May 6, 2025 • 59 mins
This episode of Curry Café hosted by Ray Gary and Rick McNamer features a panel discussion with Curry County Master Gardener volunteers, highlighting their extensive community-based gardening education program affiliated with Oregon State University Extension. They describe the program’s comprehensive training on sustainable gardening tailored to the region’s unique coastal microclimates, as well as their active […]
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Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
Well, hello again, KCIW
listeners, and welcome to Curry Cafe.
I'm producer and volunteer Rick McNamer.
Every Sunday from three to four PM, your
host, Ray Gary, puts together a panel of
guests to discuss topics of interest in our
community.
Listeners can participate by texting
in questions or comments to
(00:26):
(541)
661-4098.
Again, that's (541)
661-4098.
Now here's Ray to tell us about today's
show. Okay.
You know, every week I say that we've
we've gathered a, a panel of experts on
most often I'm lying. I mean, they don't
(00:47):
necessarily know anything. We just kinda fake it.
But today, we actually have
a panel of experts, and we're gonna be
talking about the Master Gardener program in case
anybody's wanted to everyone would be involved in
that, find out all about
what it's what it's all about. So we're
gonna go around the table now, and everybody
can introduce themselves and tell you who they
(01:08):
are. And,
yeah. Okay.
Okay. Thank you, Ray. I am Julia Bott.
I'm a Curry County Master Gardener Volunteer,
and I took the class in 02/2018.
I'm involved in a few things in the
organization.
One of them is working at the school
gardens
at Kalmiopsis.
(01:28):
I've also served on the board,
and I was
worked on getting our new home, the new
greenhouse and garden in Gold Beach.
I'm Patty McCarthy, and I just graduated this
year in the master gardener program. And I'm
also involved in the calmyopsis
program, the little bear, with the second and
fourth graders, and I really love
(01:55):
it. My name is Robin Rasch.
I am also newly
graduated,
so I guess I'm a trainee right now,
for Master Gardeners.
I have done a couple of outreaches,
plant clinics,
and we'll get more into the plant clinic
side of it.
I live in Brookings.
(02:17):
Hi. My name is Kim Foster, and I
live in Port Orford, so North County.
And I
graduated from the class last year, so
still pretty new, but this year, I've been
able to get involved in a few special
projects, including
running, the Seed to Supper program at the
Porterfield Public Library, which is a free six
(02:39):
week gardening course.
And, I'm happy to talk about that more
later.
Okay. Who wants to start out by telling
us,
what the Master Gardener program is and a
little bit about what it takes to become
one? This is not
your average garden club where you meet on
Saturdays and talk about your azaleas. Is that
(02:59):
right? Oh, that's true. We we try to
meet with the public,
often, now the third week of the month
at our plant clinics at various libraries
across the county
and,
talk to them about their azaleas and help
them with their sustainable gardening questions.
The Curry County Master Gardeners are part of
the OSU Extension program,
and since 1987,
(03:21):
we have been volunteering in the community, helping
people with their gardening questions.
We are trained. We go through a course
to become master gardeners, and we do have
requirements every year for continuing education
as well
as volunteer service hours.
So what does it take to actually become
(03:42):
a master gardener?
Well, we have a couple of people who've
recently
had been in the class, so they probably
have the great firsthand experience.
So,
Robin okay.
It's from
January
to
March,
approximately.
(04:03):
Much of it is done, the studying, online,
so it's very convenient for people.
If you can't physically get someplace, we do
meet on-site,
throughout the different,
parts of Curry County. So it would be
once,
every month.
Once approximately every other week. Every other week.
(04:24):
So,
that takes up from January to March. Every
other week, we're either meeting in Gold Beach
or we're meeting in Brookings or Port Orford.
So that's the
the span of of area you would have
to go to meet in actual in class
meetings.
But as I said, a lot of it
is done online, and Zoom is also available
(04:47):
for people that can't
have access to getting to those locations.
It's very it's a very in-depth class, so
you're not gonna just be talking about one
thing,
in terms of gardening, but it's
very comprehensive.
So you're talking about insects and entomology
(05:07):
and
things that I probably wouldn't have done on
my own.
But
it's very informative, and I am a gardener
before this, but I became, I think, a
better gardener now. So
that's my recommendation.
Yeah. Please, if you can or if you
want to, text in, questions or comments, (541)
(05:31):
661-4098.
Love to hear from anybody out there
have a question or comment. Yes. So master
the Master Gardeners are volunteers.
That's really the way to describe us. Us.
That's the key word.
And we do do public education and help
people with their sustainable gardening questions.
We help people have make informed decisions
(05:53):
so that they can do gardening in a
way that fits them best.
We provide this education through a variety of
ways and people have mentioned our plant clinics.
We now are bringing our plant clinics out
of the extension office and into our local
communities.
So on the third Monday of the month,
from ten to one, we're at the Chetco
Community Library here in Brookings.
(06:15):
On the third Wednesday of each month, we're
at the Curry Public Library in Gold Beach.
And then on the third Thursday of each
month, we're at the Port Orford Public Library.
And all of these are from ten to
one.
You can also send us questions
via email by sending an email to currymg@oregonstate.edu.
(06:38):
That's currymg@oregonstate.edu.
Or calling our voice mail, which is (541)
247-6672,
an extension 7.
will monitor those and get back to you
with an answer.
Often, they ask you more questions first so
they can help you really determine
(06:59):
what the solution is to your problem.
Yeah. I mean Go ahead. Sorry. I I
just wanted to build on that and say
that one of the great things about the
Master Gardener program is that we make really
good academic research
more accessible to communities.
So, you know, it is obviously, you know,
an OSU extension project, but we make all
of that good academic research, that's
(07:20):
peer reviewed and,
you know, contextual for and more connected to,
you know, the lived experiences of people out
here. And I think that that's just so
important, especially today. There's so much misinformation online.
There's so many influencers
on TikTok and YouTube
purporting to have, you know, these amazing gardening
hacks. And we see it at the plant
(07:41):
clinics all the time when you're tabling at
these events where people come up with just
the craziest questions that they heard online on
Instagram or Facebook or TikTok. And so I
think this is just a really great,
service for the community to sort of bring
these insights that are typically
kind of locked away in the ivory tower
down to the communities where they can be
(08:01):
implemented,
locally and to sort of share that knowledge,
for free, you know?
And usually, it's locally and climatologically
relevant. Mhmm. And we can even help people
with the different gardening needs between if you
live on the coast and you have fog
five days out of seven Mhmm. Versus living
(08:23):
seven miles
upriver
or at a thousand feet. They're all little
different gardening techniques for those microclimates,
which we have in our area. Yeah. That
was one of the big things, at the
class that I taught this year that we
covered was microclimates because you have so many
people who are maybe moving from other climates
or, you know, like, hey. You know, I
moved here from a zone nine b, and
(08:44):
I'm in Zone 9 B now. And why
isn't nothing working? That used to work at
my old, you know, garden where I used
to live and really just speaking to
microclimates
and teaching people to learn their property because
you can have a totally different microclimate
not only on the same street but on
your property itself. So it's about just sort
of learning to root down and be more
observant,
(09:04):
because that that is the name of the
game out here on the coast. We we
talked a little before the show about where
where I live. I my house is at
about a thousand feet,
and a road that I walk every morning
raises about
250
feet. And then it levels off, and it's
at at that altitude more or less for
quite a ways. And at that 250
(09:25):
feet, there are plants growing
there that do not grow at my altitude.
Rhododendrons may one. Rhododendrons are thick up at
that 1,250
foot level, but they don't live at all
where I am. At least the wild ones
don't. Mhmm. Yeah. Soil
chemistry
and, the microbes
and pH,
(09:46):
all of that. And the sun, the amount
of sun they get, the aspect Yeah.
Angle of the Yeah. I also mentioned earlier
a plant that I've been trying to transplant
that
just doesn't seem to wanna live where I
am. Well, you know, the wind is also
a major factor out here, you know,
that can really suck out the heat units,
(10:06):
in that particular area where you're trying to
grow. Whereas, you know, maybe that plant in
the wild is protected more by,
you know, the foliage of the forest. So
the the wind is a big factor. Yeah.
Okay. Getting back to Master Gardener program, you
mentioned how many weeks you didn't mention, I
don't think, how many weeks
this takes.
So the the class starts in the January,
(10:28):
and the actual classroom
activities, the Saturday in person classes or the
online modules go to mid March. And then
the trainees take an exam
that they have to pass with 70%. It's
open book. You can do it with partners
because that's how we do research when we're
doing our plant clinics or asking questions.
After that, they have forty hours of, in
(10:51):
person service learning that they do by volunteering
in the community.
And if you complete both the,
education part, the classes and modules,
and do the,
volunteer time, then you get certified as a
master gardener. The cost is $150
and if you get certified, $50 is refunded
back to you.
(11:11):
Registration usually opens up in mid November.
The class begins in mid January.
And then, like I say, once you're certified,
you go on to be
stay a master gardener as long as you
meet the new certification rules, which we have
twenty hours of volunteer service and ten hours
of continuing education.
So the first year is more onerous in
(11:33):
terms of the number of hours of volunteer
service and the number of continuing or the
education
time, but it is a deep dive, isn't
it? And it's really fun, and it's very
easy to,
volunteer those forty hours as you've talked about.
Once you start volunteering
with an organization
that you love and that, you know, you
(11:54):
think is important,
you just keep volunteering. So you actually have
to recertify every year? Yeah. Every year, we
master gardeners are certified. Because I talked to
a friend of mine who I know is
a master gardener.
Just to get out of the doing the
show, I'm sure. He says, well, I'm not
current. I'm not current. Oh, yeah. So he
likes butterflies, doesn't he? Yes. Yes. And he
is not current.
I tried to get him to talk about
(12:15):
butterflies. He didn't wanna do that. Oh, yeah.
And so some of us will talk more
than others.
But, you know, he gets a lot done.
I mean, he's a great sponsor Yes. For
KCIW.
And, but he is an associate member of
the Master Gardener program. So we do want
to keep our members engaged. And so we
do have two levels, a certified master gardener
and then the associates.
(12:36):
Associates
really still volunteer a lot and help a
lot, but by OSU requirements, a certified master
gardener needs to be there also. He gets
invited to dinner, I'm sure, a lot. Just,
oh, while you're here, you wanna look at
my plants.
Yeah. I'm sure.
Anybody who gets invited to dinner in a
lot of places gets to look at people's
plants, like, because people around here really do
(12:58):
like their gardens. Yes.
And
when when I hear garden, I think of
of decorative plants. I don't think of lettuce
and tomatoes and things like that. But you
guys
go both ways. We do. We think of
gardens in three ways, and our upcoming plant
sales sort of represents that in terms of
what we're offering.
We see people growing for food, and we
(13:20):
increasingly see more people requesting,
that how to grow food. And that's what
the Seed to Supper program was was.
We also think about ornamentals. Beauty in your
garden and, you know, the serenity
is important for our community.
And then we all look at native communities
Yes. At native plants, incorporating those and pollinator
plants into your garden. Or many of us
(13:42):
have larger landscapes around our developed,
home parcels. And we need to keep those
in healthy native landscapes,
address the invasives.
And if you keep a healthy native landscape,
you can reduce your fire risk,
and maintain more habitat for the animals that
have been here since,
things started sprouting.
(14:04):
So our plant sale has,
vegetables, locally grown vegetables raised by volunteers.
And this year, we're gonna have a really
strong selection of of vegetables.
A lot of variety and the plants look
great.
We also have, a large variety many varieties
of perennial plants, plants that live year to
(14:24):
year,
shrubs,
that are locally adaptive and work well in
our climate. And then we have, native plants
too. I think we have about 40 varieties
of native plants that are also available at
our plant sale, which is coming up next
Saturday, Saturday the tenth,
always the Saturday before Mother's Day at our
new home in Gold Beach
(14:45):
at, our new greenhouse and garden at the
Gold Beach Community Center from ten to one
on Saturday, May 10. You guys are busy.
Yes. How many Master Gardeners are there
that actually work on this program? So right
now, between,
our associate members,
our certified members, and our trainees, we have
67 members, which is really great because,
(15:06):
right about COVID time, we got down to
about 25. And,
so we were really stretched. But now with
this many volunteers,
we have programs in all three school districts.
We are working with all three school districts
going doing school gardens. We're able to bring
our plant clinics out to three different communities,
and we are putting on an awesome plant
(15:28):
sale. We have our new home. We have
great trainees.
And we've been doing some talks at SWOC
or very at libraries.
