Insects, heat, and drought certainly caught our attention and prompted discussion this July 2012. Below, you’ll see we also ran across some other interesting resources and activity in local Extension programs across the country.
July Insects
Connie Schulz shared how summer heat brought out the bugs in her backyard, and she also reported on July 23 – 29th National Moth Week. Carla Albright discussed seeing western tent caterpillars in the Pacific Northwest, which has prompted a good discussion about other tent caterpillars and how people refer to them (correctly or incorrectly) across the U.S.
Beautiful surprises - Sphinx moth Eumorpha pandorus
Heat and Drought
Throughout July 2012, we experienced hot weather across a large portion of the U.S, which held on in many states as hot AND dry weather.
- Tips and Tweet to Help Garden Through Hot Weather and Drought provided helpful resources from several Extension educators and communicators from across the U.S.
- Connie Schulz shared with us some of the drought tolerant miracles of the garden, which prompted a conversation about favorite drought tolerant plants and also resources for learning more about drought tolerant plants.
- Last but not least, Terri James said it has been so hot in Nebraska, she was ready to think about planting a fall garden, hence her July Wordless Wednesday blog post, Looking Ahead to Fall.
How about you? Has the hot weather made you think about gardening differently this year- perhaps planting a fall garden sooner than you normally would?
Extension Master Gardener Volunteers in Action
Checking whiteboard for garden instruction
Of course, we saw a number of Extension Master Gardeners involved in their communities this month. Here are a few of the links by topic that we would like to re-share:
- Penn State Master Gardener Help Inmates Tend a Garden: Although this story was released in June in the Lancaster Online, it’s still quite newsworthy and interesting. When you click on the link and view the article, don’t miss the video just below the advertisement to get the full scoop on this project!
- Garden Learning Tours Follow-up: In June we talked about upcoming learning garden tours. Here we follow-up with blog posts from Lee County Alabama and Hennepin County Minnesota Extension Master Gardeners who shared photos and some brief notes about their learning garden tours this summer. See: Lee County, Alabama’s Tour – Lee County Tour, Preview of Gardens and Hennepin Co. Minnesota’s: Successful Learning Garden Tour and A lovely day in the gardens
- Communication in the Community Garden: JC Schneider, a Master Gardener volunteer involved with the Kalamzaoo (MI) Giving Garden, shared a few more insights with us — mainly that communication is a key to their successful, run-by-committee, community garden experience in Kalamazoo.
After posting this to Facebook, one of our members commented: “Actually, communication is the key to just about anything!”
Learning Resources
The International Master Gardener Conference 2013 – will you be there? See who is going to IMGC2013 and from which states!
Here are a few other new resources we discovered this summer, you might want to check out:
- UNL’s Blossom End Rot video for those that are looking into why their tomatoes are brown on the bottom this time of year.
- Water, Lawn, and Landscape Conservation specialists have created new resources, such as this well-received article: Water-wise pollinators. For more information on water conservation in the lawn and landscape, see more at: http://www.extension.org/landscape_water_conservation.
Do you have resources you think other Extension Master Gardeners should know about? Let us know in the comments section of this post.
Fun in the Garden
Lee Co Alabama MG Demonstration Garden
Last but not least, if you haven’t seen it already, we’d like to leave you with some fun thoughts from July 2012 Wordless Wednesday blog posts Fun in the Garden and the Lee County Master Gardeners changing face of their demonstration garden.
Enjoy!
-Karen Jeannette
eXtension Consumer Horticulture Content Coordinator
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