URI MGP Newsletter, Mar 16

March Master Gardener Meeting Next Week

Thursday, March 23, 6pm – 9pm
Swan Hall, Upper College Road

meetingOur March MG meeting is a great time to get together with your fellow MG’s, catch up on the latest MG news and meet our brand new URI Plant Sciences Department faculty member, Dr. John Taylor.  Dr. Taylor will speak on Resilient Landscapes as we continue to delve into our “Land Stewardship” focus area. He’ll talk about his plans for urban gardening research here in Rhode Island, and ways that URI Master Gardeners can get involved!

Rosanne Sherry will provide timely Master Gardener Quick Tips to help you answer questions as we ramp up the kiosk and soil testing. Vanessa Venturini will continue to explain our new “focus area”of getting folks excited about improving the environment from their back yard. Please REGISTER IN VOLGISTICS so we may send you relevant information.

We will award pins as well!  MG merchandise and garden tour tickets will be on sale.  If you haven’t completed your volunteer renewal, you can do so at this meeting. Feel free to bring potluck food items to share with your fellow MG’s!

2017 Speaking Skills Series - First Class Monday 3/20!

We invite you to sharpen your educator skills with this series of workshops!  We have sessions designed for beginner and more advanced speakers to share their passion for gardening.  The best way to learn a topic is to teach it – we hope you’ll join us!

ppsPowerPoint Skills (2 Sessions – Choose 1)
Monday, March 20, 1:00pm – 2:30pm or 5:30-7:00pm,
Chaffee 208

Learn how to use a powerpoint template and best practices to design a powerpoint presentation.  This sessions is designed for our public presenters to gain more skills developing gardening talks to give to the public. Sign up for one session only, space is limited. Registration is required in Volgistics.

Public Presentation Orientation
Thursday, April 6, 6 – 7 pm
Pharmacy 240

Discover if teaching others is your calling in the Master Gardener Program.  We’ll hear from some of our MG speakers about this rewarding experience.  If you like learning about a topic in-depth and sharing that knowledge with your community, this class is for you! Registration is required in Volgistics.

 

Catch the Buzz…Learn the Benefits of Beekeeping

Wednesday, March 22, 2017, 2:00PM
Beechwood Center, 44 Beach Street, North Kingstown

buzzURI Master Gardener, Jaime Nash, is the project leader for the Edible Forest Garden located in Roger Williams Park, Providence, RI.  He has given several presentations and workshops related to beekeeping, attracting pollinators and forest gardening including the many permaculture concepts typically featured within them.  He is also a beekeeper and helps maintain two honeybee hives located within the Community Garden at Roger Williams Park.

This lecture will focus on illustrating and teaching the benefits of beekeeping and will highlight how tending beehives gives the gardener a new appreciation for these special pollinating insects.  Gardening would never be the same without them.  Protect and encourage these tireless tiny farmers!

If interested in attending, please contact Rayna Wilcox, Volunteer/Program Coordinator, at The Beechwood Center for Life Enrichment at 401-268-1594; or email her at: RWilcox@northkingstown.org.  These programs are offered to members and the public at no charge.  Master Gardeners receive education credits for attending.

Back to Our Roots: Being Wild About Wild Plants

waterSaturday, March 25, 2:00pm – 3:30pm
URI, Pharmacy 170

In Celebration of RIWPS 30th Anniversary, Lisa Lofland Gould, founding member and first president of RIWPS will address the question, Why should anyone care about plants, and especially about that seemingly obscure and often subtle flora we Wild Folks so enjoy? Lisa  will consider the pivotal role that plants play in our lives, some history of human knowledge of the plant world, and how we seek to understand plants today.

http://riwps.org/event/annual-meeting-lisa-gould-guest-speaker/

Insects in the Garden: Friend, Foe, Escargot 2

Monday, April 10 at 6 PM
Pam Gilprin, self taught gardener, popular garden speaker, and lover of beneficials
Westerly Library Auditorium

Spring Festival Update for 2017

As many of you know, URI Cooperative Extension hosts the East Farm Spring Festival annually to highlight the work of the URI Master Gardener Program and the research and Cooperative Extension activities at the farm. The event draws an estimated 3,000 visitors to the farm annually, with an estimated 4,000 attendees in 2016.  Due to space restrictions and the growth of the event over the past 15 years, the event will be moved to the main URI Kingston campus this year.

