budding
JANUARY 2015
BCMASTERGARDENERS.WEEBLY.COM
news
A PUBLICATION OF UME MASTER GARDENERS OF BALTIMORE COUNTY
C a le n d a r
FEBRUARY
12 General meeting, Creating a native wildflower meadow, 10 a.m.-12 noon
MARCH
2 Spring Lecture: Part 1: Caring for Trees
Part 2: Native Shrubs, 7-9 p.m.
28 Free garden lecture: Deer resistant plants
APRIL
6 Spring Lecture Series: Native Plants
25 Free Demo garden lecture: Growing
your own mushrooms
MAY
4 Spring Lecture Series: Container
Gardening and New Plants for 2015
7 General meeting: Plant sale preparation
9 Plant Sale 9 a.m.-2 p.m.
JUNE
1 Spring Lecture Series: Small Space
Vegetable Gardening
4 Annual State Training Day, College Park
Ne w we b s ite
H T T P :// E X T E N S I O N . U M D . E D U /
BALTIMORE-COUNTY/
MASTER-GARDENERS
FROM THE PRESIDENT
CAROLYN VANE
It’s an exciting time for Baltimore
County Master Gardeners. Just to name a
few of the many opportunities to come this
year… beginning in March, our Spring
Lecture Series, our awesome Plant Sale in
May, free Demo Garden lectures and
Garden Fest this summer, and interesting
Continuing Ed programs throughout the
year, and more.
I find that the more involved I’ve
become, the more fun I’ve had. Our new
Master Gardeners from the Class of 2014
are already very involved. The 27 interns
recorded 2,528 volunteer hours their first
year. I enjoyed getting to know some of
them while helping at the Plant Sale or in
the Demo Garden. They seemed to be ubiquitous. Irene Baker, Mary Clark, Phyllis
Clements, Dwayne Edwards, Eugenie
Nable, Sheila Polley, Stephanie Refo,
Ernie Ritchey, Gretchen Sarkin, Glen
Schulze, Sara Yousa, Michele Zahorchak,
and Bernadine Zienkiewicz each were
honored for more than 100 service hours.
Last year BCMGs recorded many
more than the required 20 hours, 10 hours
of continuing education, and attendance at a
minimum of three general meetings.
Twenty active MGs (not including interns)
were honored for exceptional involvement
in our outreach serving between 100 and
500 volunteer hours. The entire organization recorded 9,552 volunteer hours. And
we all know there were more hours
involved than those actually recorded.
Thank you to Anna Glenn for collecting all
the data—the numbers do speak!
The synergy of our talented group is
THE
TOP TEN WAYS TO
IMPROVE OURSELVES AS
MASTER GARDENERS
10
Come to meetings
9
Pay our dues
8
Introduce ourselves
7
Help out in the demo garden
6
Get out of our own boxes
5
Support our projects
4
Come to training day
3
Act on our own ideas
2
Wear our name tags
1
Get more involved
reflected by all of our achievements. We’ve
gone from an initial group of 18 in 2007, to
172 in 2014. Last year we reached 3,987
people, with 1,517 of those being youths.
Our own Jack Leonard envisioned the
design for the Demo Garden in 2009, giving
us a Master Plan with which to go forward
with the 2.7 acres dedicated to us in the Ag
Center’s master plan. Starting with only
two 20’x20’ plots (GIEI and Bay-Wise)
breaking ground in 2010, our gardens continue to grow. A deer resistant fence was
erected in 2011 to protect our 1.3 acre
Demonstration Garden space.
Prior to the Ag Center’s completion in
2010 and becoming our home, we floated
between the Cockeysville library and
Oregon Ridge for meetings, and training
classes at CCBC Hunt Valley. This
Baltimore County facility houses the
Maryland Agricultural Resource Council,
Baltimore Soil Conservation District,
University of Maryland Extension Baltimore County Office, and USDA’s Farm
Services Agency (FSA). Previously these
offices were scattered around the county.
This promises to be an exciting year
ahead. I look forward to seeing each of
you at our functions and in the garden.
budding
NEWS
NORMAN’S PATCH 45
NORMAN COHEN
P o in s e ttia s
Starting in mid-November, the poinsettia is ubiquitous. It
can be purchased everywhere: Home Depot, the Giant, Walmart,
Valley View and Wegmans. In fact, instead of counting straight
species native plants, I was counting poinsettias in my sleep.