Yeah. And, you know, the more programs that
we can, put on and the more,
you know, events that we can go to,
it kind of has this iterative effect of
of being a feeder for more Master Gardeners.
(15:49):
So I think it's it kinda it's it's
awesome how,
we were able to expand like that.
And we will be. Some if you wanted
to also meet some of us or find
out more,
for Azalea Fest, you know, the Brookings Harbor
Garden Club, which, some of our trainees are
also involved in that and some of our
members.
(16:09):
They have their annual plant sale on Saturday
and Sunday of Azalea Festival at the Botanical
Garden, which the Brookings Harbor Garden Club maintains
and keeps its lovely garden.
So we will be there tabling, providing information
to people and helping answer their gardening questions.
And what about the plant they just bought
that was lovingly raised by the Brookings Harbor
(16:30):
Garden Club volunteers?
Both of,
Robin and,
Patty are with both organizations.
Mhmm. In case you guys wanna pitch that.
Okay. Yeah. I I bought this about three
years ago, I think. I went to that
and and bought some
plants. And one of them, I don't know
what the the a plant was, but also
in the pot, there was a,
(16:52):
a maple tree that I planted separately, and
it's doing beautifully. So
Yeah. We also have a plant sale up,
in North County coming up,
Langoy's Lions plant sale, and I'll be tabling
there on that Friday. It's May
from 9AM to 4PM,
at the Langoy's Lions,
(17:13):
center up in Langoy's. So if there's anyone
listening
that far north, it's about as far north
as you can get, but that's coming up
too. Yes. And so all of these plant
sales, you know, what they do is that
they really do,
help fund organizations
and the work that they do in the
community.
Our plant sale is our major fundraiser.
I know for the Lions Club, it's a
major fundraiser, and I'm sure it really makes
(17:34):
a difference for the Brookings Harbor Garden Club.
The Garden Club, it is also and we
also have a flower show
that, happens down there also on the Saturday
and Sunday of,
Memorial weekend
at the,
the Botanical Garden.
I you were talking about the,
(17:55):
the school kids. It's unusual and exciting.
Do
do are they really that excited about growing?
I mean, that's that's a big deal. I
I I would think these days that wouldn't
be a you know, let's just go to
fast food
and call it. Oh my goodness. Well, that's
wonderful. Yeah. Harvesting carrots, harvesting strawberries,
(18:16):
radishes.
They love it,
and they really love to weed, which we
have Oh, goodness. I know. We are closer
to the ground. I never never picked that
one up.
Yeah. It's really great. Yes. They are closer
to the ground. Weeding isn't the easiest thing.
But Patty, as a volunteer,
can speak to some of his joy. Yeah.
The kids really love it. And, you know,
(18:37):
we have the second and the fourth graders,
and
they they get very involved with it. And
they learn also about bugs and how not
to be afraid of bugs, that a lot
of bugs are very beneficial
for the plants,
and they do seeding
and,
learning about
climate. And, yeah, they're they're
(18:58):
very interested. It's a lot of fun. Well,
you bet. And like I said, that's pretty
important to have the next
generation, if you will, come on up and
keep it going.
Yeah. So there's also a school garden up
at Riley Creek School in Gold Beach, and
master gardeners maintain that.
And here at Brookings, we do more hand
on, hands on programming with the students.
(19:19):
And in Gold Beach, it's more of maintaining
it and assisting teachers with curriculum that they
bring out. And then up at Driftwood
in Port Orford, their elementary school,
they have a person in there who really
works a teacher or a staff faculty with
the school district who works on the gardens,
and our volunteers help maintain that garden
(19:39):
and also provide some support during some class
times.
And then, this is really exciting,
last year, also in Kim's class,
there was a a woman of a retired
coast guard commander
who took a job,
at the at Pacific High School starting the
horticulture program. Wendy.
Wendy. And she really knew nothing about gardening.
(20:02):
In fact, she I was trying to get
her to she was asking me a lot
of questions, and I was trying to get
her to take the master gardener class. And
she's like, I've never even taken a basic
gardener class. How can I take the master
gardener class? But she took it, and she
learned so much, and she's so enthusiastic
that they are about to go from one
horticulture
class to two horticulture classes up at Pacific
(20:23):
High School.
So that was It's like night and day.
Yeah. Yeah. Just like looking at the transformation
at Pacific High School has been really cool.
And, you know, the the the folks out
here love it. And, like, a lot of
the kids are really switched on about gardening
because they're already familiar with it in some
way.
And so I think it's just a really,
tight alignment with, you know, where we're where
(20:45):
we can head as as a program. Yes.
They love their carrots. They love their strawberries.
And they tell us that they taste better
when they pull them out of the ground
and eat them.
Yeah. And I think that
that ripens on the vine, so to speak,
is gonna be better. Yeah. I guess, because
you've done it yourself too.
(21:06):
Well, it's good to teach, you know, like
you said, the next generation because, you know,
Master Gardeners typically are it's for adults.
And but, you know, you gotta you gotta
attack it from all angles.
Well, maybe Michelle Obama's,
remember her teaching the kids. I I always
thought that was a great thing, and she
got chastised from certain areas, and I thought
(21:27):
that was terrible. But, yeah, that was a
good thing. Yeah. And the kids excited about
digging in the dirt and
eating what comes out of the ground. Yeah.
I think there's a sense of security,
you know, especially if you're from,
more under resourced areas or lower income families.
Those families are also the ones, you know,
who
are more likely to experience food insecurity, and
(21:48):
that was something I experienced a bit of
growing up. And for us growing up, if
we didn't grow it ourselves, you know, we
just didn't get a ton of vegetables or
fruit that wasn't from a can.
You know, and so,
but, you know, when you walk into your
garden and there's just endless fresh green beans,
it seems like,
that's how it felt as a kid walking
(22:08):
into my grandmother's garden. It just felt like
there was just
infinite
food.
I know better now than being a gardener
and adult that that took a lot of
hard work. But, you know, that sense of
security made me feel rich,
you know? And it made me feel
secure. And I think that that feeling of
abundance can be the real joy of growing
your own food.
(22:30):
And,
you know
go ahead. Yeah. So we also do things
where we we actually have them take home
various plants. They get to pot up a
succulent and take that home and care for
it. Recently, they, all got a strawberry start
that they got to put in a pot
and take home.
Not only are they getting to care for
these things and have some ownership over it,
(22:50):
we're teaching them about the little,
the stake that comes in there that has
an information on it. That's basically the instruction
booklet for raising that plant. We teach them
about the seed packet and how to read
that. Once again, it's the instruction booklet, and
it tells you a lot of things about
gardening.
And
we
are well, some of them may not go
(23:12):
off to be gardeners in the future. Their
knowledge of nature and how natural systems work,
it should it's fundamental
decision making knowledge. And that can make a
difference on the some of the decisions they'll
make in the future.
But, and then
the other day, we're walking out of the
garden and a parent ran up to us.
And she's like, are you guys Master Gardeners?
(23:34):
Yes. She was like, thank you. Thank you
for doing the class. My my kids love
it. It's their favorite class. And, you know,
their succulent is this high. I'm raising my
fingers in front of a radio, but, like,
three inches high. And their strawberry has a
flower on it, and they're so excited.
So the parents love it. And the teachers,
I often
apologize saying, oh, it's just been chaos today.
(23:54):
I'm so sorry. They're like, no. They're learning.
They're discovering,
you know. And not only are they learning
about gardening and natural systems, they're learning about
how to deal with,
a very excited environment and how to reign
their own emotions in, how to share with
other students.
Like, some of the things they're planting now,
they won't harvest
(24:15):
because
the second graders won't or the fourth graders
won't because they won't have garden class next
year in the fall, but the things that
we're planting now will be harvested in the
fall.
And they just know that that's part of
the sharing. They're they're carrying on the garden
class.
Well, wow. If anybody out there has a
question or a comment, we have the people
here to answer. So
(24:37):
please text in here at,
(541)
661-4098.
Must be wonderful to work with kids that
are actually enthusiastic
about what you're teaching them.
I can always remember going to class things,
class trips, and the
and nobody was interested or one or one
or two people might be. I always loved
(24:57):
the things when we went to the zoo
and the museum and stuff like that, and
other kids just thought it was a way
to get out of class.
But enthusiastic kids are in need. Yes. And
to see that transition,
Patty's probably seen this too, from kids who
come in at the beginning of the year,
I don't like gardening or I'm just sitting
there,
(25:18):
to becoming really excited about it. Or the
student who is
afraid of spiders, just screaming,
who brings you up a spider in a
bug box and shows it to you.
We know we've we've talked to them. They
are not insects. A spider doesn't wanna eat
them. A spider wants to eat insects.
So, you know, they understand
that,
(25:39):
spiders are have a role in in the
world.
I think also what's really cool is that
they form a connection with nature.
And if you read about
things that
decrease your stress as you get older, it's
connection and bonding and going out into nature.
So we're starting
(25:59):
to teach them how to bond with nature.
I see a
a few if I go to a zoo
or something like that or in Florida, they
have some of these wonderful boardwalks in the
in the,
in the national park there. They're just incredible
for me because I'm interested in it. And
then whenever there's a class trip coming through,
especially if it's,
(26:20):
oh, grade school or something like that, oh,
no.
Because most of them couldn't care less, and
they're running around young. But I think, well,
okay. There's 20 kids here. One or two
of them will get it. One or two
will will have some some little seed planted.
Yes. I think
we live in a rural area. Most of
these kids are somewhat a little bit more
(26:42):
connected to nature
than, say, I was where I grew up
in apartments in a very dense urban area.
And,
embarrassingly
embarrassingly,
when I was a teenager, I saw someone's
vegetable garden for the first time, and I
actually asked them how deep their dirt went.
Because I thought everything was concrete, and then
you brought in dirt and put it on
(27:02):
top of it.
So these kids have that one leg up
on that because they know that there's dirt
everywhere.
But for urban kids, the gardening experience can
be really, really life changing. It is very
surprising. Yeah. Yeah. And a similar story to
that, I was was on a road trip
once with my family, and,
one of the kids we had along was
(27:23):
a foster child from, actually, an Eskimo from
a from a village. And we were driving
through these stockyards,
and
they really stink. I mean, they said, oh,
it doesn't really that's an order that doesn't
really bother me. I consider that to be
kinda natural. But after we're riding through for
a while, she's
she says,
do they do they wash these things before
(27:45):
we get to eat them? I said
Oh, good. We're taking them we're helping them
think critically. Yeah. That's a good thing. So
This particular kid was a joy because she
was every bit as interested in wildlife as
I was and that we could find little
bugs and things like that.
So we did learn some things though,
(28:06):
in the past few years about gardening with
kids.
And one of them was the assumption that
everybody has a yard, Mhmm. And not everybody
has a yard. Mhmm. And so
we have gone through often, we'll send home
vegetables with the kids to grow. But we
make sure if they don't have a place
to plant it at home, that they have
a good sized container for it,
(28:26):
because
people live in small areas without yards, in
small trailers,
in hotels,
and those children still wanna raise something. So
we've now
understand and tailor what we send home to
what the students' needs are.
Mhmm. That's a shift for adults and gardening.
Yeah. It's like, you know, you have to
(28:48):
look at your environment, and you have to
look at your site and really be honest
with yourself about how much sunlight you have.
And is it a wind tunnel? And
is the soil sandy
or not?
And really
build out your gardening plan to the place
that you have. So So we have this
new home,
our new greenhouse and garden up in Gold
(29:11):
Beach, and it's on the property of the
Gold Beach Community Center.
And they reached out to us to help
us locate there
in great part because they want their their
members
to be able to to grow some of
their own food.
And while they are the community center, previously
known as the senior center, and they're really
trying to get away from that and have
(29:32):
all ages involved,
realistically, a lot of their clients are seniors.
And so we've talked to them about the
fact that, yeah, you can have some raised
beds, but there's a whole lot of other
ways that seniors can raise food in their
house without a lot of strenuous garden. I
mean, there's easy ways like microgreens,
where you're just raising this the first leaves
(29:52):
and sprouts,
and you're putting them on your salads or
garnish on a little shell of some sort.
That gets you a lot of vitamins. The
vitamins are very dense in those microgreens.
There's some aquaponics
ways that you can grow things in water,
and you've seen sometimes people with big, big
operations to grow lettuce or basil or even
(30:13):
tomatoes or broccoli,
in in hydroponics
in water. But you can take a small
tote that's basically a foot by a foot,
and grow a small four heads of lettuce
and some basil on your kitchen counter.
