Cornell Cooperative Extension Community Horticulture

Find meeting minutes at this link:

http://www.hort.cornell.edu//department/faculty/bushway/comm_hort_blog/Oct%202008%20PWT%20Minutes.pdf

In our last state conference call in October we talked about Master Gardener Volunteer reference checking so I can work to establish some guidelines based on what people are already having success with. Notes from that call are at this site.

I aim to schedule conference call monthly on subject matters most pressing to your needs. Go to this survey to share your preference on when we should schedule these calls. It is nearly impossible to find a time all are available so likely I’ll rotate around the best times.

Our next conversation will be Thursday December 4th from 9:00 -10:00 on approaches to:

Reward and recognition of volunteers.

contact lori (bushway@cornell.edu) for access number and code.

On Thursday December 4th from 9:00 -10:00 please participate in our conference call to share how programs approach:

Reward and recognition of volunteers.

We want to learn from each others success and mistakes to identify effective ways programs are thanking and showing appreciation for their Master Gardener Volunteers or other volunteers like Tree Stewards.

If you are not available during this time on Thursday feel free to send along in advance a brief description of the protocol you follow for checking applicants references. Include how your program established this approach (i.e. we work with our director/supervisor to establish this…).

In our last state conference call in October we talked about Master Gardener Volunteer reference checking so I can work to establish some guidelines based on what people are already having success with. Notes from that call are at this site.

I aim to schedule conference call monthly on subject matters most pressing to your needs. Go to this survey to share your preference on when we should schedule these calls. It is nearly impossible to find a time all are available so likely I’ll rotate around the best times.

So for Thursday December 4th from 9:00 -10:00 contact Lori (bushway@cornell.edu) for the number to call and access code. The call is free so you can call from any location.

Looking for those lost Cornell bulletins or Extension publications?

Browse eCommons@Cornell

Try typing garden in the left top search box. Or try a more specific term like compost.

Agro-One
Soil and Plant Analytical Laboratory
November 11, 2008

Cornell University and Dairy One are planning to combine their strengths to provide soil and plant testing services to farmers and farm advisors.

Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Dairy One Cooperative, Inc. are collaborating through Agro One to insure that farmers and farm advisors in New York and the Northeast continue to have high-quality soil, plant tissue, and nutrient laboratory testing services available to them now and into the future.  Additionally, the collaboration will provide a mechanism for delivery of new analytical services and systems in the future.

Through this collaboration, Cornell will move its routine soil and plant tissue analysis to the Agro One laboratory housed at Dairy One’s Ithaca facility.  This allows Cornell to focus on soil and plant research and the development of innovative analytical methods, while Agro One will focus on providing routine soil and plant tissue analysis to farmers and their advisors.  Agro One will provide soil and plant tissue testing services as have been available through the Cornell Nutrient Analysis Laboratory along with additional analytical services. Key input regarding analytical methods and quality control will be provided by Cornell, and Cornell nutrient management recommendations will continue to be provided through Agro One.  Stakeholders will therefore continue to receive the same services as in the past. 

Agro One will bring together the strengths of Cornell’s knowledge and research in agronomy and horticulture with Dairy One’s industry-leading analytical capabilities and customer service.  The Dairy One sample transportation system that blankets the Northeast will become available for soil and tissue samples being submitted to the Agro One lab.  Agro One will also provide an expanded set of analytical data for use by Cornell researchers.

The move away from providing commercial laboratory services is consistent with Cornell’s focus on research and spinning off commercially-viable technologies to the private sector.  Freeing up resources previously dedicated to commercial soil and plant tissue lab services will allow Cornell to enhance its research capabilities while improving the amount of data available through Agro One.

There are many logistical issues to be worked out in the coming weeks.  Cornell and Dairy One are committed to making a smooth transition for farmers, farm advisors, extension educators, and Cornell personnel.

Dairy One Cooperative, Inc. is a 501 (c) 5 educational not-for-profit cooperative that provides dairy herd improvement services (DHIA) and software to dairy farmers in 13 northeast U.S. states and analytical services for forage, milk, water, soil, and manure to customers in the U.S. and around the world.

This 4-H club grew basil seeds that were in space and so can you…

The seeds are still available from NASA, as of this writing. Just go tothis webpage:

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/plantgrowth/joinchallenge/index.html

Here’s how they did in Oneonta:

The Oneonta Junior Scientists 4-H Club sent away (over the internet) for basil seeds that were flown by the space shuttle in the summer of 2007.  The seeds arrived in Oneonta in November and the club saved them until early spring. In March of 2008 the packet was opened at a club meeting and the number of seeds were counted. There were enough seeds to give each member 3 each, and the remaining six seeds were given to the 3rd grade science teacher at Greater Plains and a 4th grade teacher at Valleyview Elementary Schools in Oneonta.  In all, about 20-25 seeds were in our packet.