The scientific name for poinsettia is Euphorbia pulcherrima, a member of the Euphorbiaceae (Spurge) family. The
botanical name Euphorbia derives from Euphorbos, the Greek
physician of King Iuba (or Juba) II of Numidia (52–50 BC – 23
AD); the Latin adjective pulcherrima means very beautiful.
The common name comes from Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first
U.S. ambassador to Mexico, who introduced the plant in the
United States in 1825.
The poinsettia is native to Mexico and found in the wild in
deciduous tropical forests at moderate elevations from southern
Sinaloa down the entire Pacific coast of Mexico to Chiapas and
Guatemala. It is also found in the interior in the hot, seasonally
dry forests of Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Chiapas. In its natural
habitat the plant grows to 13 feet.
The colored bracts – which are most often flaming red but
can be orange, pale green, cream, pink, white, or marbled – are
often mistaken for flower petals because of their groupings and
colors, but are actually leaves. The flowers of the poinsettia are
undistinguished and do not attract pollinators. They are grouped
within small yellow structures found in the center of each leaf
bunch and are called cyathia.
The American poinsettia industry was created by the
German immigrant Albert Ecke in the Los Angeles area in the
early 1900s. His son, Paul Ecke, developed the grafting technique; but it was the third generation of Eckes, Paul Ecke Jr.,
who was responsible for advancing the association between the
plant and Christmas. Besides changing the market from mature
plants shipped by rail to cuttings sent by air, he sent free plants
to television stations for them to display on air from
Thanksgiving to Christmas. He also appeared on television programs like The Tonight Show and Bob Hope's Christmas specials to promote the plants.
In 1923, the Eckes had a virtual monopoly on poinsettias
owing to a technique that made their plants much more attractive. They produced a fuller, more compact plant by grafting
two varieties of poinsettia together. A poinsettia left to grow on
its own will naturally have an open, somewhat weedy look. The
Eckes’ technique made it possible to get every seedling to
branch, resulting in a bushier plant. Their monopoly was broken
in the 1990s when a university researcher published their grafting methodology.
In the United States and perhaps elsewhere, there is a
common misconception that the poinsettia is highly toxic.
According to an urban legend, a two-year-old child died after
consuming a poinsettia leaf. While the sap and latex of many
plants of the spurge genus are indeed toxic, the poinsettia’s toxicity is relatively mild. Its latex can cause an allergic reaction in
sensitive individuals. It is also mildly irritating to the skin or
stomach and may sometimes cause diarrhea and vomiting if
eaten.
The colors of the bracts are created through photoperiodism, meaning that they require darkness to change color. At
the same time, the plants require abundant light during the day
for the brightest color. The trick is to keep the plant in an environment of complete natural darkness from sunset to sunrise
each day starting from mid-October for 4 to 6 weeks. Total natural darkness means no light other than natural evening light
sources (moonlight or starlight) during this period of darkness.
In addition the temperature in the room should not be kept
below 65 degrees during this time.
Good luck. This is more trouble than it’s worth! For only
$5.95, you can buy a pointsettia in late November or early
December and toss it in January.
De c e m b e r wre a th wo rks h o p
Thanks to Pat Parker for all the preparation and planning that led to a
wonderful December meeting and wreath workshop. Unfortunately the winter
weather kept some members at home, but those who made it out thoroughly
enjoyed the fun and fellowship and went home with lovely and unique creations.
PAGE 2
BALTIMORE COUNTY MASTER GARDENERS
budding
NEWS
We lc o m in g o u r
2 0 1 5 O ffic e rs
Ne w we b s ite
la u n c h e d
The Master Gardeners website
changed from Weebly to the UME platform
starting January 1. The University of
Maryland has been working to create a
more uniform website look to all UME
pages, including those of all its volunteer
organizations such as Master Gardeners. For
this reason, we switched from the Weebly
website to the UME College of Agriculture
and Natural Resources web format at the
beginning of the year.
The Weebly site had both public
pages and private ones just for Master
Gardeners. Under the UME format, there
are two separate webpages, one to keep
our internal documents and another to promote our programs to the public. This will
minimize confusion for the public as to
which events they are able to attend and
which events are strictly for Master
Gardeners.
