A Master Gardener's Journal

Did you know that Media, PA is America’s first Fair Trade town? To celebrate that distinction, Media will hold its first Fair Trade Live Concert on Sunday, September 14, 2008, from 12 NOON to 7 PM. Delaware County Master Gardeners will participate with a booth on composting and sustainable gardening. Please come out and join us in supporting this event. Admission to the event is free.

Multicultural artists from Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe will perform on three different stages to create a musical celebration of diversity. Other festivities will offer an in-depth experience of global cultures with street-scape artists, Fair Trade vendors offering yummy food and handcrafted items for purchase, and many hands-on, fun and educational activities for kids and adults.

“This event will give people an opportunity to learn more about how even small purchasing decisions can have a dramatic, economic impact on farmers and workers around the world and hopefully inspire others to learn more about how they can join this growing movement,” says Elizabeth Killough, chair of America’s First Fair Trade Committee.

Fair Trade is a business practice that guarantees family farmers and workers a fair wage for their harvest. It’s a comprehensive social-economic tool that has raised the standard of living for millions of people. The Fair Trade movement began in Europe and has spread throughout the world. The movement is rapidly gaining greater recognition for what it offers--environmental sustainability, economic development and social equality for small-scale farmers and workers around the world.

For more information, go to Fair Trade Live Concert.

Do you have a gardening question? In Delaware County, call our Master Gardeners hortline at 610-690-2671 on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 AM-12 NOON.

UPCOMING MASTER GARDENERS EVENTS

Registration required for all events. Please call 610-690-2655 for more information or visit our website for a registration form.

Fall is a great time of year, and we have just the event to help you celebrate it. If you’ve never attended our annual Master Gardener Fall Fest, treat yourself this year. The date is Saturday, Sept. 27, 2008 from 9 AM to 3:30 PM at Smedley Park in Springfield, PA. We’re offering mini-workshops, environmentally friendly gardening advice, our spectacular plant sale and other fun activities. We’ll even have an orchid specialist available to answer your questions.

Advance registration of $25 is required for the two mini- workshops and box lunch, but walk-ins are welcome for the day-long “dirt cheap” plant sale, frugal gardener sale (gardening books, gently used gardening tools and outdoor decorations), bake sale and environmentally friendly gardening advice.

Be sure to try our free samples of healthy treats made from fall fruits and vegetables. While you’re wandering around, check out our reduce-reuse-recycle displays and demos. We’ll show you how easy it is to go green. And look for Greenhouse Specialist Warren Gall-he’ll be available to dispense information and advice on selecting nursery grown plants.

Eleanor Tickner, Delco Master Gardener, will stretch your imagination of the possible with her Boughs, Berries and Birds workshop. She’ll take you on a mind’s-eyes view of the fall and winter garden season. You’ll never see your garden the same again.

Kathleen Hornberger, Delco Master Gardener, hones in on those nasty invasive plants in her Exotic Invasive Plants Gone Wild workshop. Aggressive, out of control and opportunistic plants are not Martians from outer space. They’re exotic invasives from other countries that are invading our native landscape. Learn to identify and control these Earth aliens--before they take over the world--and replace them with native species.

After lunch you can choose to attend one of two optional hands-on workshops—Multi-season Containers ($25) or Building a Birdhouse ($15).

Attend the Container workshop given by Warren Goll, Greenhouse Educator and Joe Daniels, Delco Master Gardener, and you’ll take home an eighteen inch container filled with woody and herbaceous plants to beautify your outdoor area for multiple outdoor seasons.

If you choose the Birdhouse workshop, Diana Breen, Delco Master Gardener will help you build a birdhouse for your garden to attract chickadees, nuthatches and wrens. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see those birds in your yard on chilly winter days?

You won’t want to miss Fall Fest. It’s always an enjoyable event. Sign up now for the workshops while there’s still space. For registration information on the Master Gardener Fall Fest, call the Delaware County Cooperative Extension Office at 610-680-2655 or download an online registration form .

Do you have a gardening question? In Delaware County, call our Master Gardeners hortline at 610-690-2671 on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 AM-12 NOON.

UPCOMING MASTER GARDENERS EVENTS

Registration required for all events. Please call 610-690-2655 for more information or visit our website for a registration form.

By Joe Daniels, Delaware County Master Gardener

Could it be that the last few days of summer are upon us? They say time flies when you're having fun. (Do you think many school-age children feel that way?) Here are some things you can tend to for the next few weeks. Keeping up with things will allow you to continue to enjoy the garden until the weather turns frosty.

Seasonal Chores
Enrich garden beds with compost. Don't forget to compost both fallen leaves and grass clippings as well as kitchen scraps. Learn how to compost in one of our composting classes and have the ultimate recycling.

Collect soil samples now for testing so you can correct pH imbalances. Test kits (cost $9) are available at our County Extension office in Smedley Park.)

Fall is harvest time, including harvest of choice seed from favorite and top-performing non-hybrid wildflowers, garden flowers, herbs and vegetables.