If you're, a senior and you just want
a little bit of fresh vegetables or greens,
some chard for your salad without having a
(30:35):
lot of strenuous gardening, having to have a
big bed weed take care of it. So
we're looking at how to help people expand
what they see as gardening
so they can get some fresh vegetables
into their lives. That sounds like the type
of thing where you'll show somebody how to
grow a lettuce on a square foot.
And,
before long, there's
(30:56):
flowerpots in the bathroom, on all the bedrooms,
on all the
all the window sills, and it could just
grow to become something.
We, yeah. We haven't we don't have an
anti hoarder program in the Master Gardener, but,
program. But as you already offered, you said
you might you had some pots that you
wanted to bring up to our plant sale.
(31:16):
People have a lot of extra garden stuff,
and they buy a lot of plants. We
want them to buy plants at our plant
sale next Saturday, May 10, '10 to one,
ten to two at the Gold Beach Community
Center. I'm kinda near the harbor or the
post office down there,
or I and maybe you shouldn't advertise, but
Wagy's fish,
truck is really good. You can you can
(31:36):
do that. Yeah. So those are all places.
And that's those are ways,
that you could locate our new home, though
it's this big greenhouse,
24 by 48.
I wrote it down somewhere, and now I've
forgotten. But, That sounds right. Yeah. So a
big greenhouse and a garden that's gonna be
about a tenth of an acre when we,
actually get it built out. So how many
(31:57):
how many of the plants that that you
were selling did you actually grow?
So, volunteers that's the one thing I'm really
not involved with myself personally is growing anything
at the greenhouse because I do 88 different
other programs. But, you guys have the work
sum at the greenhouse, Or we have other
volunteers working there? Yeah. And a lot of
volunteers are were growing, involved in all the
(32:19):
vegetable starts.
So
So are the
the plants that aren't grown in the greenhouse,
members bring those from home that they've grown
and that type of thing? So most of
our our plants are grown in greenhouse the
our greenhouse or in controlled situations.
We
sell using, an Oregon State nursery permit, so
(32:39):
we're held to very high standards.
Additionally, Curry County is an area with high
levels of sudden oak dust, so we have
to be really careful
about the soil conditions, and maybe we don't
want to,
transfer that Biotothra or that organism to other,
lands that don't have it. And if we
can't control
sudden oak death in Curry County,
(33:01):
we could get restrictions from exporting lumber, but
not only lumber.
The the slal and huckleberry and a lot
of the other heath plants, rhododendrons,
that are used in the floral industry
could also be stopped from being exported, and
that could be a real problem for our
local economy.
So we have a controlled situation where we
grow in clean potting mediums.
(33:23):
We don't use soil from someone's ground or
garden.
We usually propagate
by,
using cuttings and starting from that. We sterilize
the pots? Sterilize the pots. We don't go
dig up from people's gardens. We take cuttings.
So we have a lot of restrictions
that we so we can guarantee you that
we're gonna be selling
pest free plants to people.
(33:45):
Although whenever you buy a plant from any
location,
even a nursery
that,
is, you know, that has really high standards,
it's always kinda good to quarantine that plant
for a few days before you plant it
to see whether or not you see some
sort of insect
coming on it or see leaf damage that
is evidence of an insect or see some
sort of wilt or blight
(34:06):
before you actually introduce it to the rest
of your plants. So you, mentioned sudden oak
death like everybody knows what it is.
You don't know about Phytophthora?
I'm sorry? Untested.
I mean, that's probably a self explanatory name,
but
So, yes, unfortunately,
sudden oak death is a waterborne
organism of Phytophthora.
(34:27):
Phytophthora.
Phytophthora.
And, so
it affects you've seen a lot of, of
our tanoaks will die suddenly. And you've seen
areas, especially if you've gone up to Loeb,
or to the Redwood Trail right by Loeb,
you've seen that they've cut a lot of
the tanoaks and burnt them there,
because they died from sudden oak death. And
(34:47):
it affects a lot of other plants,
and it's it it just it's
it does what it says it does. It's
sudden death,
primarily to the tanoaks,
which are the only acorn tree producing tree
really in our locale, in our county.
And acorns,
the tanoaks aren't true oaks, but they do
(35:09):
produce the acorns. And acorns
are a major food staple for so many
mammals,
that if when we lose that basic food
staple, the bottom of the food chain, then
the deer and a lot of other mammals
are severely impacted.
Yeah. And one of the things that I
think is interesting about sudden oak death is
that the tree suddenly dies, but it has
(35:31):
actually had,
the,
the disease for years, up to three years,
that it sort of propagates through the tree
and it sporulates in the canopy and it's
travel it travels via wind, which is a
problem out here because we have lots of
wind. And so it's tricky to to track
and contain
because the tree can look healthy for years
and look green, and then suddenly it dies.
(35:52):
And it's because the,
the rot sort of rings the tree and
chokes it from the inside, so you can't
really see,
the the tree being,
affected by the disease until all the leaves
suddenly turn brown at once. But that's why
it's it's been very difficult to contain, and
we kind of look ahead to where the
disease is and sort of look north or
(36:13):
look south to see, okay, if it's here
today and there are trees dying here today,
there may be some that look healthy that
are actually affected. We just can't see it
yet. And so I think that makes it
particularly difficult, and that's why we just are
extra careful about soil
because just because it looks like your tanoak
is healthy doesn't mean necessarily that it'll stay
(36:35):
healthy. Yes. So it is you know, it's
unfortunate because people like to share their plants.
Yeah. But we highly recommend that you do
not dig up plants from your yard and
share them with someone else and transport that
soil, because we know that is a way
to transport sudden oak death out of an
area where it may be to another property.
Now I live in basically, Brookings is what's
(36:56):
called a generally infested area,
And I know that I live in that
area, but there is no sudden oak death
within eyesight of my property. And so I'm
really careful about bringing anything to my property
because I don't wanna move it into that
locale.
So we do encourage people not to share
plants that they're digging up from their yards
(37:17):
and transport them. And it also works with
taking,
firewood
locally
and then taking it to a campground out
of the area.
That's
also a poor really poor recommendation.
And you will see a lot of times
when we have,
crews, forest service crews doing either weeding and
or fire suppression
in the area. You see these weed washing
(37:38):
stations or truck washing stations,
and they are very careful to wash their
trucks before and after leaving the, forested lands
or the wild lands to, one, remove weed
seeds like gorse or broom or pampas grass
that get stuck in their tire or underneath
the, their bumpers, but also to get rid
of the phytophthora
(37:58):
phytophthora
and or sudden oak death or other diseases
like that that you can't see. So hygiene's
really, really important. I actually carry Lysol and
a boot brush in my car. And when
I go hiking in areas that have sun
oak depth, I will clean my boots off
afterwards.
Okay. You mentioned,
(38:19):
the the problem plant. So I have a
a a question about spraying. I I know
that's not a good talk thing to talk
about.
I don't see any of you have pulled
a gun on me yet. So but, It
depends, is the answer. I guess. It's there
where where I, hike in the morning, there's
sometimes areas that are a hundred yards long
(38:40):
along the road that are full of Scotch
broom,
and it just
drives me nuts.
So I do go through every year now
with a with a little spray thing
and very carefully just spray the Scotch broom.
And the Scotch broom is a bad
situation.
And killing it with a chemical, does that
(39:03):
equalize the bad thing of killing the chemical?
Or
So all things It's kinda like a you
have to weigh you have to weigh factors
when you make a decision.
And,
as OSU Master Gardener volunteers,
we will provide information
about every way that you can control,
a weed or an insect on your property,
(39:24):
whether it is a cultural control
or some sort of, synthetic control like an
herbicide or a pesticide.
But we also try to give people,
first off, what is the way to prevent
that? Your best approach is a preventative approach.
So we try to give them that information.
Even if they eradicate like, if you spray
the broom, what's your next step to stop
that weed, that, seed bank Mhmm. From sprouting
(39:47):
the next time? The second thing we wanna
do is to provide them the right information
about how to use that pesticide or herbicide,
when to use it, and how to target
the right species.
And most importantly,
any personal protective equipment that should be used
or any
considerations for the environment. Like the wind. The
wind or if it's raining and stuff like
(40:07):
that. So and a lot of people in
restoration, and I've done restoration work for a
long time, and I've worked on removing,
pampas grass from our road, and I used
the three this Curry
Soil and Water Conservation District or the Curry
Watersheds Partnership to come up, and they did
use herbicide to remove that. It's really the
only way. The infestation
(40:28):
was dangerous, fire trucks. Even my car couldn't
really get up the road anymore.
It was the tool that we needed to
use. Typically, you needed to stump and treat
it. Yeah. You would cut it first. And
then when
the cut is fresh, you would then, paint
on the I think it's triclopyr.
You would paint that on very carefully onto
the open wound. Yeah.
(40:49):
So that way it it permeates into the
the root. If you're just spraying it on
the foliage,
and the wind's gonna take it away, it
may not be even the right herbicide and
Right. So you need to find the right
herbicide. And then as you said, if you
spray it just directly on that and actually,
the interesting some of the
signs that they're seeing with pampas grass is
that if you cut it first, you're just,
(41:09):
spreading the seed bank. Mhmm. So, actually, if
you can spray it in there right when
the fronds are still in their purple stage,
before they have actually matured into seeds,
that herbicide will kill those seeds also. So
you're not spreading Like tree of heaven where
you don't wanna cut that. Yeah. So it
so each species is different,
and so you need to know, right, you
(41:30):
don't wanna do it when it's windy. You
wanna have a very focused application
of the right herbicide or pesticide
for that plant at the time that it's
gonna be effective. So if you go out
and spray
the herbicide on pampas grass in, October,
you've missed your window. Mhmm. Your spraying time
is earlier in the season when it's got
(41:50):
that little purple.
If you go to if you see damage,
from something eating your plants, but that insect
is long gone and you spray a pesticide
to get rid of that insect,
that it's not gonna work because the insect
is gone. So you need to know what
you're doing and when to apply it, But
there are a lot of ways that you
can prevent things from happening, and so we
(42:11):
really focus on giving people that garden information
that helps improve their pest. Management. Yeah. So
Rick Rick is signaling me now that we
have a text. Oh. We have a text.
Oh my gosh. So here we go. Thank
you, texter. And again, it's,
(541)
661-4098.
And the texter says, do you educate on
how to adjust your home garden to be
(42:32):
more fire resilient?
OSU has a really strong program with that.
Yes. And there there's actually some booklets that
they have put out,
that,
provide information on plantings and as as well
as hardening your house. And that has a
lot to do with,
not just your landscape management, but how your
(42:53):
house is built and whether or not you
keep embers from going,
through under your eaves, if you clean your
gutters, things like that. But OSU does have
that information, and it is available to master
gardeners. And we can certainly provide that to
people. And if they email us at curry,
mg@oregonstate.edu,
we will send them links with that information.
(43:16):
And I have a question about I live
in Smith River just across the border, and
there's the ag station that I go through
three times a day sometimes.
No. Almost everybody nobody's ever checked me. And,
yes, sometimes I like to go to the
farmer's market in Harbor, and then I bring
my stuff home.
Am I violating
doing anything doing that? I and I of
(43:36):
course, I had never asked them. And I
also am curious, why don't they why don't
the Oregon people
worry about what we Californians
might be bringing into Oregon?
So I think the reason California has a
such a strong pest control,
situation at all of their borders is because
agriculture is so important to their economy, especially
It is. The Central Valley. And what they're
(43:57):
looking for
are pests inadvertent pests being transported
by backyard gardeners.
So if you're buying thing produce
from the farmer's market, which they get inspected
and they know how to look
for infestations,
and they shouldn't be selling things that have
pests,
and or the grocery store,
(44:18):
then those things are legitimate
to go through. But it's the backyard tomatoes.
It's the plant that was dug up from
someone's yard that has sudden oak depth that
you can't tell. It's the firewood that you're
taking from a forest land up here and
taking down to a campground here. Those are
the kinds of things that they're looking for,
and they often are looking for the things
(44:38):
that are associated with fruits, because those often
have the flying pests that can really debilitate
the crops in California.
Okay. Thank you.
When when I'm planting
a shrub that I bought, I buy
a potting soil
(44:58):
to to plant that in. And I guess
the
the
criteria is still the same. I make the
hole twice as wide and
and backfill it with 50% of the natural
dirt.
But this potting soil is available of anywhere
from about $6 for a bag to
$15.20 dollars a bag of of this in
(45:21):
the same size. Is,
am I wasting money buying the $20 bag
or is it is dirt is dirt?
