The Leaflet April 2019 Contents Coming May 11: Coming May 11: RCMGA 12th Annual Plant Sale 1 RCMGA 12th Annual Plant Sale History Of Agricultural f you are not looking forward to our plant • Label your plants with common name, Extension Service 2 sale, you must have too, too many plants, perennial or annual, color, shade or sun, Itoo much yard art, and have learned every- etc. Price them to sell! Color-coded Urban Gardening Festival thing about what RCMGA members grow stickers will be available to expedite Coming May 18th 2 and know. Since that eliminates everyone, pricing. Rcmga Recommends: you must be looking forward to learning, If you have questions, contact a project “Go to Growild!” 3 networking with other gardeners, supporting lead (Lynn Stenglein (629-888-7095) or our RCMGA projects with your plant and Rene Kriek (606-454-0041) Unmatched set. What’s Growing In Your garden art donations, volunteering your time, Our April meeting is our plant sale ‘dress re- Garden? 3 and having fun. The Plant Sale committee is hearsal’, a.k.a. plant swap. Bring your plant Profiles In Gardening: working hard on flyers, banners, publicity, labeled as perennial or annual, sun or shade, Nicholle Gerde 4 etc. A Plant Sale Tips section may be viewed size, color and other information that a buy- at www.rcmga.org and will be mailed to all er wants to know. We will suggest a price if Contact List 4 RCMG this week. It includes plant sugges- you are not sure. Upcoming Events 4 tions, labeling tips, and volunteer tasks. • The sign-up sheet for work- Gardening in Westeros 4 ers (sales, setup, plant carri- ers, consultants, etc.) will be circulated at the April 25th SATURDAY, meeting. May 11th • Get flyers at the meeting (or from Crystal at the Ext 8:00AM - 2:00PM Office) and post them in your community. Spread the word among your gar- den-loving friends and fam- PERENNIALS NEXT MEETING ily. ANNUALS Arpril 25, 2019 • Setup begins at 6:30am. SHRUBS 7 pm Plants should arrive be- HERBS tween 7am and 8am . but AND MORE bring them anytime. We Program: will have food and coffee. • We reserve the parking Robertson County Master Gardener Plant Swap places in front of the Ext Office for unloading plants. The Robertson Co. After unloading your vehi- PLANT SALE Master Gardener Assoc. cle, please park in the city meets the fourth Thurs. or convention center park- UT EXTENSION OFFICE | 408 N MAIN STREET of every month. ing lot to facilitate customer Meetings are at 7pm Springfield, TN 37172 at the UT Extension parking. Office, 408 Main Street, • Bring boxes and bags for Springfield, TN customer’s purchases. The Leaflet~ 2 History Of Agricultural Extension Service he Land Grant University System was first created in demonstration clubs”. To keep them home “where they 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln. (34 states). Ex- belonged” they decided to get rid of the home Extension tension,T also known as Cooperative Extension, began in 1914 Agent, Hazel Smithson, by not paying part of her salary. with land grant university demonstration agents being sent to Word spread and at the county court meeting a large virtually every county in every state to disseminate and pro- group showed up to support their agent—a number of mote practical knowledge to improve the lives of all citizens. them wives of court members. Funds for her salary re- Most volunteers consider themselves as advocates or sup- mained in the budget. porters for the programs they volunteer for. Therefore, at least • 1960 As the cold war heated up, Extension provided informally, Extension volunteers including Master Garden- plans, models, and training on Do-it-yourself family ers serve as advocate supporters of Extension programs. By fall-out shelters. definition, an advocate pleads for or is in favor of something. Effective advocate volunteers must have accurate information about the programs they support. In Tennessee the story begins with farm families strug- gling to survive as the US and Tennessee economies tran- sitioned from agriculture to industrialization in the early 1900’s. A short timeline of interesting events is included below: • 1910 First County Extension agent employed in Tennessee • 1917 New extension agents were hired to increase food production. The slogan was “Food to win the war.” • 1936 Extension agents coordinated efforts to electrify rural areas. • 1939 Tennessee cotton growers found that improved farming methods pro- duced a crop that glut- ted the market. The Extension service orga- nized a mattress making program where families • 1969 As part of the “War on Poverty, Extension profes- used surplus cotton to sionals started the Expanded Food Nutrition Education make mattresses to