Master Gardeners of Tanana Valley General Meeting
Meeting Minutes: May 7, 2013
6:00 PM Social Time; 6:30 PM General Meeting
Conference Room, Food Bank Service Building
725 26th Avenue, Fairbanks, AK
Members Present:
As listed in Appendix I
Business Meeting:
Fall Workshop:
 Emily thanked everyone for their work
 Fantastic speakers (everything thanked Emily for her hydroponic presentation)
 Emily made notes
 Might do a further small fruit tree/bushes workshop in spring
Old Business:
 None
Future Meetings:
 December 3, 2013 meeting pot luck
 $15.00 gift of a garden theme, Chinese auction, first Tuesday, December 3
 Suzanne Somerville invited everyone on December 14th to her 34th Recital
New Business:
 Volunteer opportunity with Children’s Healthy Living Program
 Headed up by Julianne Power and Andrea Bersamin
 Doing a 5 year project with community intervention program for 2-8 year olds
 Would like teachers and volunteers – highlight Alaska specific vegetables
 Will start in January 2014
 Contact Emily or Steve if interested who will pass your name onto Julianne
Program:
Sharing/Lessons Learned:
 Emily
o used 2 products this year, loved them, styrofoam seed starting system
o Propamatic-40 $30 for 2 or $20 each
o Also tried an earthbox from spring workshop and it worked great, did peppers in them
and plants in earthbox with 1.5 lbs. of peppers, better than her other peppers in other
pots
o Koralick tomatoes but it didn’t come cleanly off when picking, skin split upon picking
o Had some voles in the potato garden
o Putting up a greenhouse next spring
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Karen
Master Gardeners of Tanana Valley
General Meeting November 5th, 2013
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Steve
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Cobra tomato in greenhouse this year worked wonderful, very tasty
Bought seed potatoes from Plant Kingdom and got scab in garden
Also had bad cracking on potato, she bought Mrs. Mullers potato, yellow flesh
Seascape strawberries really large and productive.
Had heirloom tomatoes from Pingo Farms from Russian seeds that was really good
Had some scab on potato; once you have scab you have it but it is only on surface,
doesn’t make the potato bad to eat
Put chicken wire over the strawberries, keeps the robins off them
Greenhouse used opaque plastic, bought 6 mil painters plastic and tomatoes were okay
but if clearer plastic had been used, light would have gone through better
Suggestions for better plastic were:
 At Risse’s you can buy by roll per foot
 Maybe Plant Kingdom?
 Holm Town has package of greenhouse plastic but not cheap
 SunTough lasts a long time, not cheap, get it at Lowes
 Corrugated plastic lasts a long time, over 10 years, very clear, can go mold, wipe
it down with a bleach and rag
 Home Depot sells twin wall polycarbonate
 Planted celery for first time and it worked.
Donna
o Robins come and dug up pea seeds and eat them all
o Did perennial garden this summer but had to fight down the raspberries and roses first
o Dug down and lined the bottom and hopes for perennials next year free of roses and
raspberries
o Bought a soaker hose at Wal-mart and it worked well except if it went up a little hill
o Lined with thick weed cloth, plastic liner, compost
o Planted lots of blues and purples with some yellows
o Donna had great carrots this year
General:
 Troillius seed – can get seed online at Gardens North – www.gardensnorth.com
 Ambition shallots are good to grow and they store for a long time
 Plant garlic in September
 Chestnook Red and Persian star (a bit better)
 Best garlic is Music, plant in fall
 Voles eat garlic too
 Green beans eaten all by robins too.
 Onions – Elsa Craig, Big Daddy
 No one had much success with homemade vegetable seed tape – either stunted plants or seeds
didn’t sprout
 Top of Gilmore Trail slugs reported
 Charlie Knight has done a slug survey
 Lilacs can take 7 years to bloom – some bloom in 5 years
 Maggie Hellam has most northern organic farm has grown garlic for years
Master Gardeners of Tanana Valley
General Meeting November 5th, 2013
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Emily has article on growing garlic, plant inside, put outside in March in snow pack, chills it then
starts to grow - like a winter sow.
?G ot 500 lbs of potatos from 15 lbs of seed, Yukon gold, did sweet slice for cucumbers, very successful.
? Won for lavender at fair for other culinary. Herb at fair is very competitive. Tried to plant a late crop
but they did terrible, tried carrots and onions at end of July. Very tiny produce.
Master Gardeners of Tanana Valley
General Meeting November 5th, 2013
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