March Chapter Meeting & Guest Presentation: Helena Wagner with “Aging in Your Garden Space – Making Your Garden Age With You”

Join us for our March 25th, 2021 Columbia County Master Gardeners monthly chapter meeting via Zoom at 6:30pm and hear a special online guest presentation by Helena Wagner, Landscape Design, Consulting & Coaching at 4 Season Gardens.

Aging in Your Garden Space – Making your garden age with you: Do you love your garden and enjoy spending time caring for it? As we age, gardeners go through the process of considering alternatives to keeping up their gardens. Some choose to move, others hire out help, yet others change the garden to suit changing physical capabilities of the gardener. Garden Designer and fellow Master Gardener Helena Wagner will share ideas for transforming your garden to suit you.

Helena has been a Clackamas County Master Gardener since 2010 and studied landscape design and horticulture at Clackamas Community College. Her company, 4 Season Gardens, LLC, helps homeowners create a unique and functional outdoor garden space and improve the curb appeal. Helena’s garden has been featured in numerous magazines and garden publications. Visitors to her garden share fond memories of her skillful use of plant combinations, shapes, perspective, and traffic flow to create a highly attractive and functional space. 

https://4seasongardens.com/

Please join us for this online event, March 25th, 2021 @ 6:30 PM. Register in advance: https://beav.es/Jrf

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

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County Extension Agent, Chip Bubl, Invites Participants to a Monthly “Chat with Chip” Special Online Event!

You are invited to a Zoom Presentation on March 16th, 2021 at 6:30 PM. Register in advance for this meeting HERE. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Chip will address some previously requested topics, with plenty of time for Q & A. He also invites ideas for future presentations!

Chip Bubl is Columbia County’s OSU Agriculture Extension Agent, and a local newspaper guest columnist. You may reach Chip online with your gardening, farming and livestock questions through the OSU Extension Website.

  • Joys & challenges of raspberries
  • Manure use in gardens
  • The rose stem girdler
  • Taste preferences & changes in tomatoes
  • Seeds (viability, germination & storage)
  • Perennial vegetable of the month: artichokes
  • Slug season is upon us!

Be sure to read Chip’s local area newspaper columns, and listen weekly to the Garden Spot radio program on KOHI AM 1600 Saturday mornings at 8:00! Additionally, Chip publishes a monthly newsletter and you may subscribe to receive each new issue by email and read past issues at the OSU Extension Columbia County website.

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February 2021 Chapter Meeting: Guest Presentation by Ann Amato on “Houseplants: Gardening Indoors!”

Join the CCMGA for their February 2021 monthly chapter meeting on Thursday, 2/25/2021 at 6:30pm and hear a special guest presentation on “Houseplants: Gardening Indoors” with Ann Amato. Open to Master Gardener volunteers and members of the public, too!

About our guest speaker: “Ann was born in Portland, OR and grew up in Milwaukie just outside of the city. Calling herself a Spaghetti-Westerner she’s an Oregon Trail descendant and an Italian-American. Her Sicilian family arrived in the Portland area in the 1890s and worked in the produce industry for several generations. She is one of several cousins who now work in horticulture. Ann works as a propagator and is a seed seller. At Cistus Nursery, she is Sean Hogan’s seedstress working specifically with his collections as well as other crops. At Secret Garden Growers in Canby she works as a propagator and does production work too. Ann has a BA with a double major in English literature and art history from PSU and has studied horticulture at Clackamas Community College. In addition to writing her blog Amateur Bot-Ann-ist she is the current President of the Mt Hood Gesneriad Society (a chapter of the Gesneriad Society) and is involved in many other plant societies. For fun she loves to explore natural areas and travel.”

Ann Amato, the guest speaker for our February 2021 CCMGA Chapter Meeting.

At Cistus Nursery, Ann is Sean Hogan’s seedstress working specifically with his collections as well as other crops. At Secret Garden Growers in Canby she works as a propagator and does production work too.