re- Program. Tennessee pilot counties included Robertson. place their corn shuck/ • 1973 The Master Garden Program in started in several straw ones. Tennessee counties. • 1950 In Jackson Co. “some of the men were not too hap- Note: Thanks to Duddly Hargrove, 2019 of the Texas Master Gar- py about their wives being gone to the home den Association, and to “History of the Agricultural Extension Ser- vice” at www.nashvile.gov. Urban Gardening Festival Coming May 18th he master gardeners of Davidson County host the Ur- ban Gardening Festival at Ellington Agricultural Cen- terT May 18th (9am-4pm). Tour the demonstrations gardens; visit with gardening experts from across the U.S. on butter- flies, honey-bee keeping, native bees, composting, trees, na- tive and non-native plants; shop for plants and local artisans’ products including woven baskets, pottery, metal art, jewelry, and planters; enjoy tasty eats, beverages, and ice cream from local food trucks and vendors. Presentations (some one hour, some 30 minutes) include Climate Change and the Garden- er, Nuisance—Moles and Voles, Everything You Need to Know about Grown Roses in Tennessee, Fermenting Spring Vegetables, Tree Selection and Planting, Hemp Farming, and more. Visit mgofdc.org/ugf for complete details. The Leaflet~ 3 RCMGA Recommends: “Go to Growild!” ark April 26-27 (8am-5pm) on your calendars for the Native Plant Festival at Growild in Fairview. RCM- MGA members have been trekking to Growild individually and as a group since 2010. If you love native trees, flowers, shrubs, grasses, and vines or just being among happy/healthy/ contented plants, you should visit this native nursery. While Growild can be visited anytime by appointment, they are open twice yearly for spring and fall visits by the public. The upcoming festival promises to be especially exciting. There will be mule team and wagon rides; Henosis mush- room workshops all day; a bird hike Saturday morning; and a botany hike Saturday. All plants will be discounted 10%. You can get details at www.growildinc.com. W hat’s Growing In Your Garden? by René Kriek pring has sprung and gardens all over are bursting with life! It’s difficult to pick one single plant to talk about, so Shere are 3 fun ones. Gooseberry: Hundreds of teeny tiny little white flow- ers eventually turns this thorny bush into a mass producer of small, greenish, sweet/tart berries, that if left long enough will turn purple. Great for fresh eating or jelly making. Blueberry: Ah, the white bells of blueberry. Sounds like an English poem, but is actually truly the flowers of the blue- berry bush. Seems to be a favorite of wood bees as they’re al- ways all over the flowers! Blueberries like somewhat acidic soil so make sure you give them a bit of special care. Comfrey: The bone healer. This ancient medicinal plant is believed to have bone healing properties, as well as muscle and joint relief. Primarily used externally as a poultice or made into a cream or salve. It has beautiful bell-like purple flowers Gooseberry that pollinators love. Blueberry Comfrey The Leaflet~ 4 Profiles In Gardening: Nicholle Gerde joined the Master Gardeners because ue to learn without feeling the pressure to have a masters I a friend went through the Master Gar- in biology or horticulture! dener program and loved it. I have also I am interested in foodscaping, pollinator gardens, met a few master gardeners through no-till gardening, raised bed gardening, and creating in- my work with the Cumberland River timate spaces in my yard that I can spend time in. I look Compact. As someone who studied forward to working in a community garden and finding fun and now works in an environmental and creative ways to get the local community involved field, I have always wanted to sharpen with the Master Gardeners. my growing skills in hope of designing Growing up in Upstate New York, I worked on a farm and maintaining spaces in my yard that but not long enough to get “master gardener skills”. We benefit native wildlife and help rebuild the had beautiful lilac trees in our yard, both white and purple. soil. I was not fortunate enough to have grown up gar- Although it has been a long time since I had them, I hope dening/growing, but I have always been interested in it. to grow them soon. I also love peonies and have some in In college I took an Urban Agriculture course that I loved my yard that came all the way from my childhood home in right before graduating; I wished I could have gone back upstate New York. and learned more. That class sort of set me on the path to Two non-gardening things about me? I have two large try and learn as much as I could and I am trying to contin- dogs that I love named Skillet and Dixie.