The public webpage is http://extension.umd.edu/baltimore-county/master-gardeners.
Trish Moore has been very helpful in
switching our content to the new UME
platform. Please contact Trish or Anna
with sugesstions for items to include.
The website that will strictly house all
our internal content can be found at AGNR
Groups: https://agnrgroups.umd.edu/baltimore-county-mg. To access this content,
each MG will need to create a username
and password, request permission to join
the group, and then be added to the group
by the website administrator (Anna).
Instructions are available at: https://agnrgroups.umd.edu/how-use-site/informationnew-users/registering. Please note that this
username and password are separate from
those used to complete online hours.
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND EXTENSION...SOLUTIONS IN YOUR COMMUNITY
President: Carolyn Vane
Vice President: Heather Wight
Treasurer: Ruth Simon
Corresponding Secretary: René Bookoff
Recording Secretaries: Angie Goodman and
Barbara Lingg
Members at Large: Mary Clark, Kolman
Kodek, Ernie Ritchey
Ex Officio President: Randy Low
EAC Reps: Hannah Byron and Leslie
Erickson
Th a n ks to o u r
2 0 1 4 O ffic e rs
President: Randy Low
Vice President: Debbie McKearney
Treasurer: Ruth Simon
Corresponding Secretaries: Barbara Corak
and Carolyn Gonzalez
Recording Secretaries: Angie Goodman and
Barabara Lingg
Members at Large: Judy Ciofalo, Paul
Dorsey, and Tiiu Mayer
EAC Rep: Pam Spencer
Ex Officio President: Leslie Erickson
PAGE 3
budding
NEWS
In c o m in g
Ma s te r G a rd e n e rs
P o llin a to rs ,
Wh e re Are Yo u ?
SARA YOSUA
Wh a t c o u n ts fo r
BC MG h o u rs ( a n d
wh a t d o e s n o t) ?
ANNA GLENN
Master Gardener volunteers, especially newly trained interns, often times have
questions about the activities that are
approved for volunteer activity hours. To
help answer these questions, I, along with
the help of Jon Traunfeld, have created a
document titled “What Counts for
Baltimore County Master Gardener
Volunteer Hours” that helps to summarize
the various activities that count and those
that do not count. I have uploaded it to our
new AGNR Groups website and it can be
found under the Volunteer Hour FAQs tab.
If you have questions about hours, some of
the most important things to remember are:
• Education is the mission and principal goal of the Master Gardener program.
Garden maintenance activities should be
kept to a minimum.
• All MG activities/projects must be
approved by an Extension professional.
Hopefully this document will help to
clear up any of the questions you may have
about what counts toward your required 20
hours of volunteer service for BCMG, but
as always, if you have any questions please
don’t hesitate to contact me.
PAGE 4
Please join me in welcoming our new
Master Gardeners. During their internship
year, this hard working class recorded
2,528 volunteer hours with over half of the
class members completing 100+ hours!!
We are lucky to have such a great group of
dedicated volunteers and we are eager to
see all they will continue to accomplish in
the upcoming years.
Irene Baker; René Bookoff,
Rebecca Brown, Mary Clark, Phyllis
Clements, Dwayne Edwards, Andrea
Evelius, Paul Godwin, Neva Hurley, Jen
Kostick, Lynette Mooney, Jordan Moore
(Senne), Eugenie Nable, Ian Parrish,
Sheila Polley, Stephanie Refo, Paula
Rickter, Ernie Ritchey, Lori Rogers,
Gretchen Sarkin, Glen Shulze, Pamela
Spencer, Sarah Van Tiem, Elliot Weidow,
Sara Yosua, Michele Zahorchak, and
Bernadine Zienkiewicz.
He rb ic id e s /
P e s tic id e s c la s s
If you are interested in using herbicides or pesticides in the Demonstration
Garden, you must attend Dave Martin’s
class on February 24 at 7:00 p.m. to
receive instruction on policies and record
keeping on the Ag Center property, which
belongs to Baltimore County. Please contact Heather Wight to sign up.