Many large garden spiders will be seen at this time. Most are beneficial and not poisonous. To reduce spiders in the home for winter, seal up cracks and spaces at the foundation and remove debris nearby.

Apply touch-up mulch if needed.

Generally no more fertilizer should be applied to plants.

September is often a dry month; water as needed.

Keep up weeding, deadheading, and pest patrol.

Vegetables
Keep herbs producing new foliage by removing flowers and seedpods from basil, mint, parsley, sage and thyme.

Seed cold-hardy vegetables now, including peas, lettuce, kale, green onion sets, radishes, and spinach.

Plant many garlic varieties in the fall.

Continue to harvest vegetables at their peak. Ripe and overripe vegetables can be magnets for rodents and other pests. Have too much zucchini? Donate your excess to a local food bank!

Harvest garlic and onions when the tops have dried up. Pull up the whole plant (top and all), let it dry, and then braid garlic or onions together for winter storage and an attractive decoration. Onions with thick necks do not store well and should be used first.

Start potting up some chives, parsley, and other perennials for a kitchen winter garden.

Preserve herbs for winter use by freezing or drying them.

Lawn Care:
Continue to mow the lawn until growth ceases for the year. As the season cools, some grasses (Kentucky bluegrass, tall fescue and perennial ryegrass) will actually grow faster, and more frequent mowing will be needed. If your lawn has already gone dormant due to drought, discontinue mowing. Unless you have a newly planted lawn, your lawn will need less water in the fall.

Fertilize your lawn in mid to late September to give it an early start for next spring.

Fall is an ideal time to establish a new lawn of the cool sea son grasses. Seed and water thoroughly, but infrequently (after grass has germinated) to encourage deep roots.

This is also the best time to reseed bare spots in the lawn.

Keep weeds from forming seeds, remove seed heads promptly. Control winter annual or perennial weeds in the lawn by applying an appropriate herbicide if weeds are extensive.

Tree and Shrub Maintenance
Prior to leaves dropping, prune all dead wood.

For an energy efficient landscape: place evergreens on the north and northwest sides to block winter winds. To block early morning sun, plant deciduous trees on the east, to block late afternoon sun, plant on the west. Do not plant on the south side: trees here would block cooling summer breezes.

When night temperatures are in the 40s and days are no longer warm, transplant trees and shrubs. Do not add fertilizer to the planting hole. It will stimulate late growth that could be damaged in winter.

If you are moving plants from one area of your garden to another, be certain that they are well watered for at least several weeks prior to moving. Plants that are drought stressed do not transplant well.

Now is a good time to move needle-leaved evergreens if they need to be moved to another area. Be sure to have a large enough rootball on each plant to sustain it.

Begin to decrease supplemental watering this month to allow woody plants time to prepare for winter. If it is a dry fall, you will need to water monthly through November.

For more of Joe’s tips, go to Gardening Tips.

Do you have a gardening question? In Delaware County, call our Master Gardeners hortline at 610-690-2671 on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 AM-12 NOON.

UPCOMING MASTER GARDENERS EVENTS

Registration required for all events. Please call 610-690-2655 for more information or visit our website for a registration form.

Kathy Hornberger, our Master Gardener President and a devoted fan of butterflies, was fluttering with excitement at our last meeting because a Great Spangled Fritillary made an appearance in her garden. Read on to hear her rave…

Anyone who’s been to the last several MG meetings has heard me enthusiastically exclaim: “There was a Great Spangled Fritillary in my garden today!” For those of you familiar with this creature, forgive my childish glee. If you’ve never heard of such a thing, let me explain.

The Great Spangled Fritillary is a very attractive, rusty orange-colored and black-patterned butterfly with a 2-1/2 to 4 inch wingspan (less orange in color and slightly smaller than a Monarch). The black pattern consists of both lines and numerous spots. On the underside of the hind wings, the spots are metallic silver. It’s the largest fritillary in the eastern US and can be found along roadsides or in fields or open woodlands from June through September feasting on the nectar of bee balm, black-eyed susan, butterfly-weed, milkweed, joe-pye-weed, purple coneflower, and knapweed, just to name a few species. I grow all of these plants in my yard except for the last (it is non-native).

Caterpillars (larvae) will emerge in late summer on or near leaves of violets. The larvae are black in color with orange-based spines arising from the surface, presumably as a protective device against predatory birds. The larvae will not feed until after winter is over and young violet leaves emerge. So, for all those fastidious gardeners out there, please don’t remove any clumps of ragged-looking violet leaves because they may be harboring the eggs and larvae of this butterfly species.

My garden has become a habitat for this showy, swiftly flying invertebrate. And, I currently have at least TWO DOZEN Black Swallowtail caterpillars munching away on dill and bronze fennel and at least that many Monarch larvae on the milkweeds!

Please consider including host plants in your yard to help sustain populations of these beautiful creatures from the Order Lepidoptera.

Do you have a gardening question? In Delaware County, call our Master Gardeners hortline at 610-690-2671 on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 AM-12 NOON.

UPCOMING MASTER GARDENERS EVENTS

Registration required for all events. Please call 610-690-2655 for more information or visit our website for a registration form.