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.

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)

I am pleased to share that the 2007 CCE Master Gardener Volunteer (MGV) report is posted online in the right column of our MGV web page.

More than 2,000 active MGV spent more than 110,000 hours working to bring gardening success to New York State citizens and communities. Collectively MGV made more than 140,000 direct citizen contacts.

Lori Bushway

Leader of Adult Outreach

Cornell’s Garden-based Learning Program

Check out this latest addition to our Home-Grounds and Community Horticulture Resource Library. This is a lending library maintained in the Department of Horticulture and CCE educators are encouraged to borrow items (see more details below).

Borrow this DVD to add an educational component to your Master Gardener Volunteer meeting or if you are working with youth or public adult audiences it could be a nice addition to a garden lesson. It might even inspire your audience to look closer at their gardens and be inspired to do their own filming.

Garden Insects (DVD) a 50 minute long documentary film by Chris Korrow that features colorful close-up photography, an original music score, combined with facts about insect habitats and life cycles offers viewers a documentary film that is aesthetically pleasing, awe-inspiring and informative. Viewers learn about the multitude of insects in their own gardens — which ones are beneficial and which ones are destroying their vegetables, who eats who and why. Organized by insect families: ants; bees and wasps; etc. The unique aspect of this project is that Korrow is both an biodynamic farmer and a professional filmmaker, his insights coming from hard-won hours in the fields and a love for the garden ecosystem. Visually stimulating, the film awakens the viewer to the fact that we are not as separate from nature as we might think. If we have a garden in our backyard, chances are there is more happening out there than we could have imagined!

Filmmaker’s statement:
“Having taught gardening classes for over 14 years, I was inspired to make this film when I realized how little the majority of gardeners know about the insect ecosystem that exists in their gardens, and also that they do have a strong desire and interest to understand it better. From the point of view of an environmental activist this film is important as it gives the viewer an opportunity to connect with the natural world through something that is close and personal — their own gardens — rather than something far away and abstract like the destruction of the rain forests of the world. Garden Insects was filmed almost entirely in my own backyard.”

Home-Grounds and Community Horticulture Resource Library houses hundreds of titles. The bulk of the collection is slide presentations with an increasing number of powerpoints on CDs. There are also posters for display. CCE staff can contact Max Welcome in the Dept of Horticulture for a complete list of resources available or to borrowing any of the resources.

Monday July 21^st (10 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.) Hosted by Cornell Cooperative Extension of Rensselaer County

This in-service will provide an opportunity for CCE educators working in community horticulture to build their confidence and skill in helping lawn owners implement ecological lawn care practices.

Come with your lawn care questions and be prepared to practice identifying grasses, weeds and diseases as well as trouble shooting issues in the field. Cornell turf team experts Dr. Frank Rossi will be leading this in-service.

We will begin at 10am at CCE Rensselaer, 61 State Street, Troy, NY and take a field trip to nearby lawns in the afternoon. We will end about 3:00 pm.

Registration fee: $25 includes lunch and materials.

Homework
Identify the hot lawn care topics and issues in your county. Bring your clients’ most challenging/frequently asked lawn care questions and issues. We want to share these with the turf team to identify potential solutions and fuel future educational and research efforts.
Review Lawn Care without Pesticides and Lawn Care Almanac available from www.gardening.cornell.edu/lawn

Send this registration information by July 15^th to:
Maxine Welcome mw45@cornell.edu
Your Name:
Your County:
Your Email:
The county 9100 account to charge $25 fee:

…after July 15^th contact Lori to register.

If you are not able to attend this in-service do you have a volunteer eager to build expertise in lawn care and willing to represent your county program at this in-service? If so please contact Lori to determine arrangements.

Lori Bushway, bushway@cornell.edu, 607.255.5918

Spring is in the air and many are still fretting over the price of gas as it continues to rise. Here’s a perfect opportunity to let our NYS lawn owners know about one more way to save on gas…

Read the full press release from the Department of Horticulture at this web page.

We encourage reprinting this for your local news outlets.

If you need more of these order them from Liz at 607.255.7282 or patorder@cornell.edu