I mean, you can make you can make
your own potting soil. I do that as
well. Yeah. You can buy your own perlite,
vermiculite,
coco coir.
We try to teach people to use coco
coir instead of peat moss.
You can make your own compost.
(45:41):
I I have,
compost
barrels right now that are Well, it depends
on the type of plant too. Right? Like,
if it's, you know, a lavender plant, it
needs more well draining soils than a tomato
plant.
So it it depends on what you're trying
to grow. Yeah. And I think also you
can look at, what the source is. You
can read their labels. Once again, reading labels
(46:02):
is a great thing to do.
And
labels and stuff. It's easier to ask you
questions. I know. So but reading you can
look at the labels, and you can see
what ingredients they use to make that soil.
And so that also is the level of
materials that came from organic sources,
meaning they're carbon based living sources
versus
synthetics, which are made at they're they're fabricated,
(46:25):
usually from some kind of other mineral or
natural resource that's limited.
And so you could look to see what
the sourcing is.
You could look to see whether or not
it has additives. A lot of times, you'll
see just soils that are say, okay. Here's
our nitrogen, potassium, and calcium
content,
but, or phosphorus content, excuse me. But you'll
(46:45):
see others that add micronutrients,
which are incredibly important to the overall health
of a plant.
So
Yeah. Buying buying all those components separately and
making your own is a great way to
save money too.
I I yeah. I've never actually made, the
soil myself. I still have to look into
doing that.
I
compost everything religiously,
(47:07):
and
sometimes it works well and sometimes not as
well. I don't know why. When does it
not work?
I don't know. Just sometimes I, you know,
I tumble it and I I mix the,
the different Browns and greens? Yes. I use
horse bedding pellets for the for the brown,
and that really makes the compost look good.
(47:29):
I don't know if it's any better or
not.
Then I, I dump it out and go
through and
get all the stuff that didn't compost. And
it's
pretty rewarding. I don't know if,
it's probably not financially
better, but it's I feel better not putting
that in the garbage. Yeah.
Composted the methane from composting
(47:50):
that go from not composting, but from sending
it to a landfill Mhmm. Decomposed
anaerobically
is a is a big
climate warming factor. We we don't have a
place here to bring that type of stuff.
Because of sudden oak death. See, unfortunately,
the big sort in order to get the
commercial composting Mhmm. Where they take that green
waste and they put
(48:12):
put it, it's a very large operation. There
are some of those outside of the area,
but because of sudden oak death, we cannot
transport our vegetated material out of the area
into that those commercial composting areas. If if
sudden oak death is is
present in my
area, would I see it? Would I see
some plants dying? Or Mhmm.
(48:32):
Yeah. You could I mean, you can just
Google the signs of what it looks like
because it's really a visual thing, and you
can look and see what a rhododendron will
look like or what a,
huckleberries
are affected. I think anything in Ericaceae,
sudden oak I mean, it just looks like
the whole tree's brown. So that And is
it primarily deciduous plants that is?
It's it's all sort there's a whole long
(48:53):
list, I think it but I think it's
mostly deciduous. There is actually, if I talk
through, that affects porterford cedar, and that's the
Porterford cedar root rot, but that's a separate
Yeah. Issue. So Yeah. Most of those are
actually, evergreen. They lose their leaves, but they
don't lose all their leaves at the same
time. But all your rhododendrons, all your tanoaks,
all your conifers actually lose a certain amount
of leaves every year.
(49:13):
So,
so, so, like,
Kim was saying, you can look and you
can start to see things. If things are
dying very suddenly or they're getting twig wilt,
and it's just coming on suddenly,
that's a really good indication.
Now what we ask is that you don't
take those plant samples somewhere else, like to
our plant clinic. Take a picture. And yeah.
And ask us to identify it. And, actually,
(49:36):
we can't identify it. It can actually only
be identified in a lab. It's not something
you can visually inspect and see.
And the Forest Service,
and,
OSU,
and other agencies have protocols for coming out
and actually collecting it and testing it in
a lab and then getting back to you
with what treatment remedies are there. And in
(49:56):
many cases, there are actually funds available
to address a sudden oak death on your
property. So if you think that you do
have sudden oak death, your best,
your best course of action is to contact
the local Brookings office of the Forest Service.
Tell them you think that they will start
a course of inspection
and tell you what to do if there
is a problem.
(50:17):
We don't seem to have a whole lot
of an insect problem here on at least
not on on my landscaping.
There there are I see slugs all the
time, and everybody gets all of a sudden.
I just if they're actually on my plants,
I just move them. And I You're still
lucky. I'm sorry? You're lucky.
Yeah. I
I was with a friend one time, and
(50:38):
we were at we were at a,
a a plant sale.
And she picked up a snail and very
happily crushed it into the ground. And
I don't like to kill things. I kind
of, so
I I said, give them to me. I'll
take them home.
She thought I was kidding, and then she's
complaining about the snail problem she has at
(50:58):
her house. And it turns out that,
sometimes she will pick up a large flower
pot and move it, and there'll be 15
or 20 or 30 snails under there. I
don't see 30 snails in a year.
So she has a bigger problem than I
do. Yeah. That is what happens when you
transport plants through other people's gardens all the
time, unfortunately. Well, some of these slugs are
invasive as well. They're not native. So it's
(51:19):
important to understand the difference between, like, a
banana slug and an invasive slug that will
just I mean, it will munch down your
whole garden. Yeah. I understand there that the
banana slugs are
native and but then there's a smaller slug
that's
A brown few different species, yeah, that are
pretty damaging.
And,
and they actually eat the green
(51:40):
foliage, whereas the, you know, banana slugs, they
kinda stick to more brown Yeah. The dead
stuff. Usually. Yeah. Yeah. The dead stuff. So
it's it's important to know and differentiate between
the two. Except for the banana slug that
I found on my cauliflower. Oh, rude. Okay.
Rude. Yeah. So I do I do toss
them into Habitat and tell them to go
live their good life Yes. There.
(52:01):
But there are some great ways that you
can also get slugs out of your garden
if you need to. There are traps,
and you've heard about using beer, but there's
also one where you can make a yeast
flour,
slurry. A dough. Yeah.
That works so well. I use that, like,
twice a week, and I've killed, sorry, hundreds
of slugs. Mhmm. So they're they've all what's
(52:21):
the recipe?
It is you use,
one part
of flour, so just regular flour, and then
two parts water.
And a, I just use a teaspoon
of instant yeast
and slurry it up. So it's one cup
of flour, two cups of water, a teaspoon
instant yeast, slurry it up,
(52:42):
and you pour it in your slug traps
and
they they come. They come and they drown.
And it's very satisfying when you have had
so much slug damage. But you, I would
feel sorry for the slugs. Oh, it's all
the invasive ones. I I the the banana
slugs, I like Julia, I'll pop them in
the forest and let them go on their
(53:03):
way. Yeah. Encourage encourage the snakes to live
in you. I don't know how you do
that. The snakes I have a snake in
my garden who,
I love because he eats all the stuff.
They will get to know you and they'll
get they'll I'm gonna say they get friendly,
but they certainly get to where they won't
be afraid of you. Oh, yeah. No. They're
they're great. I I like them too in
our property,
and we've caught a couple of them halfway
(53:23):
through their meal of digesting, and it's quite
the same. I love it. Yes. Snakes. I
love the garter snakes. Well, I call them
garter snakes. Yeah. That's
what they are. We don't have any venomous
snakes out here. So I Yeah. That's what
it is. Love that. Yeah. So that we
the school kids, they love snails. And we
get them to hunt snails.
And they know now to look up under
pots and under wood and inside. We've taught
(53:45):
them if you're a snail, you're gonna be
in the nice cool moist place. So underneath
plants like agapanthus,
things like that, and the the day lilies,
they go and find them for us. And
we have a little snail bucket, And then
we take all of those snails and we
take them out to our weed pile, which
is outside of the garden, or the snail
buffet as we call it. Oh, yeah. And
Help to break things down. Yeah. And that's
(54:05):
what we teach them exactly, that snails have
a role. They're they're decomposers. And if we
had no decomposers
Mhmm. We would have so much vegetation that
we, you know, we wouldn't be able to
walk around anymore. So That wouldn't work on
a compost pile, though, would it? It doesn't
work well. They might get a little hot.
Yeah. Yeah. It might get a little one
of the things though that, we taught in
our class that we had,
(54:25):
Seed to Supper in Port Orford was about
vermicomposting.
Are you familiar with that? Yeah. Where you
take, a certain species of composting worms,
red wigglers is the common
name. And you use those to break down
your vegetable scraps. And they break it down
very quickly
and without a lot of smell, you know,
(54:46):
if you're worried about your compost bin getting
smelly, the worms break it down so quickly
that,
you wind up having, what they call black
gold, which is worm poop. And then you
use that
to fertilize your garden.
And it is a wonderful way, especially if
you have a small space, to, start composting
because it breaks down all that material quite
quickly
(55:07):
and,
turns it into wonderful fertilizer. It's some of
the best fertilizer you could get for your
garden. For some reason or other, my compost
doesn't seem to it it doesn't do well
with with worms. Worms don't do well with
Well, it's a separate kind of system. So
it's you wouldn't put it in your barrels.
You wouldn't put the worms in your tumbler.
They'd no. You you there's a totally different
(55:28):
strategy for worm, for vermicomposting.
That's that's why they don't survive in my
book. Yeah. And there's they're a very particular
species. And so there's a a great gentleman,
Jeff, who runs earthquake
EarthCraft Worm Farm in Port Orford, and he
donated a lot of worms to our program
to our students.
But he, provides,
the specific species of,
(55:50):
composting worms. So if you just look up
EarthCraft Worm Farm,
you can find out more information about how
to buy I mean, you buy them at,
like, 500 at a time. Yeah.
A lot of worms. Yeah. So these these
will survive than an open compost. Does it
work? They they prefer to be,
one of the methods is it's in ground
composting. So you can get, like, a a,
(56:11):
tub.
You drill a bunch of holes in it.
You bury it in your garden bed. And
then you put the bedding material and the
food scraps and the worms in that bin
with a lid on it because it needs
to be kind of moist. You wanna create,
like, a good environment for your wormies.
And then that's kind of the the environment
that you would compost,
your your scraps in. And there are there
(56:33):
are other methods where you can kind of
bring that indoors, but Who who knew worms
were so particular? Right. They are not earthworms.
That was Oh, they're not earthworms? No. They
they're red wigglers. They're earthworms. There's a whole
different species of worms. And so we've been
teaching the students the difference between earthworms,
which are aerating the soil and needing dirt,
and the red wigglers, which are eating some
vegetation,
(56:54):
aspects and changing that
into,
the worm castings. They can kinda be picky
about their food too. Yes. So you have
to train them to
to eat things, you know. Or train yourself
to not put your citrus peels or onion
into your compost. They will reject it. Yeah.
And you don't put your weed seeds in
there or because they won't eat they don't,
they it doesn't get hot. It's not a
(57:15):
hot compost, so it's not gonna get rid
of weed seeds. So you put your vegetable
kitchen scraps in there is what it's really
best for.
And what about,
orange peels?
Heard yes and no on that.
Put it in your your regular composting bin.
They're okay. But not not for vermicomposting,
usually. Those are they will take longer to
break down, but they they're just I've I've
(57:36):
composted them. Yeah. Yeah. We are we're, we're
running down here. We got couple minutes left,
but I wanna thank all you ladies. Hey.
You too, Ray. You contributed
to to all this great education and information.
And,
if you have any final parting thoughts on
the gardening
issues. Maybe we should let Robin or Patty
(57:57):
give some final things since there are there
are class of 2025.
Wonderful. Wonderful.
I would just say that
it's good it's a good practice for everyone
to,
grow in
a garden because
it's also an opportunity to share with others
(58:20):
like we are as volunteers, but also
when you have crops and there is so
much food insecurity out there is to share
even if it's not just for you. You're
you're growing things for other people that you
can share at the food banks and,
those that are
food insecure right now is really high. And
You bet. We don't know if those programs
(58:42):
will be funded. So Okay. I invite people
to share their,
harvest. Thank you. We got twenty seconds. Patty,
what Hey. I'm just putting a plug in
for the Master Gardener program. I found it
was wonderful. I moved from California,
and it was a completely different environment. And
I wanted to learn how to grow things
here, and I I learned a lot. It's
(59:02):
a great program. Wonderful. Thank you all. Thank
you all. Yes. Thank you all for coming,
and thank you for listening.