Follow Ann Amato at her blog:

Amateur Bot-Ann-ist

Photo credit: ©Evrim Icoz Photography

In this presentation she’ll discuss indoor gardening basics, advanced techniques and trends, as well as challenges and problems. It won’t matter if you’re a beginner or an advanced indoor gardener, she promises to cover something for everyone and will help to answer your questions as well!

This will be a recorded presentation. Please register in advance to join us for this event: https://beav.es/J84. You will receive a confirmation email with a unique login link and password to join the Zoom meeting. Remember – Master Gardeners volunteers may count Continuing Education credit for attendance (or watching the recording) and the public is invited, too. Invite your friends!

Following the presentation on houseplants we will hold a business meeting for the CCMGA Chapter (agenda coming soon) where we will also hear about a new upcoming volunteer opportunity as well as review the results of a recent survey to our volunteers (which is still open if you haven’t taken it yet!) Please take a few minutes to provide your responses here: https://beav.es/JNc.

Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you on Thursday, February 25th at 6:30 PM.

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Early rose pruning could cause dieback, result in re-prune next spring, Question & Answer from OSU’s Ask an Expert

We’ve passed the winter solstice and that means we’re on the way to spring and the gardening season. If you’ve got questions, turn to Ask an Expert, an online question-and-answer tool from Oregon State University’s Extension Service. OSU Extension faculty and Master Gardeners reply to queries within two business days, usually fewer. To ask a question, simply go to the OSU Extension website and type in a question and the county where you live.

Here is a question from Multnomah County, and a response from Jack Master, OSU Extension Master Gardener Diagnostician about rose pruning:

Q: With this warm early January weather my roses are growing like crazy and have several blooms. How can I protect the roses, if the weather turns cold again in February?

A: In western Oregon/Willamette Valley the best time to prune is mid-February to early March. Pruning mid-month or later is recommended. This timing is suggested because generally we will have weather that encourages the plant to start growing. Pruning earlier (before the last frost or forecast bad weather) will cause the rose grower problems. If you prune early, you may experience dieback and have to re-prune again after better weather arrives. In the higher elevations of eastern and central Oregon, it is better to wait until April, until after any possible heavy, severe freezes but while plants are still dormant.

Here is additional information regarding pruning your roses. Your question did not indicate if you had already pruned your roses at an earlier date. This weather is unusual and many parts of the garden, both plants, animals and pollinators, are out early as a result.

Have a question? Submit it to OSU’s Ask an Expert. Read some recently featured Questions & Answers HERE.

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Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Jan. 18th 2021

What does the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. mean to you? As a Master Gardener? As a gardener? How can we honor his teachings in our own work?

Join us for a moderated online Zoom discussion January 18th, 7pm. As part of the University-wide 39th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration, OSU Extension Master Gardener volunteers and staff are invited ahead of time to read, view and reflect upon materials and prompts of inclusion and identity as gardeners and Master Gardeners.

These include:

  • Listen to and reflect upon the YouTube interview of Abra Lee, by Annie Guilfoyle and Noel Kingsbury of Garden Masterclass.
  • Read and reflect upon the article posted on the Oregon Humanities Website about farming as a form of homecoming for the African American community in Portland.
  • Watch the presentation: Steady & Focused: Efforts to Promote Racial Justice in Oregon’s Master Gardener Program. This talk was given this past year at Cornell University’s Ag In-Service Day and at the National Extension Master Gardener Conference by OSU Extension Master Gardener leadership Gail Langelotto and LeAnn Locher.
  • Use Google Image Search to search for the terms “Gardener” and “Master Gardener. What do you notice about the images that are returned with these search terms? What does it say about who is or can be a gardener or Master Gardener?

OSU Extension Master Gardener volunteers and staff register for the moderated online Zoom discussion January 18th, 7pm here.

You are also invited to attend the morning’s keynote address to be delivered by Dr. Angela Davis for Oregon State University’s 39th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. University-wide celebration. The event is free and open to the public. Register here.

The quote used in the graphic is from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s address in 1967 to students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia, as part of his “What Is Your Life’s Blueprint?” speech. You can read more about the speech and see a recording of it here. It’s also a central part of The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University’s Liberation Curriculum’s lesson plan on suffering, hope and the future.

