended from a soil particle underground to be drawn upward from a root tip to the farthest leaf blade and released from leaf stomata as air-cooling vapor. Listen as you stand under that maple. Is that the sigh of the wind you’re hearing or the whispery flow of gallons of water vapor being transpired?

the full article is here

This factsheet article is from the National Garden Bureau. It highlight what crops do well in containers as well as how to care for those crops.

Full article here.

Add gardeners can search our Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners website for specific varieties. Type the word container in the search box in the left column to find some varieties particularly well suited for containers.

Moreover we’d loved to hear what varieties are working especially well in containers.

Check out Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners

It is a good spring when Cornell gardening resources get mention in the Wall Street Journal …

How Much Green Can Growing a Vegetable Garden Save You?

and the NYTimes …

The Danger of Seduction

Washington is hot on gardening. Let’s hope that translates into more funding for programs that help gardeners connect with researched-based information and skills to help them achieve gardening success and environmental stewardship.

Find out about the USDA’s People’s Garden project at:

http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/?navid=PEOPLES_GARDEN

Did you catch this New York Time article about soil contaminants?

For those of you who are interested the link to the NYT article “For Urban Gardeners, Lead is a Concern” is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/garden/14lead.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Jonathan Russell-Anelli in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences (CSS) reports on the article:

Murray McBride of CSS and the Cornell Waste Management Institute was quoted. A little alarmist, with some significant misquotes – we are not in fact offering free soil testing, though we have gotten four calls as of yesterday inquiring about such a service… but generally not quite as sensational or inaccurate as we feared, but a bit too much for our taste. We are in the process of writing a letter to the editor with hope that we could turn this into a learning moment.

It turns out that the gardener (Frank Meuschke) interviewed at the beginning of the story had some factual issues with the article. See his blog here: http://nycgarden.blogspot.com/2009/05/extra-extra-read-all-about-it.html…

Further as to an update from what we are in fact doing here at CU, Hannah Schayler at CWMI and Véronique Lambert at NYC-CUCE sent this out to our NYC collaborators…

This article is a reminder of the importance of this issue and the need for consistent, comprehensive information about soil contaminants. We encourage you to refer to our resources at http://cwmi.css.cornell.edu/soilquality.htm. Additionally, we’d like to provide more information here about a few issues raised in this article, as well as an update about our Urban Soils efforts.

Soil testing

The article included the following quote from Murray McBride: “You won’t know if you’re at risk unless you test your soil,” said Murray McBride, a professor of soil chemistry at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., which because of concerns about lead in community gardens began a free soil-testing program last month in cooperation with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.”

We’d like to clarify that this statement about a “free soil-testing program” is misleading. Although Cornell is working with GreenThumb to test soils from the raised beds of 100 community gardens for lead and other metals, the participating gardens will be carefully selected by GreenThumb to meet certain criteria. We hope to secure additional resources for more soil testing in the future, but at this time we’re not able to provide “a free soil-testing program” to the public as the article implies. We are also not aware of any opportunities for free soil testing from other organizations, but will continue to share any new information in the future and are happy to help you find a lab that meets your needs.

Best practices for managing soil contaminants

The article gives some key steps to manage lead in soils (e.g., through soil amendments, container gardening or building raised beds), but please see our fact sheet “Soil Contaminants and Best Practices for Healthy Gardens” (http://cwmi.css.cornell.edu/soil%20contaminants.pdf) for more comprehensive information. We’d also like to note that scientific research and practical limitations largely do not support using phytoremediation to remove lead from soils, as is proposed by the University of Southern Maine study described in the article. Extraction of a substantial fraction of the total lead from soils by plants has proven to be difficult, if not impossible, because of the very low solubility of lead in almost all soils.

We hope that this article and our resources leave you with the take-home message that contaminants in garden soils can be effectively managed. Edie Stone summarized this nicely on the final page: “It isn’t that you shouldn’t garden if you find lead in the soil, you just have to manage the space,” said Edie Stone, executive director of GreenThumb, a division of the New York City Parks and Recreation Department that supports urban gardening. “You can’t assume what you buy at the grocery store is any safer.”

Update on Urban Soils activities

Since our initial New York City meeting in September, we have developed a first round of web resources intended to help people interested in soil testing, interpreting test results, and best practices for healthy soils (see web link above). We will continue to update these materials and welcome any comments or suggestions (contact Hannah Shayler We are also working to address additional topics of concern, such as comparisons of different testing methods and services provided by various laboratories, resources specifically for arsenic and lead, and other concerns noted by communities.