We're wrapping it up. There come here comes
the thumper music. Uh-oh. See you next week.
You bet. You've been listening to KCIWLP
one hundred point seven in beautiful Brookings, Oregon.
Well, hello again, KCIW
listeners, and welcome to Curry Cafe.
I'm producer and volunteer Rick McNamer.
Every Sunday from three to four PM, your
host, Ray Gary, puts together a panel of
guests to discuss topics of interest in our
community.
Listeners can participate by texting
in questions or comments to
(00:26):
(541)
661-4098.
Again, that's (541)
661-4098.
Now here's Ray to tell us about today's
show. Okay.
You know, every week I say that we've
we've gathered a, a panel of experts on
most often I'm lying. I mean, they don't
(00:47):
necessarily know anything. We just kinda fake it.
But today, we actually have
a panel of experts, and we're gonna be
talking about the Master Gardener program in case
anybody's wanted to everyone would be involved in
that, find out all about
what it's what it's all about. So we're
gonna go around the table now, and everybody
can introduce themselves and tell you who they
(01:08):
are. And,
yeah. Okay.
Okay. Thank you, Ray. I am Julia Bott.
I'm a Curry County Master Gardener Volunteer,
and I took the class in 02/2018.
I'm involved in a few things in the
organization.
One of them is working at the school
gardens
at Kalmiopsis.
(01:28):
I've also served on the board,
and I was
worked on getting our new home, the new
greenhouse and garden in Gold Beach.
I'm Patty McCarthy, and I just graduated this
year in the master gardener program. And I'm
also involved in the calmyopsis
program, the little bear, with the second and
fourth graders, and I really love
(01:55):
it. My name is Robin Rasch.
I am also newly
graduated,
so I guess I'm a trainee right now,
for Master Gardeners.
I have done a couple of outreaches,
plant clinics,
and we'll get more into the plant clinic
side of it.
I live in Brookings.
(02:17):
Hi. My name is Kim Foster, and I
live in Port Orford, so North County.
And I
graduated from the class last year, so
still pretty new, but this year, I've been
able to get involved in a few special
projects, including
running, the Seed to Supper program at the
Porterfield Public Library, which is a free six
(02:39):
week gardening course.
And, I'm happy to talk about that more
later.
Okay. Who wants to start out by telling
us,
what the Master Gardener program is and a
little bit about what it takes to become
one? This is not
your average garden club where you meet on
Saturdays and talk about your azaleas. Is that
(02:59):
right? Oh, that's true. We we try to
meet with the public,
often, now the third week of the month
at our plant clinics at various libraries
across the county
and,
talk to them about their azaleas and help
them with their sustainable gardening questions.
The Curry County Master Gardeners are part of
the OSU Extension program,
and since 1987,
(03:21):
we have been volunteering in the community, helping
people with their gardening questions.
We are trained. We go through a course
to become master gardeners, and we do have
requirements every year for continuing education
as well
as volunteer service hours.
So what does it take to actually become
(03:42):
a master gardener?
Well, we have a couple of people who've
recently
had been in the class, so they probably
have the great firsthand experience.
So,
Robin okay.
It's from
January
to
March,
approximately.
(04:03):
Much of it is done, the studying, online,
so it's very convenient for people.
If you can't physically get someplace, we do
meet on-site,
throughout the different,
parts of Curry County. So it would be
once,
every month.
Once approximately every other week. Every other week.
(04:24):
So,
that takes up from January to March. Every
other week, we're either meeting in Gold Beach
or we're meeting in Brookings or Port Orford.
So that's the
the span of of area you would have
to go to meet in actual in class
meetings.
But as I said, a lot of it
is done online, and Zoom is also available
(04:47):
for people that can't
have access to getting to those locations.
It's very it's a very in-depth class, so
you're not gonna just be talking about one
thing,
in terms of gardening, but it's
very comprehensive.
So you're talking about insects and entomology
(05:07):
and
things that I probably wouldn't have done on
my own.
But
it's very informative, and I am a gardener
before this, but I became, I think, a
better gardener now. So
that's my recommendation.
Yeah. Please, if you can or if you
want to, text in, questions or comments, (541)
(05:31):
661-4098.
Love to hear from anybody out there
have a question or comment. Yes. So master
the Master Gardeners are volunteers.
That's really the way to describe us. Us.
That's the key word.
And we do do public education and help
people with their sustainable gardening questions.
We help people have make informed decisions
(05:53):
so that they can do gardening in a
way that fits them best.
We provide this education through a variety of
ways and people have mentioned our plant clinics.
We now are bringing our plant clinics out
of the extension office and into our local
communities.
So on the third Monday of the month,
from ten to one, we're at the Chetco
Community Library here in Brookings.
(06:15):
On the third Wednesday of each month, we're
at the Curry Public Library in Gold Beach.
And then on the third Thursday of each
month, we're at the Port Orford Public Library.
And all of these are from ten to
one.
You can also send us questions
via email by sending an email to currymg@oregonstate.edu.
(06:38):
That's currymg@oregonstate.edu.
Or calling our voice mail, which is (541)
247-6672,
an extension 7.
will monitor those and get back to you
with an answer.
Often, they ask you more questions first so
they can help you really determine
(06:59):
what the solution is to your problem.
Yeah. I mean Go ahead. Sorry. I I
just wanted to build on that and say
that one of the great things about the
Master Gardener program is that we make really
good academic research
more accessible to communities.
So, you know, it is obviously, you know,
an OSU extension project, but we make all
of that good academic research, that's
(07:20):
peer reviewed and,
you know, contextual for and more connected to,
you know, the lived experiences of people out
here. And I think that that's just so
important, especially today. There's so much misinformation online.
There's so many influencers
on TikTok and YouTube
purporting to have, you know, these amazing gardening
hacks. And we see it at the plant
(07:41):
clinics all the time when you're tabling at
these events where people come up with just
the craziest questions that they heard online on
Instagram or Facebook or TikTok. And so I
think this is just a really great,
service for the community to sort of bring
these insights that are typically
kind of locked away in the ivory tower
down to the communities where they can be
(08:01):
implemented,
locally and to sort of share that knowledge,
for free, you know?
And usually, it's locally and climatologically
relevant. Mhmm. And we can even help people
with the different gardening needs between if you
live on the coast and you have fog
five days out of seven Mhmm. Versus living
(08:23):
seven miles
upriver
or at a thousand feet. They're all little
different gardening techniques for those microclimates,
which we have in our area. Yeah. That
was one of the big things, at the
class that I taught this year that we
covered was microclimates because you have so many
people who are maybe moving from other climates
or, you know, like, hey. You know, I
moved here from a zone nine b, and
(08:44):
I'm in Zone 9 B now. And why
isn't nothing working? That used to work at
my old, you know, garden where I used
to live and really just speaking to
microclimates
and teaching people to learn their property because
you can have a totally different microclimate
not only on the same street but on
your property itself. So it's about just sort
of learning to root down and be more
observant,
(09:04):
because that that is the name of the
game out here on the coast. We we
talked a little before the show about where
where I live. I my house is at
about a thousand feet,
and a road that I walk every morning
raises about
250
feet. And then it levels off, and it's
at at that altitude more or less for
quite a ways. And at that 250
(09:25):
feet, there are plants growing
there that do not grow at my altitude.
Rhododendrons may one. Rhododendrons are thick up at
that 1,250
foot level, but they don't live at all
where I am. At least the wild ones
don't. Mhmm. Yeah. Soil
chemistry
and, the microbes
and pH,
(09:46):
all of that. And the sun, the amount
of sun they get, the aspect Yeah.
Angle of the Yeah. I also mentioned earlier
a plant that I've been trying to transplant
that
just doesn't seem to wanna live where I
am. Well, you know, the wind is also
a major factor out here, you know,
that can really suck out the heat units,
(10:06):
in that particular area where you're trying to
grow. Whereas, you know, maybe that plant in
the wild is protected more by,
you know, the foliage of the forest. So
the the wind is a big factor. Yeah.
Okay. Getting back to Master Gardener program, you
mentioned how many weeks you didn't mention, I
don't think, how many weeks
this takes.
So the the class starts in the January,
(10:28):
and the actual classroom
activities, the Saturday in person classes or the
online modules go to mid March. And then
the trainees take an exam
that they have to pass with 70%. It's
open book. You can do it with partners
because that's how we do research when we're
doing our plant clinics or asking questions.
After that, they have forty hours of, in
(10:51):
person service learning that they do by volunteering
in the community.
And if you complete both the,
education part, the classes and modules,
and do the,
volunteer time, then you get certified as a
master gardener. The cost is $150
and if you get certified, $50 is refunded
back to you.
(11:11):
Registration usually opens up in mid November.
The class begins in mid January.
And then, like I say, once you're certified,
you go on to be
stay a master gardener as long as you
meet the new certification rules, which we have
twenty hours of volunteer service and ten hours
of continuing education.
So the first year is more onerous in
(11:33):
terms of the number of hours of volunteer
service and the number of continuing or the
education
time, but it is a deep dive, isn't
it? And it's really fun, and it's very
easy to,
volunteer those forty hours as you've talked about.
Once you start volunteering
with an organization
that you love and that, you know, you
(11:54):
think is important,
you just keep volunteering. So you actually have
to recertify every year? Yeah. Every year, we
master gardeners are certified. Because I talked to
a friend of mine who I know is
a master gardener.
Just to get out of the doing the
show, I'm sure. He says, well, I'm not
current. I'm not current. Oh, yeah. So he
likes butterflies, doesn't he? Yes. Yes. And he
is not current.
I tried to get him to talk about
(12:15):
butterflies. He didn't wanna do that. Oh, yeah.
And so some of us will talk more
than others.
But, you know, he gets a lot done.
I mean, he's a great sponsor Yes. For
KCIW.
And, but he is an associate member of
the Master Gardener program. So we do want
to keep our members engaged. And so we
do have two levels, a certified master gardener
and then the associates.
(12:36):
Associates
really still volunteer a lot and help a
lot, but by OSU requirements, a certified master
gardener needs to be there also. He gets
invited to dinner, I'm sure, a lot. Just,
oh, while you're here, you wanna look at
my plants.
Yeah. I'm sure.
Anybody who gets invited to dinner in a
lot of places gets to look at people's
plants, like, because people around here really do
(12:58):
like their gardens. Yes.
And
when when I hear garden, I think of
of decorative plants. I don't think of lettuce
and tomatoes and things like that. But you
guys
go both ways. We do. We think of
gardens in three ways, and our upcoming plant
sales sort of represents that in terms of
what we're offering.
We see people growing for food, and we
(13:20):
increasingly see more people requesting,
that how to grow food. And that's what
the Seed to Supper program was was.
We also think about ornamentals. Beauty in your
garden and, you know, the serenity
is important for our community.
And then we all look at native communities
Yes. At native plants, incorporating those and pollinator
plants into your garden. Or many of us
(13:42):
have larger landscapes around our developed,
home parcels. And we need to keep those
in healthy native landscapes,
address the invasives.
And if you keep a healthy native landscape,
you can reduce your fire risk,
and maintain more habitat for the animals that
have been here since,
things started sprouting.
(14:04):
So our plant sale has,
vegetables, locally grown vegetables raised by volunteers.
And this year, we're gonna have a really
strong selection of of vegetables.
A lot of variety and the plants look
great.
We also have, a large variety many varieties
of perennial plants, plants that live year to
(14:24):
year,
shrubs,
that are locally adaptive and work well in
our climate. And then we have, native plants
too. I think we have about 40 varieties
of native plants that are also available at
our plant sale, which is coming up next
Saturday, Saturday the tenth,
always the Saturday before Mother's Day at our
new home in Gold Beach
(14:45):
at, our new greenhouse and garden at the
Gold Beach Community Center from ten to one
on Saturday, May 10. You guys are busy.
Yes. How many Master Gardeners are there
that actually work on this program? So right
now, between,
our associate members,
our certified members, and our trainees, we have
67 members, which is really great because,
(15:06):
right about COVID time, we got down to
about 25. And,
so we were really stretched. But now with
this many volunteers,
we have programs in all three school districts.
We are working with all three school districts
going doing school gardens. We're able to bring
our plant clinics out to three different communities,
and we are putting on an awesome plant
(15:28):
sale. We have our new home. We have
great trainees.
And we've been doing some talks at SWOC
or very at libraries.
Yeah. And, you know, the more programs that
we can, put on and the more,
you know, events that we can go to,
it kind of has this iterative effect of
of being a feeder for more Master Gardeners.