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County Extension Agent, Chip Bubl, Invites Participants to a Monthly “Chat with Chip” Special Online Event!

Chip Bubl is Columbia County’s OSU Agriculture Extension Agent, and a local newspaper guest columnist. You may reach Chip online with your gardening, farming and livestock questions through the OSU Extension Website.

You are invited to a Zoom Presentation on January 19th, 2021 at 6:30 PM. Register in advance for this meeting HERE. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. Chip will address some previously requested topics, with plenty of time for Q & A. He also invites ideas for future presentations!

  • Options for controlling blackberries and English ivy
  • Winter garden protection
  • Spring garden bed prep and early planting
  • Seed topics: sweet corn and green beans
  • Moss on lawns and roofs
  • Protecting individual plants from deer browse

Be sure to read Chip’s newspaper columns, such as this recent contribution to The Chief in Clatskanie, and listen weekly to the Garden Spot radio program on KOHI AM 1600 Saturday mornings at 8:00! Additionally, Chip publishes a monthly newsletter and you may subscribe to receive each new issue by email and read past issues at the OSU Extension Columbia County website.

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New OSU program first in nation to tackle statewide native bee inventory

Posted Jan. 8th, 2021 in the Capital Press, by Sierra Dawn McClain

The Western bumble bee.  

Oregon State University has a program that teaches volunteers to locate, identify and preserve the more than 620 species of native bees in Oregon in a database called the Oregon Bee Atlas.

Photo: Rich Hatfield/Xerces Society

Oregon is the first state in the U.S. to create a Master Melittologists program that trains volunteers to become bee experts and use that knowledge to preserve and catalogue bees native to the state. A melittologist studies bees. Oregon State University modeled its new program after its Master Gardener program.

The program teaches volunteers to locate, identify and preserve the more than 620 species of native bees in Oregon, many of which are pollinators, in a database called the Oregon Bee Atlas.

The program expands knowledge about the natural world, but it also has practical applications. Researchers identify bees experiencing declining populations, and knowing more about native bee species has enabled growers to boost crop yields.

It has also produced unexpected benefits. Volunteers looking for bees inadvertently stumbled across invasive species, which may help stop their spread. “Volunteers have been committed to producing the best museum-quality specimens possible. The people attracted to this program are super passionate, super capable,” said Lincoln Best, lead taxonomist for the Oregon Bee Atlas.

Collecting specimens isn’t easy. To become Master Melittologists, volunteers receive a year of training covering bee biology, how to prepare collections and plan trips.

“We were looking for people we could train to be entomologists in their own right,” said Andony Melathopoulos, OSU Extension’s pollinator health specialist, who runs the program. (Note – although there is already a waiting list for the 2021 volunteer training program, the Oregon Bee Atlas website has a wonderful collection of resources for gardeners!)

Melathopoulos tries to make it fun. The act of putting identification on a bee is called “determinating,” so Melathopoulos recently awarded one of his volunteers the “Determinator” award. When students pass the program, he knights them with a net.

The volunteers come from many walks of life — from Portlanders to eastern Oregon ranchers. More than half are retired. “Some of these people are birders. Studying bees is like next-level birding,” said Best. To catch bees, a volunteer either gets permission from a landowner or a permit to go on state land. He or she takes a photo of a plant, records surroundings, then waits. As bees land on the plant, the volunteer catches them and puts them into tubes that humanely kill them. Back at home, the volunteer pins sample bees, then tries to identify and label them.

“It’s like a treasure hunt,” said Michael O’Loughlin, 58, a Yamhill County volunteer who drove 15,000 miles with his brother around Oregon in 2020 looking for bees. This winter, O’Loughlin’s tables at home are covered with microscopes, notebooks and bees. After identifying bees on his own property and then creating a better pollinator habitat, O’Loughlin said his fruit set in his orchards and berry crops has increased. “My yields have gone up significantly,” he said.

Although the Master Melittologist program is still young — it started in 2020 — the Oregon Bee Atlas was created in 2018. Over the past three years, volunteers have contributed 70,000 bee samples. Killing bees might sound counterintuitive to saving them – but researchers say collecting targeted samples like this is the first step toward tracking populations.

