Greenhouse Notes. A quarterly newsletter for Coastal Master Gardener Association members.

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1 Greenhouse Notes A quarterly newsletter for Coastal Master Gardener Association members. President s Notes: Summer It has been a gorgeous spring! And, there have been several activities where Master Gardeners have participated. In April there was the NOGS Garden Tour, MGs served as Docents (and I saw several doing the tour also). On April 20th Earth Day events were held at Forsythe Park. MGs teamed up with the Savannah Urban Garden Alliance for an Ask a Master Gardener booth. Frances Smith headed up our team. The Coastal Master Gardeners toured the Bethesda Boys School market vegetable gardens and the Landings Skidaway Farms. While at Bethesda we were able to purchase fresh vegetables and goat milk soap, which is made at the Bethesda Farm. Skidaway Farms is a community garden for residents of the Landings. The gardens were all very creative and well cared for. We had an Ask a Master Gardener booth at the Savannah Botanical Garden s Rose Festival. The festival was well attended, and several Master Gardeners could be seen helping out where ever they were needed. Just a couple of weeks ago we held our annual Master Gardener s Spring Picnic and Plant Swap at the Bamboo Farm. There were several new members there. And one new member, Hope Barton who is the first member of the class of 2013 to complete her 50 hours of volunteer work, received her badge and certificate. I m sure many of the 2013 class are close to the goal of badge and certificate also. Keep up the good work! I can t wait to hand out many more badges and certificates. Last week Master Gardeners from the 2013 class served as garden tour leaders at the Savannah Botanical Garden for a tour group from Arkansas. Our next general meeting will be held July, 17 at Hospice on Eisenhower where noted speaker and Savannah Morning News columnist Diana Churchill will give us a talk about Backyard Birds. More details follow in the Calendar of Upcoming Events. I am looking forward to this meeting. One of my goals for my garden has always been to make it bird friendly. Faith Sadley President

2 Coastal Master Gardener Class of 13 Susan Ason Chatham Isabelle Harman Chatham Ken Barthels Chatham Joanie Horton Jasper Hope Barton Chatham Ronald Jacob Chatham Dasiy Bennett Chatham Kay LaBlanc Chatham Cheath Bjorklund Chatham Leroy Lloyd Effingham Kathleen Bolch Chatham Josephine (JoCarol) Martin Chatham Sandra Brady Chatham Sandra Mayer Chatham Terri Breyman Chatham Mark Miller Chatham Terry Breyman Chatham Angie Mohr Chatham Shirley Brown Chatham Kimberly Murphy Bryan Karen Buschow Chatham Elizabeth Norman Bryan Susanne Carnes Chatham Denise Porter Chatham Lawrence Carson Chatham Joel Rodriguez Chatham Sandra Cason Chatham Nancy Roth Chatham Mark Cloud Bryan Elizabeth Rothweiler Effingham Theresa (Terry) Cobb Chatham Sylvia Rudolph Chatham Ronnie Cox Liberty Donna Rushing Chatham Wendy Delano Chatham Bill Shanahan Chatham Amanda Dorman Chatham Brenda Shermer Chatham Cathryn Dravis Chatham Michael Shuler Chatham Lanell Edge Chatham Louisa Sigman Chatham Ronald Elcock Chatham Gale Steves Chatham Deborah Ferraro Chatham Linda Tierney Chatham Cory Forsman Glynn Michelle Tucker Effingham Candy Frawley Chatham Pegi Walters Bryan Mary Ann Gojman Chatham Allison Ward Chatham Kenna Graham Liberty Elaine Witbeck Chatham Daniel Grant Bryan France Lowery-Wilson Chatham Diane Gustafson Chatham Paul Yarbrough Chatham Sue Hamlet Chatham Congratulations and welcome to the wonderful world of plant swaps, hands-on experience, and contacts who provide horticultural information on beyond Google. Not to mention some great fun doing things with people doing what you like to do while benefiting others.

3 We d like to give special recognition and thanks to Hope Barton, MG volunteer extraordinaire, who was recruited before her first week of the 2013 MG class and has yet to slow down. She received her badge and certificate at the picnic & plant swap for earning 50+ hours of volunteer services (the first in her class). I m just a girl wh ho can t say no! Savannah-Ogeechee Canal: Butterfly Garden and Beyond No wonder the butterflies are out and about! All their summer favorites in the Butterfly Garden are coming into bloom, like lantana, yarrow, garden pinks, butterfly weed and passion flower. No hummingbirds have been seen, but many of their favorites are also out, including altheas, rose mallows, coral bean plants and cigar plants. Just a few of the butterfly varieties that have been seen are the Giant and Tiger Swallowtails, Red-spotted Purple and Checkered Skipper. If the butterflies are not content with what they can find in the Butterfly Garden, they can always move on to the Canal and sample some of the native aquatic plants, like the Pickerel Weed or Spider Lily. One Canal bank has a Swamp Rose, and hidden away in swampy bogs on both sides of the Canal are clusters of white Lizard Tails. Volunteer Days at the S-O Canal are the first Saturday of the month and Friday and Monday afternoons. For more information, call me at the Canal at or contact at home at or carndt2651@aol.com. Chica Arndt

