Carolina Yard Gardening School

I had a lot of fun at the Carolina Yard Gardening School this weekend.  If you don't know about it, it's put on by Clemson Extension and the Tri-County Master Gardeners every March.  There are two classes, two hands-on workshops, a keynote speaker, gift bags, compost, and lunch, as well as plants and other gardening-related items to for sale.

I volunteered two years ago, and one of my favorite things about it that year was all the free stuff I got to take home - seeds, plants, compost, and even food.  I missed it last year at the last minute - the night before I hurt my back, bad enough that I was out of work for close to two weeks.  This year was different.  I've been out of gardening for most of the past year, for a number of reasons, and I've been pushing myself to get back into it - I worked the Master Gardener office earlier in the week, and I went to a couple of seminars earlier in the year.  I knew today might go a long way in reigniting my love of gardening...and I think it did.  More than anything else, I enjoyed the people this year.

When I arrived before 7:30am, I didn't have an assigned task, but found work hanging baskets around the building, and helping people with rain barrels they had purchased.  Then I was told I was going to help run a powerpoint presentation during the opening segment, "Making It Grow", with Amanda McNulty, Amy Dabbs, Millie Davenport, and Zach Snipes.  I'm not usually a fan of being put on the spot like that, at least not with a rehearsal (don't ask me about being a page turner for pianists!), but it turned out to be a no-brainer and it was a lot of fun watching the "show".  The rapport among Amy, Amanda, and Millie was fun to watch, and Zach's great too - he's the new kid, literally - very young, and a new agent at the Clemson Extension.

There were a lot of volunteers, so after the first segment, I was able to attend some of the classes and workshops.  During the first time slot, it was a toss-up between heirloom gardening and integrated pest management, but the science geek in me won and I went to the "IPM in Your Backyard" that Zach gave.  Plant pathology is one of those very dense subjects that take many times hearing to sink in, at least for me, but I've immersed myself in it enough over the past couple of years that I'm starting to get the hang of it.

I sat in on parts of two lectures/workshops -  Spring-planted Bulbs and one about creating backyard bird habitats - and then I went to Amanda McNulty's lecture called, "Where de Rice?".  It was completely fascinating.  It ranged from the link between sickle cell and malaria resistance to rice steamers and division of labor on plantations.  I can't say enough about it - she really made my day.  The last class I saw was Amy's vermicomposting workshop.  I've heard her talk about worm composting a number of times, but I think this was the first real class setting I have been to, and she went into much greater detail than she has in the past.  It was very interesting - it's something I would definitely do if I didn't have chickens to feed my kitchens scraps to.

Like I was saying before, it was the people that made today fun for me - Amanda McNulty and her craziness, Amy for just being Amy, Zach and his love of plant pathology, and Millie Davenport and our conversation about our chickens!

At The Master Gardener's Office

Part of my Master Gardener training is working a number of shifts at the Master Gardener's office at the Clemson Cooperative Extension answering people's gardening questions.  Every time has been different - from a little scary to very boring.  Before I ever stepped foot in the office, it seemed a little intimidating, to answer a call from someone who expects answers about something you can't even anticipate.  I was put at ease during our orientation, when we were being shown the office and the phone rang.  Amy answered it, took down their question and told them she would find out the answer and get back to them shortly.  That was a big relief for me - I was expecting to have to know answers to questions off the top of my head.

My experiences at the office have been varied.  The first several times I worked the afternoon shift.  There was always another volunteer there and we got no more than five calls each time - one afternoon, the phone never rang.  I decided to try mornings recently and for my two shifts last month, I was the only volunteer in the office.  It was definitely busier - I probably got seven or eight calls.  It seems to be quiet the first hour and then by 10:30am, the phone calls start, and then before you can find the answer to one question the phone rings again.  It was nice being by myself, but I'm happy that I will have help this month.  Once you do about seven shifts at the office, you are not required to do any more.  You can volunteer elsewhere.  Probably most people do that, and I thought I would be one of those, but after three or four shifts, I decided this would be a good way to get the volunteer hours and learn something in the process.

The questions that people have vary, but there seems to be a cycle - as the seasons change the questions change accordingly.  Earlier in the year, there were a lot of calls about soil testing.  When it was time to fertilize the lawn, we got calls about that.  Now we're getting calls about vegetable gardens, etc.  There is a lot of strange things I've learned during my time and I thought I would start sharing them - here are just a few things:

I was reading about Centipede grass and came across its origin: "Centipedegrass (Eremochloa ophiuroides) was introduced into the United States from seed found in the baggage of Frank Meyer, a USDA plant explorer who disappeared on his fourth trip to China in 1916."

I thought this was a very strange origin story - something that I'll remember for a long time.  The same is true about what I learned about Rhododendrons:  "People have been known to become ill from eating honey made by bees feeding on rhododendron and azalea flowers. Xenophon described the odd behavior of Greek soldiers after having consumed honey in a village surrounded by Rhododendron ponticum during the march of the Ten Thousand in 401 BC. Pompey's soldiers reportedly suffered lethal casualties following the consumption of honey made from Rhododendron deliberately left behind by Pontic forces in 67 BC during the Third Mithridatic War."