(15:49):
So I think it's it kinda it's it's
awesome how,
we were able to expand like that.
And we will be. Some if you wanted
to also meet some of us or find
out more,
for Azalea Fest, you know, the Brookings Harbor
Garden Club, which, some of our trainees are
also involved in that and some of our
members.
(16:09):
They have their annual plant sale on Saturday
and Sunday of Azalea Festival at the Botanical
Garden, which the Brookings Harbor Garden Club maintains
and keeps its lovely garden.
So we will be there tabling, providing information
to people and helping answer their gardening questions.
And what about the plant they just bought
that was lovingly raised by the Brookings Harbor
(16:30):
Garden Club volunteers?
Both of,
Robin and,
Patty are with both organizations.
Mhmm. In case you guys wanna pitch that.
Okay. Yeah. I I bought this about three
years ago, I think. I went to that
and and bought some
plants. And one of them, I don't know
what the the a plant was, but also
in the pot, there was a,
(16:52):
a maple tree that I planted separately, and
it's doing beautifully. So
Yeah. We also have a plant sale up,
in North County coming up,
Langoy's Lions plant sale, and I'll be tabling
there on that Friday. It's May
from 9AM to 4PM,
at the Langoy's Lions,
(17:13):
center up in Langoy's. So if there's anyone
listening
that far north, it's about as far north
as you can get, but that's coming up
too. Yes. And so all of these plant
sales, you know, what they do is that
they really do,
help fund organizations
and the work that they do in the
community.
Our plant sale is our major fundraiser.
I know for the Lions Club, it's a
major fundraiser, and I'm sure it really makes
(17:34):
a difference for the Brookings Harbor Garden Club.
The Garden Club, it is also and we
also have a flower show
that, happens down there also on the Saturday
and Sunday of,
Memorial weekend
at the,
the Botanical Garden.
I you were talking about the,
(17:55):
the school kids. It's unusual and exciting.
Do
do are they really that excited about growing?
I mean, that's that's a big deal. I
I I would think these days that wouldn't
be a you know, let's just go to
fast food
and call it. Oh my goodness. Well, that's
wonderful. Yeah. Harvesting carrots, harvesting strawberries,
(18:16):
radishes.
They love it,
and they really love to weed, which we
have Oh, goodness. I know. We are closer
to the ground. I never never picked that
one up.
Yeah. It's really great. Yes. They are closer
to the ground. Weeding isn't the easiest thing.
But Patty, as a volunteer,
can speak to some of his joy. Yeah.
The kids really love it. And, you know,
(18:37):
we have the second and the fourth graders,
and
they they get very involved with it. And
they learn also about bugs and how not
to be afraid of bugs, that a lot
of bugs are very beneficial
for the plants,
and they do seeding
and,
learning about
climate. And, yeah, they're they're
(18:58):
very interested. It's a lot of fun. Well,
you bet. And like I said, that's pretty
important to have the next
generation, if you will, come on up and
keep it going.
Yeah. So there's also a school garden up
at Riley Creek School in Gold Beach, and
master gardeners maintain that.
And here at Brookings, we do more hand
on, hands on programming with the students.
(19:19):
And in Gold Beach, it's more of maintaining
it and assisting teachers with curriculum that they
bring out. And then up at Driftwood
in Port Orford, their elementary school,
they have a person in there who really
works a teacher or a staff faculty with
the school district who works on the gardens,
and our volunteers help maintain that garden
(19:39):
and also provide some support during some class
times.
And then, this is really exciting,
last year, also in Kim's class,
there was a a woman of a retired
coast guard commander
who took a job,
at the at Pacific High School starting the
horticulture program. Wendy.
Wendy. And she really knew nothing about gardening.
(20:02):
In fact, she I was trying to get
her to she was asking me a lot
of questions, and I was trying to get
her to take the master gardener class. And
she's like, I've never even taken a basic
gardener class. How can I take the master
gardener class? But she took it, and she
learned so much, and she's so enthusiastic
that they are about to go from one
horticulture
class to two horticulture classes up at Pacific
(20:23):
High School.
So that was It's like night and day.
Yeah. Yeah. Just like looking at the transformation
at Pacific High School has been really cool.
And, you know, the the the folks out
here love it. And, like, a lot of
the kids are really switched on about gardening
because they're already familiar with it in some
way.
And so I think it's just a really,
tight alignment with, you know, where we're where
(20:45):
we can head as as a program. Yes.
They love their carrots. They love their strawberries.
And they tell us that they taste better
when they pull them out of the ground
and eat them.
Yeah. And I think that
that ripens on the vine, so to speak,
is gonna be better. Yeah. I guess, because
you've done it yourself too.
(21:06):
Well, it's good to teach, you know, like
you said, the next generation because, you know,
Master Gardeners typically are it's for adults.
And but, you know, you gotta you gotta
attack it from all angles.
Well, maybe Michelle Obama's,
remember her teaching the kids. I I always
thought that was a great thing, and she
got chastised from certain areas, and I thought
(21:27):
that was terrible. But, yeah, that was a
good thing. Yeah. And the kids excited about
digging in the dirt and
eating what comes out of the ground. Yeah.
I think there's a sense of security,
you know, especially if you're from,
more under resourced areas or lower income families.
Those families are also the ones, you know,
who
are more likely to experience food insecurity, and
(21:48):
that was something I experienced a bit of
growing up. And for us growing up, if
we didn't grow it ourselves, you know, we
just didn't get a ton of vegetables or
fruit that wasn't from a can.
You know, and so,
but, you know, when you walk into your
garden and there's just endless fresh green beans,
it seems like,
that's how it felt as a kid walking
(22:08):
into my grandmother's garden. It just felt like
there was just
infinite
food.
I know better now than being a gardener
and adult that that took a lot of
hard work. But, you know, that sense of
security made me feel rich,
you know? And it made me feel
secure. And I think that that feeling of
abundance can be the real joy of growing
your own food.
(22:30):
And,
you know
go ahead. Yeah. So we also do things
where we we actually have them take home
various plants. They get to pot up a
succulent and take that home and care for
it. Recently, they, all got a strawberry start
that they got to put in a pot
and take home.
Not only are they getting to care for
these things and have some ownership over it,
(22:50):
we're teaching them about the little,
the stake that comes in there that has
an information on it. That's basically the instruction
booklet for raising that plant. We teach them
about the seed packet and how to read
that. Once again, it's the instruction booklet, and
it tells you a lot of things about
gardening.
And
we
are well, some of them may not go
(23:12):
off to be gardeners in the future. Their
knowledge of nature and how natural systems work,
it should it's fundamental
decision making knowledge. And that can make a
difference on the some of the decisions they'll
make in the future.
But, and then
the other day, we're walking out of the
garden and a parent ran up to us.
And she's like, are you guys Master Gardeners?
(23:34):
Yes. She was like, thank you. Thank you
for doing the class. My my kids love
it. It's their favorite class. And, you know,
their succulent is this high. I'm raising my
fingers in front of a radio, but, like,
three inches high. And their strawberry has a
flower on it, and they're so excited.
So the parents love it. And the teachers,
I often
apologize saying, oh, it's just been chaos today.
(23:54):
I'm so sorry. They're like, no. They're learning.
They're discovering,
you know. And not only are they learning
about gardening and natural systems, they're learning about
how to deal with,
a very excited environment and how to reign
their own emotions in, how to share with
other students.
Like, some of the things they're planting now,
they won't harvest
(24:15):
because
the second graders won't or the fourth graders
won't because they won't have garden class next
year in the fall, but the things that
we're planting now will be harvested in the
fall.
And they just know that that's part of
the sharing. They're they're carrying on the garden
class.
Well, wow. If anybody out there has a
question or a comment, we have the people
here to answer. So
(24:37):
please text in here at,
(541)
661-4098.
Must be wonderful to work with kids that
are actually enthusiastic
about what you're teaching them.
I can always remember going to class things,
class trips, and the
and nobody was interested or one or one
or two people might be. I always loved
(24:57):
the things when we went to the zoo
and the museum and stuff like that, and
other kids just thought it was a way
to get out of class.
But enthusiastic kids are in need. Yes. And
to see that transition,
Patty's probably seen this too, from kids who
come in at the beginning of the year,
I don't like gardening or I'm just sitting
there,
(25:18):
to becoming really excited about it. Or the
student who is
afraid of spiders, just screaming,
who brings you up a spider in a
bug box and shows it to you.
We know we've we've talked to them. They
are not insects. A spider doesn't wanna eat
them. A spider wants to eat insects.
So, you know, they understand
that,
(25:39):
spiders are have a role in in the
world.
I think also what's really cool is that
they form a connection with nature.
And if you read about
things that
decrease your stress as you get older, it's
connection and bonding and going out into nature.
So we're starting
(25:59):
to teach them how to bond with nature.
I see a
a few if I go to a zoo
or something like that or in Florida, they
have some of these wonderful boardwalks in the
in the,
in the national park there. They're just incredible
for me because I'm interested in it. And
then whenever there's a class trip coming through,
especially if it's,
(26:20):
oh, grade school or something like that, oh,
no.
Because most of them couldn't care less, and
they're running around young. But I think, well,
okay. There's 20 kids here. One or two
of them will get it. One or two
will will have some some little seed planted.
Yes. I think
we live in a rural area. Most of
these kids are somewhat a little bit more
(26:42):
connected to nature
than, say, I was where I grew up
in apartments in a very dense urban area.
And,
embarrassingly
embarrassingly,
when I was a teenager, I saw someone's
vegetable garden for the first time, and I
actually asked them how deep their dirt went.
Because I thought everything was concrete, and then
you brought in dirt and put it on
(27:02):
top of it.
So these kids have that one leg up
on that because they know that there's dirt
everywhere.
But for urban kids, the gardening experience can
be really, really life changing. It is very
surprising. Yeah. Yeah. And a similar story to
that, I was was on a road trip
once with my family, and,
one of the kids we had along was
(27:23):
a foster child from, actually, an Eskimo from
a from a village. And we were driving
through these stockyards,
and
they really stink. I mean, they said, oh,
it doesn't really that's an order that doesn't
really bother me. I consider that to be
kinda natural. But after we're riding through for
a while, she's
she says,
do they do they wash these things before
(27:45):
we get to eat them? I said
Oh, good. We're taking them we're helping them
think critically. Yeah. That's a good thing. So
This particular kid was a joy because she
was every bit as interested in wildlife as
I was and that we could find little
bugs and things like that.
So we did learn some things though,
(28:06):
in the past few years about gardening with
kids.
And one of them was the assumption that
everybody has a yard, Mhmm. And not everybody
has a yard. Mhmm. And so
we have gone through often, we'll send home
vegetables with the kids to grow. But we
make sure if they don't have a place
to plant it at home, that they have
a good sized container for it,
(28:26):
because
people live in small areas without yards, in
small trailers,
in hotels,
and those children still wanna raise something. So
we've now
understand and tailor what we send home to
what the students' needs are.
Mhmm. That's a shift for adults and gardening.
Yeah. It's like, you know, you have to
(28:48):
look at your environment, and you have to
look at your site and really be honest
with yourself about how much sunlight you have.
And is it a wind tunnel? And
is the soil sandy
or not?
And really
build out your gardening plan to the place
that you have. So So we have this
new home,
our new greenhouse and garden up in Gold
(29:11):
Beach, and it's on the property of the
Gold Beach Community Center.
And they reached out to us to help
us locate there
in great part because they want their their
members
to be able to to grow some of
their own food.
And while they are the community center, previously
known as the senior center, and they're really
trying to get away from that and have
(29:32):
all ages involved,
realistically, a lot of their clients are seniors.
And so we've talked to them about the
fact that, yeah, you can have some raised
beds, but there's a whole lot of other
ways that seniors can raise food in their
house without a lot of strenuous garden. I
mean, there's easy ways like microgreens,
where you're just raising this the first leaves
(29:52):
and sprouts,
and you're putting them on your salads or
garnish on a little shell of some sort.
That gets you a lot of vitamins. The
vitamins are very dense in those microgreens.
There's some aquaponics
ways that you can grow things in water,
and you've seen sometimes people with big, big
operations to grow lettuce or basil or even
(30:13):
tomatoes or broccoli,
in in hydroponics
in water. But you can take a small
tote that's basically a foot by a foot,
and grow a small four heads of lettuce
and some basil on your kitchen counter.