4 Bonaventure Update It s been a busy time out at Bonaventure these last few months but all of the hard work is really paying off. We were lucky enough to have some temperate climate and a little rain and were able to do some serious fertilizing and apply some horticultural oil without fear of frying everything in sight. The success rate of all of the recent transplantss has been amazing and Mullryne Way hasn t looked this good in many years. Now we re trying to expand to other areas of the cemetery and replant more camellias that also bit the dust closer to the bluff on Confederate Way and thereabouts. We also have some places in mind closer to the entrance to plant so you can see there is always plenty to do. Just because we re doing all of this doesn t mean we re not still attending to general maintenance. There is always plenty of moss, dead branches, smilax, wisteria and who knows what else to be dealt with so we can always use more assistance. The past few weeks Ron Jacob, 2013, has joined us but we can always use more hands, especially in the summer. People do take vacations but unfortunately plants don t and Mother Nature has not been kind in recent years as far as rain goes so anybody with hoses or gallon buckets would be welcome company out there. We re meeting on Tuesday mornings at 9am on Mullrynne Way and go from there. As usual, many thanks go to Doug Webb and Dennis Ronning for their enthusiasm about this project. It can seem overwhelming at times but they ve never given up, no matter what the challenge. Remember, if you can t make it to Bonaventure, check out the Judge Solomon Trail at the Bamboo Farm or the Botanical Gardens on Eisenhower. They can always use some help and the contact info is in the newsletter. Congratulations to the new class of Volunteer as much as you can because all of us old master gardeners will telll you that you ll learn more out in the field than in the classroom and you get to get dirty, too! Jane Sommers richardgsommers@comcast.nett

5 Coastal Master Gardeners Association - Projects Projects Committee: Pat Ryan (Chairman), Rose Mary Cone, and Faith Sadley Last year we worked on a Project at the Jenkins Boys Club on Waters. The plantings are maturing nicely. Spring 2012 Spring 2013 This year we worked on the Fresh Air Home on Tybee Island which provides a memorable summer seaside camp experience for children with many needs at no cost to the families for the children to attend. Each summer they host 96 children in four two-week sessions, totaling 384 children. I just thought you would like to see these pictures. Everything you planted grew up and looks great! We are so excited to see the camp look so pretty for the campers that will be coming in 2 weeks! Thanks again for all you have done for the Fresh Air Home. Rebecca Cope (Grounds Committee Chairwoman) We are now planning a Children s Garden at Botanical Garden on Eisenhower. Four of the Class of 2013 have worked on this with the support of the Botanical Garden. We don't have a huge space but we all wanted to do something fun for kids since so many family groups come through. There will be designated areas for butterflies and birds, a fanciful flower and herb pizza garden, a flower bed (with actual head and foot boards), a vegetable teepee large enough for children to go into, and beds to plant seeds and seedlings. The plan is comprised of raised beds with good soil and a simple irrigation system and designed to an appropriate height and width for small people to work in. Hope Barton Among the many outreach ventures that the CMGA undertakes is providing financial and physical support for worthwhile community gardening projects. The CMGA awards grant money, as its resources allow, to individuals or not-for-profit organizations wanting to complete garden projects which promote and involve the community in gardening. The Project must have an educational element for the participants and/or recipients, and help to beautify a public-use facility. It should make a difference, even in a small way, to the community that it serves. The basic criteria for receiving a grant are simple. A written application must be submitted. Application forms and guidelines can be downloaded from our website at If you know of a worthy cause, don t hesitate to contact us. Pat Ryan