Club members planted the seeds in growth chambers configured from 3-liter soda bottles, and the growing medium was a mix of perlite and vermiculite.

Each member was given a thermometer to use inside their chamber to monitor temperature.  This was very important when the chamber was exposed to direct sunlight.

We used an organic fish and seaweed fertilizer as a nutrient. All of the seeds sprouted in the club members chambers. As time went by, some club members kept record of growth rates.

Two of the basil plant chambers were displayed at the Otsego County Fair this past summer.  In fact, these two plants are still thriving, and each of them has produced seeds.

One of the club members who had one of these plants has already planted and began growing a second generation of basil, using these seeds!

And I hope your report how well these cultivars of basil did at Cornell Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners website: http://vegvariety.cce.cornell.edu/

Gardeners engage the next generation in vegetable growing and making use of all the fruit in the vegetable garden.

Rise to the challenge and create a cool, funky piece of earth-friendly art with youth in your community.
See: Veggie Art

registration form (word doc)

Facilitating Meetings and Building Teams Training

Friday December 12th from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

This is a must attend training especially for your staff in Community Horticulture and Plant or Environmental Science 4-H Youth Development.

In today’s climate we must build skill to maximize our efficiency and effective engagement of volunteers.

It is estimated that 11 million meetings are held each DAY in the US and organizations spend up to 15 % of their budgets on meetings. Poor meetings and poor teams lead to loss of money, time and most importantly morale.

This training will help your staff plan and conduct meetings so you build effective teams to maximize your county programs’ impact.

This training is at the DEC Stony Kill Farm facility just south of Poughkeepsie so county associations in the Hudson Valley, Capital District and Long Island are especially encouraged to attend but it is open to CCE staff from across the state.

Participants will walk away with new strategies to immediately apply in our extension work.

Register staff today.

Consider sending a complete team from your county including a person from community horticulture, 4-H youth development, nutritional sciences.. If you’d like to also include a Master Gardener Volunteer and/or 4-H Volunteer contact Lori (bushway@cornell.edu) for space availability.

registration form (word doc)

You can help! - Find ‘em, photograph ‘em, and send ‘em

Whether you are a home gardener or landscape professional, choosing the right tree or shrub for your site is an important decision. Now there’s a Cornell University website –the Woody Plants Database — that can help you select the species most likely to thrive where you plant them.“Most people recognize the benefits of tree planting – from sequestering carbon to providing shade to improving aesthetics,” says Nina Bassuk, director of Cornell University’s Urban Horticulture Institute.  “But it’s important to make sure that the trees we plant are well-suited to the site before we invest time and money in planting them.”

In her decades of research on trees that can stand up to tough city life, Bassuk identified five key site characteristics that determine the chances of success – or failure – of particular woody plant species:

• How much light the site receives (full sun to shade).
• How cold it gets in winter (USDA Hardiness Zone).
• Soil moisture (from poorly drained to prolonged dry periods).
• Soil acidity or alkalinity (pH).
• Salt spray or salty soils (from road runoff or the ocean).

Simply plug that site information into an online form, and the Woody Plants Database website determines which of nearly 400 trees, shrubs and woody vines should perform well.  You can also refine your search to include only certain sized plants, or evergreen or deciduous species.

The site also includes detailed profile pages for each species that include:

• Images showing species’ ornamental characteristics through the year.
• Potential insect or disease problems.
• Notable cultivars available in the trade.
• Additional information on ornamental characteristics and environmental constraints.

The website focuses primarily on species well-suited for New York and the Northeast, but may be useful in regions with similar environmental conditions, notes Bassuk, who received the prestigious 2008 Scott Medal from Scott Arboretum for her work.

Bassuk traces the roots of this website back nearly 10 years, to a Cornell Faculty Innovation in Teaching grant to develop a website for students in the Creating the Urban Eden course.  Bassuk teaches the course along with her husband Peter Trowbridge, chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture.

“Originally, we just wanted a kind of online textbook to help students learn to identify these plants and their characteristics,” recalls Bassuk.  “But we realized that we could turn this information into a powerful tool to help people make better choices about what to plant.”

Visit the Woody Plant Database website:  http://hosts.cce.cornell.edu/woody_plants

Editors:  Click on images above for high-resolution images.