If you're, a senior and you just want
a little bit of fresh vegetables or greens,
some chard for your salad without having a
(30:35):
lot of strenuous gardening, having to have a
big bed weed take care of it. So
we're looking at how to help people expand
what they see as gardening
so they can get some fresh vegetables
into their lives. That sounds like the type
of thing where you'll show somebody how to
grow a lettuce on a square foot.
And,
before long, there's
(30:56):
flowerpots in the bathroom, on all the bedrooms,
on all the
all the window sills, and it could just
grow to become something.
We, yeah. We haven't we don't have an
anti hoarder program in the Master Gardener, but,
program. But as you already offered, you said
you might you had some pots that you
wanted to bring up to our plant sale.
(31:16):
People have a lot of extra garden stuff,
and they buy a lot of plants. We
want them to buy plants at our plant
sale next Saturday, May 10, '10 to one,
ten to two at the Gold Beach Community
Center. I'm kinda near the harbor or the
post office down there,
or I and maybe you shouldn't advertise, but
Wagy's fish,
truck is really good. You can you can
(31:36):
do that. Yeah. So those are all places.
And that's those are ways,
that you could locate our new home, though
it's this big greenhouse,
24 by 48.
I wrote it down somewhere, and now I've
forgotten. But, That sounds right. Yeah. So a
big greenhouse and a garden that's gonna be
about a tenth of an acre when we,
actually get it built out. So how many
(31:57):
how many of the plants that that you
were selling did you actually grow?
So, volunteers that's the one thing I'm really
not involved with myself personally is growing anything
at the greenhouse because I do 88 different
other programs. But, you guys have the work
sum at the greenhouse, Or we have other
volunteers working there? Yeah. And a lot of
volunteers are were growing, involved in all the
(32:19):
vegetable starts.
So
So are the
the plants that aren't grown in the greenhouse,
members bring those from home that they've grown
and that type of thing? So most of
our our plants are grown in greenhouse the
our greenhouse or in controlled situations.
We
sell using, an Oregon State nursery permit, so
(32:39):
we're held to very high standards.
Additionally, Curry County is an area with high
levels of sudden oak dust, so we have
to be really careful
about the soil conditions, and maybe we don't
want to,
transfer that Biotothra or that organism to other,
lands that don't have it. And if we
can't control
sudden oak death in Curry County,
(33:01):
we could get restrictions from exporting lumber, but
not only lumber.
The the slal and huckleberry and a lot
of the other heath plants, rhododendrons,
that are used in the floral industry
could also be stopped from being exported, and
that could be a real problem for our
local economy.
So we have a controlled situation where we
grow in clean potting mediums.
(33:23):
We don't use soil from someone's ground or
garden.
We usually propagate
by,
using cuttings and starting from that. We sterilize
the pots? Sterilize the pots. We don't go
dig up from people's gardens. We take cuttings.
So we have a lot of restrictions
that we so we can guarantee you that
we're gonna be selling
pest free plants to people.
(33:45):
Although whenever you buy a plant from any
location,
even a nursery
that,
is, you know, that has really high standards,
it's always kinda good to quarantine that plant
for a few days before you plant it
to see whether or not you see some
sort of insect
coming on it or see leaf damage that
is evidence of an insect or see some
sort of wilt or blight
(34:06):
before you actually introduce it to the rest
of your plants. So you, mentioned sudden oak
death like everybody knows what it is.
You don't know about Phytophthora?
I'm sorry? Untested.
I mean, that's probably a self explanatory name,
but
So, yes, unfortunately,
sudden oak death is a waterborne
organism of Phytophthora.
(34:27):
Phytophthora.
Phytophthora.
And, so
it affects you've seen a lot of, of
our tanoaks will die suddenly. And you've seen
areas, especially if you've gone up to Loeb,
or to the Redwood Trail right by Loeb,
you've seen that they've cut a lot of
the tanoaks and burnt them there,
because they died from sudden oak death. And
(34:47):
it affects a lot of other plants,
and it's it it just it's
it does what it says it does. It's
sudden death,
primarily to the tanoaks,
which are the only acorn tree producing tree
really in our locale, in our county.
And acorns,
the tanoaks aren't true oaks, but they do
(35:09):
produce the acorns. And acorns
are a major food staple for so many
mammals,
that if when we lose that basic food
staple, the bottom of the food chain, then
the deer and a lot of other mammals
are severely impacted.
Yeah. And one of the things that I
think is interesting about sudden oak death is
that the tree suddenly dies, but it has
(35:31):
actually had,
the,
the disease for years, up to three years,
that it sort of propagates through the tree
and it sporulates in the canopy and it's
travel it travels via wind, which is a
problem out here because we have lots of
wind. And so it's tricky to to track
and contain
because the tree can look healthy for years
and look green, and then suddenly it dies.
(35:52):
And it's because the,
the rot sort of rings the tree and
chokes it from the inside, so you can't
really see,
the the tree being,
affected by the disease until all the leaves
suddenly turn brown at once. But that's why
it's it's been very difficult to contain, and
we kind of look ahead to where the
disease is and sort of look north or
(36:13):
look south to see, okay, if it's here
today and there are trees dying here today,
there may be some that look healthy that
are actually affected. We just can't see it
yet. And so I think that makes it
particularly difficult, and that's why we just are
extra careful about soil
because just because it looks like your tanoak
is healthy doesn't mean necessarily that it'll stay
(36:35):
healthy. Yes. So it is you know, it's
unfortunate because people like to share their plants.
Yeah. But we highly recommend that you do
not dig up plants from your yard and
share them with someone else and transport that
soil, because we know that is a way
to transport sudden oak death out of an
area where it may be to another property.
Now I live in basically, Brookings is what's
(36:56):
called a generally infested area,
And I know that I live in that
area, but there is no sudden oak death
within eyesight of my property. And so I'm
really careful about bringing anything to my property
because I don't wanna move it into that
locale.
So we do encourage people not to share
plants that they're digging up from their yards
(37:17):
and transport them. And it also works with
taking,
firewood
locally
and then taking it to a campground out
of the area.
That's
also a poor really poor recommendation.
And you will see a lot of times
when we have,
crews, forest service crews doing either weeding and
or fire suppression
in the area. You see these weed washing
(37:38):
stations or truck washing stations,
and they are very careful to wash their
trucks before and after leaving the, forested lands
or the wild lands to, one, remove weed
seeds like gorse or broom or pampas grass
that get stuck in their tire or underneath
the, their bumpers, but also to get rid
of the phytophthora
(37:58):
phytophthora
and or sudden oak death or other diseases
like that that you can't see. So hygiene's
really, really important. I actually carry Lysol and
a boot brush in my car. And when
I go hiking in areas that have sun
oak depth, I will clean my boots off
afterwards.
Okay. You mentioned,
(38:19):
the the problem plant. So I have a
a a question about spraying. I I know
that's not a good talk thing to talk
about.
I don't see any of you have pulled
a gun on me yet. So but, It
depends, is the answer. I guess. It's there
where where I, hike in the morning, there's
sometimes areas that are a hundred yards long
(38:40):
along the road that are full of Scotch
broom,
and it just
drives me nuts.
So I do go through every year now
with a with a little spray thing
and very carefully just spray the Scotch broom.
And the Scotch broom is a bad
situation.
And killing it with a chemical, does that
(39:03):
equalize the bad thing of killing the chemical?
Or
So all things It's kinda like a you
have to weigh you have to weigh factors
when you make a decision.
And,
as OSU Master Gardener volunteers,
we will provide information
about every way that you can control,
a weed or an insect on your property,
(39:24):
whether it is a cultural control
or some sort of, synthetic control like an
herbicide or a pesticide.
But we also try to give people,
first off, what is the way to prevent
that? Your best approach is a preventative approach.
So we try to give them that information.
Even if they eradicate like, if you spray
the broom, what's your next step to stop
that weed, that, seed bank Mhmm. From sprouting
(39:47):
the next time? The second thing we wanna
do is to provide them the right information
about how to use that pesticide or herbicide,
when to use it, and how to target
the right species.
And most importantly,
any personal protective equipment that should be used
or any
considerations for the environment. Like the wind. The
wind or if it's raining and stuff like
(40:07):
that. So and a lot of people in
restoration, and I've done restoration work for a
long time, and I've worked on removing,
pampas grass from our road, and I used
the three this Curry
Soil and Water Conservation District or the Curry
Watersheds Partnership to come up, and they did
use herbicide to remove that. It's really the
only way. The infestation
(40:28):
was dangerous, fire trucks. Even my car couldn't
really get up the road anymore.
It was the tool that we needed to
use. Typically, you needed to stump and treat
it. Yeah. You would cut it first. And
then when
the cut is fresh, you would then, paint
on the I think it's triclopyr.
You would paint that on very carefully onto
the open wound. Yeah.
(40:49):
So that way it it permeates into the
the root. If you're just spraying it on
the foliage,
and the wind's gonna take it away, it
may not be even the right herbicide and
Right. So you need to find the right
herbicide. And then as you said, if you
spray it just directly on that and actually,
the interesting some of the
signs that they're seeing with pampas grass is
that if you cut it first, you're just,
(41:09):
spreading the seed bank. Mhmm. So, actually, if
you can spray it in there right when
the fronds are still in their purple stage,
before they have actually matured into seeds,
that herbicide will kill those seeds also. So
you're not spreading Like tree of heaven where
you don't wanna cut that. Yeah. So it
so each species is different,
and so you need to know, right, you
(41:30):
don't wanna do it when it's windy. You
wanna have a very focused application
of the right herbicide or pesticide
for that plant at the time that it's
gonna be effective. So if you go out
and spray
the herbicide on pampas grass in, October,
you've missed your window. Mhmm. Your spraying time
is earlier in the season when it's got
(41:50):
that little purple.
If you go to if you see damage,
from something eating your plants, but that insect
is long gone and you spray a pesticide
to get rid of that insect,
that it's not gonna work because the insect
is gone. So you need to know what
you're doing and when to apply it, But
there are a lot of ways that you
can prevent things from happening, and so we
(42:11):
really focus on giving people that garden information
that helps improve their pest. Management. Yeah. So
Rick Rick is signaling me now that we
have a text. Oh. We have a text.
Oh my gosh. So here we go. Thank
you, texter. And again, it's,
(541)
661-4098.
And the texter says, do you educate on
how to adjust your home garden to be
(42:32):
more fire resilient?
OSU has a really strong program with that.
Yes. And there there's actually some booklets that
they have put out,
that,
provide information on plantings and as as well
as hardening your house. And that has a
lot to do with,
not just your landscape management, but how your
(42:53):
house is built and whether or not you
keep embers from going,
through under your eaves, if you clean your
gutters, things like that. But OSU does have
that information, and it is available to master
gardeners. And we can certainly provide that to
people. And if they email us at curry,
mg@oregonstate.edu,
we will send them links with that information.
(43:16):
And I have a question about I live
in Smith River just across the border, and
there's the ag station that I go through
three times a day sometimes.
No. Almost everybody nobody's ever checked me. And,
yes, sometimes I like to go to the
farmer's market in Harbor, and then I bring
my stuff home.
Am I violating
doing anything doing that? I and I of
(43:36):
course, I had never asked them. And I
also am curious, why don't they why don't
the Oregon people
worry about what we Californians
might be bringing into Oregon?
So I think the reason California has a
such a strong pest control,
situation at all of their borders is because
agriculture is so important to their economy, especially
It is. The Central Valley. And what they're
(43:57):
looking for
are pests inadvertent pests being transported
by backyard gardeners.
So if you're buying thing produce
from the farmer's market, which they get inspected
and they know how to look
for infestations,
and they shouldn't be selling things that have
pests,
and or the grocery store,
(44:18):
then those things are legitimate
to go through. But it's the backyard tomatoes.
It's the plant that was dug up from
someone's yard that has sudden oak depth that
you can't tell. It's the firewood that you're
taking from a forest land up here and
taking down to a campground here. Those are
the kinds of things that they're looking for,
and they often are looking for the things
(44:38):
that are associated with fruits, because those often
have the flying pests that can really debilitate
the crops in California.
Okay. Thank you.
When when I'm planting
a shrub that I bought, I buy
a potting soil
(44:58):
to to plant that in. And I guess
the
the
criteria is still the same. I make the
hole twice as wide and
and backfill it with 50% of the natural
dirt.
But this potting soil is available of anywhere
from about $6 for a bag to
$15.20 dollars a bag of of this in
(45:21):
the same size. Is,
am I wasting money buying the $20 bag
or is it is dirt is dirt?
I mean, you can make you can make
your own potting soil. I do that as
well. Yeah. You can buy your own perlite,
vermiculite,
coco coir.