We hope to secure funds to strengthen existing collaborations among Cornell researchers and extension educators, government agencies, non-profit organizations, gardeners, and others to expand our research and outreach efforts related to soil quality. In particular, we hope to: 1) create more comprehensive, interactive web resources and education programs; 2) assess soil and vegetable contaminant levels and exposures to soil contaminants through gardening activities; and 3) evaluate the effectiveness of different management strategies in addressing soil contamination issues.

We encourage all of you to keep in touch with your questions and concerns.

The Cornell Team
Hannah Shayler, Murray McBride, Jonathan Russell-Anelli, Gretchen Ferenz, Véronique Lambert

The publication “Using Organic Nutrient Sources” is now available through Penn State Cooperative Extension. The publication is intended to help growers interpret soil test recommendations for using organic nutrient sources. However, you might find some parts especially some of the tables will also be valuable tool for training your Master Gardener Volunteers or as a resource in your local library.
Topics included are:
• When Nutrient Levels Exceed Crop Needs
• Balance and Imbalance of Nutrients in Organic Nutrient Sources
• Nutrient Availability from Organic Nutrient Sources
• Increasing Soil pH, Calcium, Magnesium Levels Decreasing Soil pH
• Recommendations for Nitrogen, Phosphate, and Potash
• Soil Organic Matter Content
• Mineralization
• Using Compost
• Using Manure

It can be download for free as a pdf here

The publication can be ordered through: The Publications Distribution Center, College of Agricultural Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University, 112 Agricultural Administration Building, University Park, PA 16802-2602. Phone: 814-865-6713. Fax: 814-863-5560.

Internet: http://pubs.cas.psu.edu/Publications.asp.

go here:

http://blogs.cornell.edu/turf/

to listen or download file to your mp3 player

Printable sheet to share with your volunteers can be found at the following state. NYS is one of the 40 states that responded so our numbers are included as long as you and your volunteers continue to submit your numbers to me I can submit to the national organizers. So if you haven’t submitted figures for 2008 yet do so immediately! If you have thanks.

http://pubwiki.extension.org/mediawiki/files/f/f5/Extension_MG_Survey_4-9.pdf

Total current Extension Master Gardener volunteers 94,865*

Total annual volunteer hours 5,197,573*

Value of volunteer hours $101.4 Million**

New Extension Master Gardener volunteers who recently achieved good standing (40 responding states) 16,471

Percentage of metropolitan county volunteer hours (36 responding states) 79%

Percentage of rural county volunteer hours (36 responding states) 21%

Personal contacts (e.g. hotline calls, e-mails returned, live audience presentation, site visits) (38 responding states) 4,850,285

Percentage of personal contacts to underserved audiences (30 responding states) 14.4%

Yearly media reach (e.g. TV, Radio, Print, and Internet) (34 responding states) 102 Million***

Pounds of produce donated to local food banks (26 responding states) 685,554

Volunteer Extension Master Gardener volunteer hours devoted to youth programming (31 responding states) 293,017

Youth served by Extension Master Gardener programming activity (29 responding states) 265,733

Extension Master Gardener volunteers involved in youth programming (30 responding states)) 7,428

Percentage of states with a volunteer training curriculum chapter dedicated to (31 responding states):

Ø Integrated Pest Management 92.7%

Ø Water issues (including irrigation and water supply) 65.9%

Ø Using native plants 61.0%

Ø Wildlife management 58.5%

A recent New York Times story discussed an emerging challenge for nonprofits in the US: unemployment and President Obama’s call to service are producing more inquiries from potential volunteers, but many organizations aren’t prepared to handle this volume of applicants. Are you ready for a possible surge in volunteer applications? Don’t let skilled, motivated volunteers slip away — prepare your organization by instituting an effective volunteer interviewing process.

Check out some of these resources to help you efficiently interview potential volunteers:

Beyond Police Checks: The Definitive Volunteer & Employee Screening Guidebook (Linda L. Graff)

This book will help you:

• Protect clients and your organization
• Be a more effective interviewer and screener
• Apply best interview practice techniques and legal screening requirements to your situation

Group Interviewing Techniques: Hitting the Bull’s-Eye Every Time (Jill Friedman Fixle)

Volunteer program managers worry about “missing the mark” when interviewing and placing new volunteers. Also, interviewing is time-consuming, especially in a large program. Jill Friedman Fixler’s article showcases the group interviewing technique — that will enable you to hit the bull’s-eye every time.