6 Programs Committee: Cheryl Drwiega (Chairman), Jeanette Byrd, Faith Sadley, Paula Wheatley & Galen Young I hope everyone s gardens are growing well. I have lots of cucumbers and squash and green beans. My tomatoes were off to a rousing start, but now are plagued by army worms, but the peppers are coming along nicely. The lavender and sages are blooming, attracting lots of bees. Birds are picking off insects. Yea! Speaking of birds, Dianna Churchill, our local bird expert, is scheduled to talk to us about backyard birds on the July 16 th meeting. Dianna will be bringing copies of her book, if you would like to have one. She will even sign it. The meeting will be at Hospice on Eisenhower Drive starting at 6:30 pm in the education room. Please use the parking along the side road and the Botanical Garden. We will have refreshments before the meeting. Thanks go to Marty Coolidge for arranging this. Jeannette Byrd has arranged a visit to Savannah Wildlife Refuge for September 7 th. We will meet at the visitor s center, tour the museum there and view a short film before going into the refuge. This will be a bring your sack lunch affair. You will get an reminder with details later in the summer. Don t forget the sunscreen and bug spray. On November 9 th, the meeting will be held at the Mary Kahrs Warnell Education Center, located in the 3,300 acre forest off Hwy 17 in Guyton. Paula Wheatley has asked Don Gardner to educate us on trees. It is the perfect setting to learn about forest ecosystems and sustainable forest management. Please remember to visit CMGA website to stay up to date on programs. Happy Gardening, Cheryl Drwiega Field Day 2013 (August 21 st ) Dave Linvill, Chatham County Extension Agent and Master Gardener Class Organizer/Instructor, has proposed a group bus trip to the Plant Genetic Resources Conservation Unit in Griffin, Georgia, whose mission is to preserve plant genetic resources for present and future researchers and educators. For more information on this project, check out the following website: If you would like to join Dave on this venture, please contact him as soon as possible so arrangements can be made. Phone him at (912) or at dlinvill@uga.edu.

7 Things going on at the Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens (CGBG), affectionately known as the Bamboo Farm: Grounds Worker Vacancy: Full-time Grounds Worker opening at CGBG. High School Diploma or GED required. Must pass background/mvr check. Salary $23,570 Apply at: Search and apply for Staff openings at UGA Select locations of vacancy: Savannah area. Search, and view under the title of Grounds Foreman I Click: Apply for this posting and follow application process. Application deadline is June 20, 2013 Antique Auto Cruise-In! Join us Saturday June 15 from 10am 2pm as we host the Dixieland Cruisers and Savannah Chapter of the Antique Auto Club of America for an old fashioned cruise-in. Also that day, Lakeside Fishing and lunch at the pavilion. Bring your own fishing gear or buy a bamboo pole. A perfect Father s Day gift! $10 per car or $15 per minivan/suv. There will be a fee for lunch. All proceeds benefit construction of our Children s Garden. Our Summer Gardening Series kicks off on Saturday June 15, with our Orchid Repotting Workshop. Join us in the Orchid Greenhouse from 10am noon. $20 includes materials to pot your own orchid to take home! Create a Succulent Bowl. $30 includes all materials to create your own mini garden of succulent plants. Wednesday June 26 or Saturday June 29 from 10-11:30 am in the Annex building. Summertime Pruning Know-How. Learn about properly pruning woody garden shrubs and when and what to cut back. $10 in the Annex building, Saturday July, 13 th. Carter & Holmes Orchid Nursery Bus Trip. Saturday July 20 8am 6:30 pm. Please see website for more details We have some exciting new features and events at CGBG! If you haven t seen the new Mediterranean garden or the new colors of the bridal cottage and conference center, you re in for a treat! Jamie has gone crazy with the paint and plantings and created a beautiful, colorful garden space. Be sure to see it next time you re here. A thousand thanks (actually over 3,800 thanks!) to the Master Gardener Greenhouse group for all your hard work raising baby plants over the winter for our annual plant sale! To date we have made over $3,800 on the sale of plants you propagated and planted from seeds this past winter. This money is very important for our many garden projects, thank you to our wonderful volunteers! If you would like to be included on our mailing list, please send me an with your name and address: elubrani@uga.edu Liz Lubrani, Events Planner UGA, College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences, Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens

8 Koi Pond My husband and I decided this year to revamp and update our Koi pond in our back yard. We originally constructed it in 1994 and had a wooden wall erected to allow for a raised bed area and a backdrop for the falls and pond. Over the years the plants, a variety of ferns, palms, and various bog and water plants grew quite well. Ivy and creeping fig overwhelmed the wall eventually. We decided to remove the wooden wall and replace it with a concrete block one and install new lighting. The soil was renourished and the tier walls replaced. We also added a new 13' square tent cover over the shallow end to provide shade and to prevent a return of a "dreaded thief". This nemesis was an infamous Great Blue Heron. Apparently this culprit thought our koi pond was a sushi bar. We had over 50 koi, some quite large, and he decided to dine on most of them over the course of a few weeks. We decided it was time to redo an old project. We even bought a 4 foot crocodile to scare him away (just have to relocate it occasionally). Here are pictures to show the stages of the reconstruction. Debbie Kennedy, MG Class of 06 debkaye60@yahoo.com Gibbs Gardens These pictures were taken at Gibbs Gardens in Ball Ground, GA. It is a lovely place to visit. Another MG and I went up and back in one day and we met two MGs who had moved away. It was a lot of fun. I highly recommend it. It costs $20 to get in but is worth the money. You can get a delicious lunch on the grounds that is very reasonable and served on freshly-made bread. The website is Chris Arthur CMGA VP