After careful consideration, site visits and consultation with about 15 URI Master Gardeners on the planning committee and various URI staff, we’ve settled on a festival location.   The educational elements of the festival will be held in the URI Botanical Gardens with the plant sale held in the URI Fine Arts Commuter lot, and various activities stretching between the two locations.  The “URI Spring Festival” will be held on Saturday, May 6, 2017 from 9:00-1:00PM.

Once we’ve ironed out the larger logistical issues related to traffic, parking and safety with URI officials in mid-March, we will be in touch with event details, and to coordinate programmatic elements and publicity, serving as a highlighted event for URI’s 125th Anniversary Celebration. Thank you to all of who have supported this transition thus far!

If anyone has any questions and concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Best,

Kate Venturini

URI Cooperative Extension
College of the Environment and Life Sciences | University of Rhode Island
p: 401-874-4096 | f: 401-874-2259 | e: kate@uri.edu | w: web.uri.edu/ceoc

Hot Topics from the URI Consumer Horticulture Educator

rosanneThe following science-based articles may help you answer questions from the community.  Rosanne Sherry, URI Consumer Horticulture Educator, recommends you read them to help sharpen your own gardening and educator skills! Please send comments or suggestions for articles to rsherry@uri.edu.

The latest Master Gardener Quick Tips is now available in the MG Gardening Resources Section under Documents. It is dated 2.15.17. Timely tips are now sorted by season. There is an index sheet listed as well so you can quickly find a topic.
https://web.uri.edu/mastergardener/documents/

From New Terrain Feb. 1, 2017

While the majority of Monarchs that overwinter in Mexico are born in the Midwest, building and conserving habitat in other regions is important to conserving their numbers.

University of Guelph researchers have pinpointed the North American birthplaces of migratory Monarch butterflies that overwinter in Mexico by analyzing “chemical fingerprints” in the wings of butterflies collected as far back as the mid-1970s.

The largest percentage of Monarchs migrated to Mexico from the American Midwest, but the biologists were surprised to find that the insects’ origins were spread fairly evenly throughout Canada and the United States.

“We expected the vast majority of Monarch butterflies to be found in the Midwestern states,” said Tyler Flockhart, lead author and Liber Ero postdoctoral fellow at the University of Guelph. “However, just 38% come from that part of the U.S. If we just focus conservation activities on this area, this research shows we will be missing a large number of butterflies born elsewhere in North America.”

This is the first detailed look at where overwintering Monarch butterflies are born over multiple years, he said. Monarch numbers have dropped significantly in recent years, likely due partly to the control of milkweed, regarded as a weed pest in agricultural fields. Monarchs feed on milkweed and lay their eggs on the plants.

Analyzing more than 1,000 samples, the research team looked at chemical isotope signatures showing where the butterflies were born in the previous summer and fall. They found that 12% of the insects were born in the northwestern U.S. and Canadian prairies, 17% in the north-central states and Ontario, 15% in the northeastern U.S. and the Maritimes, 11% in the south-central U.S. and 8% in the southeastern states.

Midwestern habitat conservation is a priority, but the authors note that effective conservation calls for efforts across the entire species range.

The Guelph researchers worked with collaborators at Western University, London, Ontario; the University of Georgia; Sweet Briar College; Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico; Environment Canada and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Regional climate on the breeding grounds predicts variation in the natal origin of monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico over 38 years by Flockhart, D. T. T., Brower, L. P., Ramirez, M. I., Hobson, K. A., Wassenaar, L. I., Altizer, S. and Norris, D. R.  in Global Change Biology, DOI: 10.1111/gcb.13589.

Conserving eastern populations of Monarchs

A new interagency report on monarch conservation offers designers of pollinator and wildlife habitat science-based land management insights.

The Monarch Conference Report was developed to inform work by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) as they develop conservation plans for landowners. Recommendations were jointly developed by NRCS and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The guidance focuses on Midwestern and South Central U.S. regional agricultural land conservation practices. However, for landscape designers developing pollinator/Monarch habitat, there are several very useful sections, especially if your practice focuses on large-scale landscapes.

The discussion of three less common species of milkweeds, Spider milkweed (Aesclepias asperula), Zizotes milkweed (A. oenotheroides) and Green antelope horn (A. viridis) is informative, as is discussion of the physiology of Monarchs as they migrate, as well as the detail provided on their population ecology and migration. There are also helpful discussions of the effects of various mowing and grazing regimes on biodiversity.

Most of the report is NRCS-centric and geared to supervisors and technical staff who implement Farm Bill agricultural land conservation programs.