We try to teach people to use coco
coir instead of peat moss.
You can make your own compost.
(45:41):
I I have,
compost
barrels right now that are Well, it depends
on the type of plant too. Right? Like,
if it's, you know, a lavender plant, it
needs more well draining soils than a tomato
plant.
So it it depends on what you're trying
to grow. Yeah. And I think also you
can look at, what the source is. You
can read their labels. Once again, reading labels
(46:02):
is a great thing to do.
And
labels and stuff. It's easier to ask you
questions. I know. So but reading you can
look at the labels, and you can see
what ingredients they use to make that soil.
And so that also is the level of
materials that came from organic sources,
meaning they're carbon based living sources
versus
synthetics, which are made at they're they're fabricated,
(46:25):
usually from some kind of other mineral or
natural resource that's limited.
And so you could look to see what
the sourcing is.
You could look to see whether or not
it has additives. A lot of times, you'll
see just soils that are say, okay. Here's
our nitrogen, potassium, and calcium
content,
but, or phosphorus content, excuse me. But you'll
(46:45):
see others that add micronutrients,
which are incredibly important to the overall health
of a plant.
So
Yeah. Buying buying all those components separately and
making your own is a great way to
save money too.
I I yeah. I've never actually made, the
soil myself. I still have to look into
doing that.
I
compost everything religiously,
(47:07):
and
sometimes it works well and sometimes not as
well. I don't know why. When does it
not work?
I don't know. Just sometimes I, you know,
I tumble it and I I mix the,
the different Browns and greens? Yes. I use
horse bedding pellets for the for the brown,
and that really makes the compost look good.
(47:29):
I don't know if it's any better or
not.
Then I, I dump it out and go
through and
get all the stuff that didn't compost. And
it's
pretty rewarding. I don't know if,
it's probably not financially
better, but it's I feel better not putting
that in the garbage. Yeah.
Composted the methane from composting
(47:50):
that go from not composting, but from sending
it to a landfill Mhmm. Decomposed
anaerobically
is a is a big
climate warming factor. We we don't have a
place here to bring that type of stuff.
Because of sudden oak death. See, unfortunately,
the big sort in order to get the
commercial composting Mhmm. Where they take that green
waste and they put
(48:12):
put it, it's a very large operation. There
are some of those outside of the area,
but because of sudden oak death, we cannot
transport our vegetated material out of the area
into that those commercial composting areas. If if
sudden oak death is is
present in my
area, would I see it? Would I see
some plants dying? Or Mhmm.
(48:32):
Yeah. You could I mean, you can just
Google the signs of what it looks like
because it's really a visual thing, and you
can look and see what a rhododendron will
look like or what a,
huckleberries
are affected. I think anything in Ericaceae,
sudden oak I mean, it just looks like
the whole tree's brown. So that And is
it primarily deciduous plants that is?
It's it's all sort there's a whole long
(48:53):
list, I think it but I think it's
mostly deciduous. There is actually, if I talk
through, that affects porterford cedar, and that's the
Porterford cedar root rot, but that's a separate
Yeah. Issue. So Yeah. Most of those are
actually, evergreen. They lose their leaves, but they
don't lose all their leaves at the same
time. But all your rhododendrons, all your tanoaks,
all your conifers actually lose a certain amount
of leaves every year.
(49:13):
So,
so, so, like,
Kim was saying, you can look and you
can start to see things. If things are
dying very suddenly or they're getting twig wilt,
and it's just coming on suddenly,
that's a really good indication.
Now what we ask is that you don't
take those plant samples somewhere else, like to
our plant clinic. Take a picture. And yeah.
And ask us to identify it. And, actually,
(49:36):
we can't identify it. It can actually only
be identified in a lab. It's not something
you can visually inspect and see.
And the Forest Service,
and,
OSU,
and other agencies have protocols for coming out
and actually collecting it and testing it in
a lab and then getting back to you
with what treatment remedies are there. And in
(49:56):
many cases, there are actually funds available
to address a sudden oak death on your
property. So if you think that you do
have sudden oak death, your best,
your best course of action is to contact
the local Brookings office of the Forest Service.
Tell them you think that they will start
a course of inspection
and tell you what to do if there
is a problem.
(50:17):
We don't seem to have a whole lot
of an insect problem here on at least
not on on my landscaping.
There there are I see slugs all the
time, and everybody gets all of a sudden.
I just if they're actually on my plants,
I just move them. And I You're still
lucky. I'm sorry? You're lucky.
Yeah. I
I was with a friend one time, and
(50:38):
we were at we were at a,
a a plant sale.
And she picked up a snail and very
happily crushed it into the ground. And
I don't like to kill things. I kind
of, so
I I said, give them to me. I'll
take them home.
She thought I was kidding, and then she's
complaining about the snail problem she has at
(50:58):
her house. And it turns out that,
sometimes she will pick up a large flower
pot and move it, and there'll be 15
or 20 or 30 snails under there. I
don't see 30 snails in a year.
So she has a bigger problem than I
do. Yeah. That is what happens when you
transport plants through other people's gardens all the
time, unfortunately. Well, some of these slugs are
invasive as well. They're not native. So it's
(51:19):
important to understand the difference between, like, a
banana slug and an invasive slug that will
just I mean, it will munch down your
whole garden. Yeah. I understand there that the
banana slugs are
native and but then there's a smaller slug
that's
A brown few different species, yeah, that are
pretty damaging.
And,
and they actually eat the green
(51:40):
foliage, whereas the, you know, banana slugs, they
kinda stick to more brown Yeah. The dead
stuff. Usually. Yeah. Yeah. The dead stuff. So
it's it's important to know and differentiate between
the two. Except for the banana slug that
I found on my cauliflower. Oh, rude. Okay.
Rude. Yeah. So I do I do toss
them into Habitat and tell them to go
live their good life Yes. There.
(52:01):
But there are some great ways that you
can also get slugs out of your garden
if you need to. There are traps,
and you've heard about using beer, but there's
also one where you can make a yeast
flour,
slurry. A dough. Yeah.
That works so well. I use that, like,
twice a week, and I've killed, sorry, hundreds
of slugs. Mhmm. So they're they've all what's
(52:21):
the recipe?
It is you use,
one part
of flour, so just regular flour, and then
two parts water.
And a, I just use a teaspoon
of instant yeast
and slurry it up. So it's one cup
of flour, two cups of water, a teaspoon
instant yeast, slurry it up,
(52:42):
and you pour it in your slug traps
and
they they come. They come and they drown.
And it's very satisfying when you have had
so much slug damage. But you, I would
feel sorry for the slugs. Oh, it's all
the invasive ones. I I the the banana
slugs, I like Julia, I'll pop them in
the forest and let them go on their
(53:03):
way. Yeah. Encourage encourage the snakes to live
in you. I don't know how you do
that. The snakes I have a snake in
my garden who,
I love because he eats all the stuff.
They will get to know you and they'll
get they'll I'm gonna say they get friendly,
but they certainly get to where they won't
be afraid of you. Oh, yeah. No. They're
they're great. I I like them too in
our property,
and we've caught a couple of them halfway
(53:23):
through their meal of digesting, and it's quite
the same. I love it. Yes. Snakes. I
love the garter snakes. Well, I call them
garter snakes. Yeah. That's
what they are. We don't have any venomous
snakes out here. So I Yeah. That's what
it is. Love that. Yeah. So that we
the school kids, they love snails. And we
get them to hunt snails.
And they know now to look up under
pots and under wood and inside. We've taught
(53:45):
them if you're a snail, you're gonna be
in the nice cool moist place. So underneath
plants like agapanthus,
things like that, and the the day lilies,
they go and find them for us. And
we have a little snail bucket, And then
we take all of those snails and we
take them out to our weed pile, which
is outside of the garden, or the snail
buffet as we call it. Oh, yeah. And
Help to break things down. Yeah. And that's
(54:05):
what we teach them exactly, that snails have
a role. They're they're decomposers. And if we
had no decomposers
Mhmm. We would have so much vegetation that
we, you know, we wouldn't be able to
walk around anymore. So That wouldn't work on
a compost pile, though, would it? It doesn't
work well. They might get a little hot.
Yeah. Yeah. It might get a little one
of the things though that, we taught in
our class that we had,
(54:25):
Seed to Supper in Port Orford was about
vermicomposting.
Are you familiar with that? Yeah. Where you
take, a certain species of composting worms,
red wigglers is the common
name. And you use those to break down
your vegetable scraps. And they break it down
very quickly
and without a lot of smell, you know,
(54:46):
if you're worried about your compost bin getting
smelly, the worms break it down so quickly
that,
you wind up having, what they call black
gold, which is worm poop. And then you
use that
to fertilize your garden.
And it is a wonderful way, especially if
you have a small space, to, start composting
because it breaks down all that material quite
quickly
(55:07):
and,
turns it into wonderful fertilizer. It's some of
the best fertilizer you could get for your
garden. For some reason or other, my compost
doesn't seem to it it doesn't do well
with with worms. Worms don't do well with
Well, it's a separate kind of system. So
it's you wouldn't put it in your barrels.
You wouldn't put the worms in your tumbler.
They'd no. You you there's a totally different
(55:28):
strategy for worm, for vermicomposting.
That's that's why they don't survive in my
book. Yeah. And there's they're a very particular
species. And so there's a a great gentleman,
Jeff, who runs earthquake
EarthCraft Worm Farm in Port Orford, and he
donated a lot of worms to our program
to our students.
But he, provides,
the specific species of,
(55:50):
composting worms. So if you just look up
EarthCraft Worm Farm,
you can find out more information about how
to buy I mean, you buy them at,
like, 500 at a time. Yeah.
A lot of worms. Yeah. So these these
will survive than an open compost. Does it
work? They they prefer to be,
one of the methods is it's in ground
composting. So you can get, like, a a,
(56:11):
tub.
You drill a bunch of holes in it.
You bury it in your garden bed. And
then you put the bedding material and the
food scraps and the worms in that bin
with a lid on it because it needs
to be kind of moist. You wanna create,
like, a good environment for your wormies.
And then that's kind of the the environment
that you would compost,
your your scraps in. And there are there
(56:33):
are other methods where you can kind of
bring that indoors, but Who who knew worms
were so particular? Right. They are not earthworms.
That was Oh, they're not earthworms? No. They
they're red wigglers. They're earthworms. There's a whole
different species of worms. And so we've been
teaching the students the difference between earthworms,
which are aerating the soil and needing dirt,
and the red wigglers, which are eating some
vegetation,
(56:54):
aspects and changing that
into,
the worm castings. They can kinda be picky
about their food too. Yes. So you have
to train them to
to eat things, you know. Or train yourself
to not put your citrus peels or onion
into your compost. They will reject it. Yeah.
And you don't put your weed seeds in
there or because they won't eat they don't,
they it doesn't get hot. It's not a
(57:15):
hot compost, so it's not gonna get rid
of weed seeds. So you put your vegetable
kitchen scraps in there is what it's really
best for.
And what about,
orange peels?
Heard yes and no on that.
Put it in your your regular composting bin.
They're okay. But not not for vermicomposting,
usually. Those are they will take longer to
break down, but they they're just I've I've
(57:36):
composted them. Yeah. Yeah. We are we're, we're
running down here. We got couple minutes left,
but I wanna thank all you ladies. Hey.
You too, Ray. You contributed
to to all this great education and information.
And,
if you have any final parting thoughts on
the gardening
issues. Maybe we should let Robin or Patty
(57:57):
give some final things since there are there
are class of 2025.
Wonderful. Wonderful.
I would just say that
it's good it's a good practice for everyone
to,
grow in
a garden because
it's also an opportunity to share with others
(58:20):
like we are as volunteers, but also
when you have crops and there is so
much food insecurity out there is to share
even if it's not just for you. You're
you're growing things for other people that you
can share at the food banks and,
those that are
food insecure right now is really high. And
You bet. We don't know if those programs
(58:42):
will be funded. So Okay. I invite people
to share their,
harvest. Thank you. We got twenty seconds. Patty,
what Hey. I'm just putting a plug in
for the Master Gardener program. I found it
was wonderful. I moved from California,
and it was a completely different environment. And
I wanted to learn how to grow things
here, and I I learned a lot. It's
(59:02):
a great program. Wonderful. Thank you all. Thank
you all. Yes. Thank you all for coming,
and thank you for listening.
We're wrapping it up. There come here comes
the thumper music. Uh-oh. See you next week.
You bet. You've been listening to KCIWLP
one hundred point seven in beautiful Brookings, Oregon.
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