Cornell Cooperative Extension Community Horticulture

This program is from Cornell Cooperative extension of Onondaga.

The program focus is caring for trees in public places to assure healthy trees. Stewards learn a lot about trees and do a lot of good work. Participants have all levels of expertise and interest in trees and in gardening. A pet project is the native plant garden at the zoo.

Check out these brochure and contact Fran Lawlor if you have any questions.

CommuniTree Stewards program (pdf)

2007 planting (pdf)

Does your county have any similar volunteer programs? Is there interested in having something like this?

Have you seen the multimedia section of the www.gardening.cornell.edu? From the home page scroll down towards the bottom.

There you’ll find:

The most recent episode of

Garden podcasts from North Country Public Radio featuring horticulturist Amy Ivy, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Essex and Clinton Counties.

and…

Zone Creep - NPR’s Wired Science explores global warming and ‘zone creep’. Clip features David Wolfe, climate change expert in Cornell’s Department of Horticulture.

Let us know if you have found multimedia we might want to consider sharing on our site.

This e-newsletter comes out of the Dutchess County Cornell Cooperative Extension Community Horticulture Program.

Are other counties producing similar e-newsletters for their community residents?

Dutchess Dirt (PDF)

This summer Cornell Cooperative Extension of Putnam County began its Turf Love Program, a county-wide program designed to get participating homeowners to protect water quality by learning and using lawn care IPM principles. The program consists of: * Lawn Site assessment by Master Gardeners

(click here for site assessment survey and here for lawn survey questionnaire)

* Soil nutrient analysis

* Turf Love Journal - a homeowner diary

* Best Management Plan

* Kick-off Saturday Workshop for participants

* Mid-summer contact by Master Gardeners

* Super Turf Saturday workshop at end of September .

They hope to expand the program next year to other counties.

If you are interested in being part of the expansion let us know.

For more information, contact:

Dianne K. Olsen

Environmental Horticulture and Natural Resource Educator

Cornell Cooperative Extension of Putnam County
1 Geneva Rd., Brewster, NY 10509
845-278-6738

2007 America in Bloom Criteria Award Winners Announced!

Check out this site to find out about the Ball Horticultural Company Floral Displays Award Saratoga Springs, New York won and the J Frank Schmidt & Son Company Urban Forestry Award won by Ithaca, New York

Go New York.

Jessica Damiano a writer for newsday is blogging about her experiences as a trainee in the Nassau County CCE Master Gardener Volunteer program.

Check out her blog here.

Here’s an example of a county’s online newsletter for Master Gardener Volunteers:

YOUR AUGUST NEWSLETTER is ready at: http://counties.cce.cornell.edu/monroe/horticulture/insidemg.htm

Do other county’s have volunteer newsletter online?

Check out this sample of a new E-mail Gardening Newsletter from Cornell Cooperative Extension of Rensselaer, Albany, Schenectady.

Draft sample (pdf)

To learn more about their transition form paper to electronic format contact David Chinery
at dhc3@cornell.edu.

There has been speculation that breathing the bone meal dust or eating vegetables fertilized with bone meal fertilizer could cause bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Should gardeners be worried?

The bottom line is no. Bone meal fertilizer sold in the U.S. should be free of the agent that causes BSE or Mad Cow Disease and should be safe to use. U.S. manufactures use a heat and solvents in the rendering process so the BSE agent, if present, would be destroyed. Further, bone meal and other animal feeds can no longer be imported from England.

Britain cows became infected with BSE when animal feed that included bone meal that had the BSE prion was given to them. A small number of people that ate the infected beef as became infected. Although this disease was already in English sheep (in sheep the disorder is called Scrapie) for more than 200 years, it was never seen in other animal species until the 1980’s. It’s been suggested that the spread came about due to a change in the way infected sheep carcasses were processed/rendered in the late 1970’s. These carcasses were used for many years to make a high protein feed for cattle and other ruminants. But in the late 1970’s they altered the procedure from using high heat and chemical solvents to only using a heat method which apparently was not effective in destroying the BSE in rendered products.

Answer researched by Holy Wise of CCE of Oneida County.

Here is the D.E.C.I.D.E. Before You Act brochure mentioned in this article and posted on the CCE Onondaga County website.

Friday, April 20, 2007 — Syracuse Post Standard editorial
It’s not every day when people on opposite sides of a hotly contested issue link arms on something substantial.

So it is reason to cheer that groups for and against a pesticide notification law have found common ground that will help the environment. Pesticide Awareness Week begins Monday, and lawn care businesses and environmental groups have combined efforts to help homeowners make safe, healthy decisions when caring for their lawns and gardens this season.

With Earth Day coming up Sunday and Arbor Day next Friday, it’s the perfect time for such an effort.

Onondaga County Legislator Kathleen Rapp, R-Salina, and representatives from Cornell Cooperative Extension, Pro Scapes Inc. landscaping and lawn care company and the Citizens Campaign for the Environment have come together in a public awareness campaign that will include workshops and lectures and will place brochures in hardware store aisles across the area. The brochures are designed to educate consumers and encourage them to adopt a “long-term approach to managing pests using ways that reduce environmental, health and economic risks.”

The brochure is called D.E.C.I.D.E. Before You Act - D iagnose the problem (consult the Web site resources listed on the back of the brochure). E valuate all options. C hoose carefully. I nvestigate directions and apply carefully. D ispose of correctly. And E valuate the results.

The risks of doing otherwise are real.

According to the Citizens Campaign Web site, research continues to uncover links between pesticide exposures and serious health problems, including several types of cancer, neurological and reproductive disorders and birth defects.

Children are especially vulnerable to overexposure and can be subject to physiological and behavioral changes. In addition, lawn and garden pesticides are a leading cause of bird deaths.

Considering all that, a law requiring neighbors to give two days’ notice before applying the most dangerous pesticides to their lawns remains a good idea. It should be revisited despite the county legislature’s vote against it last June.

Members of the public awareness campaign disagree on that issue and have wisely agreed to put it aside while they pursue their education campaign. Their goal is to make residents who apply pesticides to their yards more aware of their potential impact and the various alternatives to dealing with those pesky grubs, worms, dandelions, etc. At the very least, the campaign will remind people to carefully follow the directions on the containers when they apply any chemicals. On the other end of the spectrum, some homeowners may want to reconsider what constitutes “a good lawn.”

For more information, the Web site of Cornell University Cooperative Extension-Onondaga County has a section on lawn care and pesticides at www.cce.cornell.edu/onondaga; Cornell’s Integrated Pest Management program is at www.nysipm.cornell.edu; and the CNY Nursery and Landscape Association offers information on the importance of trees at www.cnysnla.org.

With a spring-like weekend on tap, now is the perfect time to take a fresh look at the kind of yard care you want to do this year - and how to make it more environmentally responsible.