Fall is gone; Christmas is history;
winter is now in full swing. So, where are
the hoards of bees, flies, butterflies, moths,
wasps, and other pollinators that we rely on
in the warmer months? Except for a very
few migrating species, they’re right here!
As either egg, larvae, pupae or adult, they
are trying to survive the harsh cold while
being invisible to predators and parasites.
And all those precious workers could really
use your help to make it through the winter.
Next year consider waiting until
spring to tidy your gardens. Ladybugs and
lacewings like to nest in the crowns of
native grasses. Dead flower stems provide
overwinter nesting for bees. Leaf litter
provides a safe place for newly emerged
butterfly larvae to sleep the long winter.
With about 70 percent of North American
bees nesting underground in the midst of
all your mulched and planted areas, provide one or two well-drained areas about
three square feet that receive sun (a south
facing slope is ideal) and are deliberately
kept bare throughout the year.
Check the Xerces Society for instructions to create nests and boxes for wood
and cavity nesting bees and bumblebees http://www.xerces.org/wpcontent/uploads/2008/11/nests_for_native_
bees_fact_sheet_xerces_society.pdf.
To be continued... What are my
Winter Quarters?
BALTIMORE COUNTY MASTER GARDENERS
budding
NEWS
P la n t S a le 2 0 1 5 ;
S a ve th e d a te s !
NANCY LEWIS
The main fundraiser for our demonstration gardens and other outreach projects
is five months away. Save the date for our
sale, which is Saturday, May 9. Our sale is
a great way to get the majority of your volunteers hours done in one week! Setup
will begin on Wednesday, May 6, and will
continue through our MG presale, which
takes place at 3:00 p.m. on May 8. If you
can’t volunteer on Saturday, we can use
your help with setup or volunteering at
White House Nursery in March and April
to earn in-kind plants.
After Sara Tangren’s enlightening
course, the plant sale committee has committed to adding more of the native plant
products that Sara advocated. There are
several nurseries that grow native
Maryland seed stock and we will be highlighting these at our sale. We already have
bought plants from American Natives (now
known as ArcheWild) where we got the
lovely Zizia aurea plugs and the Spigelia
marilandica. We will have more of their
stock in 2015. The native plant products
will be separate from the traditional native
offerings we have sold in the past.
At the December meeting, we discussed whether certain ‘native plants’ in
our area remain genetically pure and how
could it even be proved. Plants such as the
Panicum have so many cultivars planted
throughout the state that finding a genetically pure straight species Panicum is
unlikely. Other plants such as Zizia that do
not have a cultivar would have genetically
pure seed. We will have a careful vetting
process to make sure that the native plant
products meet a pure definition in the
absence of AOSCA certified seeds. Ferns
have a free ride – their spores travel thousands of miles so they can be placed
among the native plant products.
As we have done every year in the
past, we will also strive to add more plants
that are native to the MD Piedmont or their
cultivars that come from our generous
donors like Herring Run and American
Native Plants. Our sale will continue to
welcome (and badly need) donations from
our donors and Master Gardeners that are
non-native or native plant cultivars as long
as they are not invasive plants.
For our sale to continue to generate
funds and to meet the needs and desires of
our customers, we will continue to welcome and offer a variety of plants. No
Master Gardener should feel ashamed of
donating or buying an “alien” plant. We
have some exciting new varieties of plants
chosen from the inventory on hold at
White House Nursery, which we will earn
with our in-kind work in the spring. A big
boost for the sale’s bottom line are the nonnative or native plant cultivar donations
from wholesale growers. Many of our customers expect to find new and exciting
plants at our sale.
Tiiu Mayer has offered to lead a seed
starting workshop in March. This will be
a great opportunity to learn how to start
your tomato plants at home and not have to
worry about finding the plants you want at
the garden center. You can also grow these
plants for our sale to get volunteer hours.
We will also be buying plant plugs that
will need potting so that will be another
opportunity to help our sale.
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND EXTENSION...SOLUTIONS IN YOUR COMMUNITY
If you haven’t volunteered for our
sale you are missing out on some rewarding fun, learning more about plants and
getting to know other Master Gardeners.
See you in May!
Volunte e r a t White
Hous e Nurs e ry
It’s time to sign up for planting
work days at White House Nursery. In
exchange for planting seedlings, BCMG
receives perennials for the plant sale. So
just sign up, show up dressed in layers,
bring water, willingness to work (not
hard), and laughter.