Best said researchers in California, Washington, Idaho and even Canada plan to duplicate Oregon’s model in 2021. Read the article online in the Capital Press.

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Growing Oregon Gardeners: Level Up Series

This monthly zoom series kicks off in January, offering education for the experienced gardener led by OSU horticulture experts from across the state. Take your gardening knowledge to the next level with timely topics from gardening in a changing climate to techniques to extend your season. Read all about it HERE.

WHENThe second Tuesday of the month, 3pm, January-November 2021
WHEREZoom, recordings available to watch anytime
WHOOpen to the public, OSU Extension Master Gardeners receive continuing education credit
HOWTake one or take all. Registration information to come.
COSTFree

Growing Oregon Gardeners:

Level Up Series

Growing Oregon Gardeners: Level Up Series – OSU Extension Master Gardener Program News

Currently Scheduled:

January 12: ‘Understanding Seed Characteristics’ with Nicole Sanchez

February 9: ‘Multifunctional Hedgerows’ with Pami Monnette

March 9: ‘What to Do About Herbicide Contaminated Compost and Soil Mix/How to Use Compost in Gardens and Landscapes’ with Weston Miller

April 13: ‘Dazzling Dahlias’ with Julie Huynh

May 11: ‘Water-wise Gardening’ with Erika Szonntag

June 8: ‘Unique Winter Vegetables to Grow’ with Lane Selman

July 13: ‘Fire-wise Landscaping’ with Amy Jo Detweiler

August 10: ‘Season Extension Techniques’ with Heather Stoven and Nicole Sanchez

September 14: ‘Gardening with Native Plants for Pollinators’ with Gail Langellotto

October 12: ‘Adapting Your Garden and Landscape for Climate Change’ with Weston Miller

November 9: ‘Using Life Cycle Analysis to Understand the Sustainability of Your Garden Products and Practices’ with Gail Langelotto

Read more about plans for 2021, including additional event and trainings, here.

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Lime won’t fix your moss problem and other garden myths debunked

By Kym Pokorny | For The Oregonian/OregonLive

CORVALLIS – Reality can get skewed when there are so many sources of information – books, magazines, newspapers, nurseries and, most of all, the internet and social media open up lots of room for contradiction. So, how do you find the right answer for gardening questions?

Nine experts from Oregon State University Extension Service stepped up to bust some common gardening myths. Read THIS ARTICLE on to get some research-based answers to 10 common misconceptions.

Some myths addressed by the experts include:

  • You should top a tree to control its height.
  • Lime will remove moss from your lawn.
  • Ponderosa pine needles make the soil more acidic (low pH).
  • Just add more compost to the soil.
  • Bee houses help promote and conserve bee diversity.
  • Tree roots go only as far as the branch crown diameter or drip line.
  • Epsom salts are a must for great tomatoes. Use them in every garden.
  • When you plant a new tree or shrub, dig the hole and add an amendment to the soil before you backfill the hole.
  • Brown recluse and hobo spiders are common in Oregon.
  • Watering on hot sunny days will burn the plants because the water droplets magnify the sun’s rays.

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Check out Chip’s latest newspaper column for a discussion of voles, owls and spiders!

Voles continue to be a problem

Meadow mice, more properly known as voles, are short tailed and plump. They can’t climb much so spend their lives in shallow tunnels or foraging on the surface. Their populations rise and fall for reasons that are still obscure. Right now, numbers seem higher than average.

Voles cause a lot of damage in winter. When food gets scarce and especially when there is snow on the ground, they turn to young trees and shrubs for dinner. After snow melts, there are often 2-3 –inch vole holes in patches, evidence of a lot of activity in the area. Their gnawing can girdle trees at the soil line or remove roots. Next spring, your trees leaf out but without roots and the “plumbing” in the stem, can’t move water and they die. Voles also love carrots, beets, and potatoes left too long in the ground.

To reduce damage, you have to make voles uncomfortable. Cut grass short near trees so voles are more visible to the owls, cats, and hawks they fear. Trap moles since their tunnels provide safe access for voles to roots. Collapse the tunnels if possible. Finally, be careful in the use of mulches including landscape fabric and black plastic – they provide vole cover.