9 Victory Gardens The concept of the Victory Garden began during World War I and continued throughout World War II. The wars placed demands on the food supply with agricultural labor being recruited into military service. Charles Lathrop Pack organized the National War Garden Commission which launched the War Garden Campaign a concept where people could help the supply of food greatly by cultivating private and public lands, resulting in over five million gardens. During the course of World War II, over 20 million Americans planted Victory Gardens and produced up to 40% of all the vegetable produce. Today, many are undertaking the challenge whether it be a modest container of tomatoes or a fullfledged sufficient garden. I ve Learned Many Tricks for a Victorious Garden By using a combination of containers and rows, you give yourself flexibility to move things around to rotate your crops. It is always recommended to rotate crops to avoid disease issues. For instance, you should not plant tomatoes in the same place two years in a row. Grow tomatoes in containers to avoid many of the disease issues that we have if we plant tomatoes in the ground. In Coastal Georgia, we have many different types of bacterial and viral wilts in the native soil that can cause problems. By growing in commercially purchased potting soil, the problems can be avoided because the soil is sterile out of the bag. Limited space for a garden should not deter your efforts. Anyone can grow fresh produce in a limited space. Every spring, I give some of my greenhouse-grown vegetable transplants to one of the local artists here in Richmond Hill. He has very limited space and grows wonderful eggplants, peppers and tomatoes in planters behind his shop. One 4 x 8 raised bed planting box can be built for less than $50 and will provide your family with fresh vegetables all year. Getting Started First of all, start small. Plastic storage tubs, old nursery containers, half whisky barrels or decorative flower pots all make suitable planters. Numerous container growing systems are available online and many are available as a kit. Make sure there are holes poked through the bottom for drainage. In the larger containers, I like to put old packing peanuts or recycled Styrofoam in the bottom third of the container. This makes the planted container much lighter, provides good drainage and allows me to move the pots easily. Fill the container with potting soil and plant your vegetable selections. Mulch the plants using pine straw or wheat straw for good results. Example: Potatoes that are exposed to light will turn green and become inedible; covering them with straw blocks out the light. Find a sunny location, water and watch your plants grow. Bob Izzo These are excerpts from Bob s article in the Richmond Hill Reflections Magazine. To read the whole article (and it s worth it, with reminiscences of a Yankee struggling to grow produce in the cold to a Southerner struggling to grow produce in the heat and humidity), click on:

10 SPRING Mystery Plant Clerodendrum indicum aka - Turk s Turban or tubeflower Family: Verbenaceae (verbena or vervain Family) Chris Arthur, CMGAVP, photographed this on one of her many plant-infested walkabouts. No one even tried to guess this one! Summer Mystery Plant Looks like an alien, Doesn t it? Picture by Freya Zipperer in her very own garden. There is a prize for the correct guesser It might be exotic seeds or a unique plant, or an absolutely cutesy gardener's doo-dad. (Answers should be sent to mm_mccurdy@msn.com.) That s an underscore between all those mmm s

11 CMGA Website: Facebook: On-going Volunteer Opportunities Contacts Bamboo Farm... Fred Nussbaum BBF Roots & Shoots... Bonaventure Cemetery... Jane Sommers Botanical Gardens... Diane Calhoun... Downtown Extension Office... Tonia Rudrow Susie Edwards BBF Greenhouse Plantings... Bob Izzo Habitat for Humanity... Jay Volker Native Planting... Pat Ryan Old Darien Jail... Ginger Pruden Owens-Thomas House... Diane Houston Roots & Shoots... Fred Nussbaum Savannah-Ogeechee Canal... Chica Arndt Savannah Tree Foundation... Diane Houston Board Members President... Faith Sadley Vice President... Chris Arthur Secretary... Frances Smith Treasurer... Sandra Morgan Past President... Bob Izzo Directors Website... Jeanette Byrd Programs...Cheryl Drwiega Membership... Louise Grotheer Comms/Newsltr... Carol McCurdy Publicity... Amy Rhodes... Projects... Pat Ryan General Factotem... Steve Taylor Liaison Friends BBF & MG...Gaylen Young (Note: All Area Codes are 912)