Six people are needed each day:
March 19, March 26, April 7, and April
9 from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. at White
House Nursery, 7422 Falls Road,
Upperco, MD 21155.
Sign up with Heather Wight.
PAGE 5
budding
NEWS
Vo lu n ta ry d o n a tio n
The Baltimore County Master
Gardeners will be collecting membershp
voluntary donations from January to
March. The suggested annual contribution
is $25, but you are welcome to contribute
any amount. These funds are used for supporting various activities not covered by
the UME, Baltimore County Extension
Office. Donations can be made by cash or
check endorsed to Baltimore County
Extension Advisory Council (BCEAC), not
Baltimore County Master Gardeners.
Donations can be given to Treasurer Ruth
Simon at the meetings or mailed to the
Baltimore County Extension Office (Attn:
Anna Glenn).
*The Baltimore County Extension
Advisory Council is a 501(c)(3) organization. Please consult your accountant for
guidance on the tax implications of your
donation. Your donation will in no way
affect your membership status as an Active
Baltimore County Master Gardener.
I N F O R M A T I O N A B O U T A L L MG
ADVANCED TRAINING
CLASSES MAY BE FOUND AT:
H T T P :// E X T E N S I O N .
UMD.EDU/MG/ADVANCEDTRAINING
Be e ke e p in g
S h o rt C o u rs e
S p rin g Le c tu re
S e rie s a n n o u n c e d
MARC is sponsoring a workshop
with Honey Bee Steward Nathan Reid on
January 31 and February 1. It will include
a hands-on day in the hive later in spring at
the Ag Center.
Focused on the guiding principles of
beekeeping, this course will help you build
a framework to continue your education as
a beekeeper, honey bee steward, or simply
a person who recognizes the irreplaceable
value honey bees hold in our food system.
The course fee is $60 with course
book and $50 without. Visit www.marylandagriculture. org for registration information.
The Spring Lecture Series will held
on the first Monday of each month from
March through June. Open to the public
and to Master Gardeners, these lectures will
be held at the Ag Center from 7-9 p.m.
March 2: Part 1: Anybody can plant a
tree, but how do you raise a tree?;
Part 2: Native shrubs in your yard
April 6: Get on board with Natives!
May 4: Part 1: Growing your work of
art: Container Gardening; Part 2:
What’s new for 2015?
June 1: How to get a lot from a little:
Small Space Vegetable Gardening
More information on the series will
follow shortly, but for now be sure to add
these dates to your calendar.
F E BR UAR Y G E NE R AL
ME E TING
Fe brua ry 1 2 th, 1 0 :0 0 a .m. to 1 2 :0 0 noon
C re a tin g a n a tive wild flo we r m e a d o w
Our own Mary Clark and her husband Dewey will share lessons learned during the last several years in transforming 1½ acres of lawn into a native wildflower
meadow. Randy Low and Patsy Pahr suggested this meadow presentation after
their Bay-Wise Certification visit to the Clarks’ home. The February 12th presentation, in the form of a photo essay, will highlight the meadow at various stages of
development and in different seasons. The Clarks will share photos of the diverse
wildlife their meadow has attracted and discuss challenges related to invasive plants.
budding
NEWS
Editor: open
Designer: Natalie Hamilton
Submissions are welcome!
Please forward to
infobcmg@yahoo.com
The Maryland Master Gardener Program was started in 1978
as a means of extending the horticultural and pest management
expertise of University of Maryland Extension to the general
public. The program is designed to train volunteer horticultural
educators for the University of Maryland Extension—the principal outreach education unit of the University of Maryland.
UME B A L T I M O R E C O U N T Y E X T E N S I O N
1114 Shawan Road
Cockeysville, MD 21030
Phone: (410) 887-8090
Fax: (410) 785-5950
NEW website:
http://extension.umd.edu/baltimore-county/master-gardeners
Anna Glenn, Horticulture Faculty Extension Assistant,
amglenn@umd.edu
University of Maryland Extension (UME) programs are open to any person and
will not discriminate against anyone because of race, age, sex, color, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, religion, ancestry, national origin, marital status, genetic information, political affiliation, and gender identity or expression.