I have had several recent calls involving voles and mulch. One was a blueberry patch with grass clippings piled around the plants to conserve moisture. But covering soil in a 6-8 inch radius of the stems encouraged voles to gnaw without fear. A similar thing happened with a very heavy bark mulch application around young fruit trees. Most of the trees were a total loss. Finally, I once visited with a gardener that planted a new rose bed. He worked the soil, put in a drip irrigation system, and covered the bed with landscape fabric. Then he planted his new roses through holes in the fabric.

In the second year of growth, the gardener started to “high prune” his roses in November. As he pruned, he felt them to be poorly anchored. He tugged on one and it pulled right out. It had virtually no roots. It was much the same with the rest of the roses. The voles had been in food heaven, eating rose roots that they dearly love, protected by the fabric from any predators. The fabric was removed and all but a few of the 25 or so roses had to be replaced.

Trapping voles can work if pursued persistently. Standard mouse traps will work. Dig a shallow “swale” about six inches deep, about two feet wide and four feet long. Put some apples pieces in there and then cover it with a piece of plywood or some other cover that you can keep in place, leaving openings at both ends. If you see vole feeding on the apple pieces, place the traps in the swale, bait them with peanut butter, and cover the swale back up. Voles, unlike rats, aren’t very savvy and you can trap vole upon vole with the same traps in the same place.

There are a lot of issues with vole baits injuring non-target animals and there are few if any baits registered for home use much beyond the immediate area adjacent to structures. If you feel you can use them in your situation, please read and follow all instructions. The bait will need to be placed where nothing else but voles can get to it.

Encouraging barn owls

Barn owls were once considerably more common around Columbia County. The transition from the old-fashioned hip-roofed bard to the modern pole barn has removed some nesting sites. In addition, the conversion of farms to residential living has removed lots of farm structure period.

Yet, these birds are tremendously valuable. They will eat 5-10 rodents per day. Besides, how can you resist the chance to see their ghostly flight through a moonlit night? Or the opportunity to collect and take apart owl pellets to see the skulls of their prey within.

This link describes design and placement for barn owl boxes. They have researched the size that works best for them and other issues with having them adopted by the owls. The best time to install them is late fall through February. What a great weekend project. If the link below is too complicated for you to use, email me (chip.bubl@oregonstate.edu) and I will send you a PDF of the article. slconservancy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2019.10-BARN-OWL-NEST-BOX.pdf

Spider symmetry

If you’ve ever looked at spider webs, you probably have noticed that some are rather straight forward affairs and others have a lot of extra zig-zaggy silk added to the structure.

It is the business of biologists to speculate on these subjects. Are the extra strands of silk there for reinforcement? The best evidence indicates that the “stabilimenta” is not rein-forcing material. So why do certain spiders expend the time and resources to produce it?

Because they catch more bugs. A scientist monitored the prey interception rates by noting the damaged areas in the web. He found that those decorated with the silk strands had 72% more “hits” from flying insects than those without the extra silk. His theory is that the extra strands reflect more ultraviolet light, making those webs more attractive to the flying insects that orient themselves to UV. These insects include many pollinating in-sects that use UV patterns from plants to guide them.

Have questions?

If you have questions on any of these topics or other home garden and/or farm questions, please contact Chip Bubl, Oregon State University Extension office in St. Helens at 503- 397-3462 or at chip.bubl@oregonstate.edu.

Free newsletter

The Oregon State University Extension office in Columbia County publishes a monthly newsletter on gardening and farming topics (called County Living) written/edited by yours truly. All you need to do is ask for it and it will be mailed or emailed to you. Call 503-397-3462 to be put on the list. Alternatively, you can find it on the web at extension.oregonstate.edu/columbia and click on newsletters.

Many Extension publications available online

Are you putting up salsa, saving seeds, or thinking about planting grapes? OSU has a large number of its publications available for free download. Just go to catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu. Click on publications and start exploring.

The Extension Service offers its programs and materials equally to all people.

Contact information Oregon State University Extension Service–Columbia County

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