People have called about sterilizing Sweet Gum trees and even mailed in leaves, asking us to figure out what's wrong with their plants.  I plan to post more of these as I work at the Master Gardener office, so stay tuned.

Master Gardener - Weeds

One of the activities for the chapter on weed ecology was the following:


"Visit your lawn. Choose three weeds and identify. After you've identified them, discuss the implications of these weeds in your lawn. Now visit the edges of your lawn, perhaps in the food garden bed or your ornamental plant beds. Find three weeds there and identify. Are they the same as the lawn weeds you saw? How do you manage these weeds in both situations (lawn and other)?"


I would say the main problem weed in my back yard is Florida betony (cool-season perennial).  When we first bought our house, I didn't know what it was.  In the summer, digging in the ground, I would find these white tubers - I didn't put the two together at the time.  For some reason they are almost exclusively in my back yard, so I don't do too much with them.  Since I know they are perennials and grow from those white tubers, pre-emergent herbicides will not work.  After doing some research on control methods, it appears there are a couple of post-emergent herbicides that will work, depending upon your grass type.  I have a good bit of bahiagrass in the back yard - which, to me, is a weed in itself - so I mostly leave it alone.  It take a different approach when it comes up in my garden.  When I see the tubers I get rid of them, and I tend to hand-pull the shoots when I see them, hoping that, if I pull them enough times, it will exhaust the plant.

I have a problem weed in the front yard, but, for the life of me, I don't know what it's called.  I should know this - it is a cool-season perennial, tap-rooted plant with a yellow flower.  I guess it could be dandelion, but the leaves are a lot different.  It has started coming up recently.  I have a tool with tines at the end - it's called a Garden Weasel Weed Popper.  It's hinged and spring-loaded.  You stick the tines in the ground near the weed and step on it, then catapult the weed across the lawn.  It proved effective against these tap-rooted weeds more than half the time, but it's labor-intensive.  Usually I'll take some time and spray Roundup on all of them, but I don't realize how many I have until I start doing it.

I used to have dollar weed (warm-season perennial) around my vegetable garden, but I was very vigilant about pulling it up overtime I saw it.  It's not a problem anymore.  It became a problem in one of our landscaped beds out front, but it was easy to get rid of.  The stolons were growing in the top layer - mulch/compost, and it was easy to hand-pull.  Long strings of it came up out of the loose mulch.  I notice from the photo that it's in the turf as well, but I can tolerate that.

I've been pulling up spurge around our vegetable garden all summer.  It's a warm-season annual that I've begun to notice a lot this year.  It grow outward from a taproot, hugging the ground.  It looks like it covers a large area, but all you have to do is pull it up from the single root and it's all gone.

The past year or so, I've gotten a little purslane in our vegetable garden.  I was curious about it, because it have very succulent stems and leaves.  It's a warm-season annual related to Portaluca.  Like other weeds in my garden, I try to hand pull weed now - since I Roundup-ed my pole beans last summer!

There is another plant that resembles dollar weed, that I believe I have in my yard as well.  It's called dichondra and it must get confused with the other because it's mentioned in the dollar weed article on the HGIC website.   From what I've seen, it is more of a clumping type of plant.  I could be wrong.

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There were other weeds I could mention, but these were the ones I knew the most about.  I'm sure a lot of people know what this weed is in the photo - I'm am just drawing the biggest blank.  I'll post the answer when someone tells me on the message board, but until then, I'll be in the dark.  Comment, if you think you know!

SC Master Gardener Class - Online

A few years ago I decided I was ready to take the Master Gardener class that the Clemson Extension offers every year.  I filled out a long application with a short essay and had a phone interview.  I felt proud to be accepted, though I didn't take the class because of scheduling conflicts.  I bought the MG Training Manual in advance, so when I didn't take the class, I decided that I didn't need to, now that I had the book.  Even though my intention was to slowly work my way through the book, I hardly even cracked it, except to read the vegetable gardening section and to identify pests.

Recently, I felt like my gardening skills had plateaued and I wasn't getting as much out of gardening as I used to - so I decided to look into signing up for the class again.  I thought I still had time, but when I looked it up, the class was closed and wouldn't be open again until next fall.  I was disappointed, but a couple of weeks later, I found out that they were going to offer an online version of the class.  It's pretty much the same structure, except there are video lectures, and home activities instead of classroom work.

I signed up for it and it started this week.  We have reading assignments, video lectures, activities to do at home, class discussions on a message board and online quizzes.  I haven't taken a class in a number of years, so it's going to be a little tough at first.  The first chapter on soil has a little bit of chemistry in it, but the good thing is that I can take my time and let it all soak in, since I have a whole week.

Like I'm doing with gardening tips, I think I'm going to do a series with stuff I'm learning in this class.  I have at least two ideas in this one chapter alone that I want to write about.  I may find too many things and not be able to keep up with it, but we'll see.