june 2016 wsu spokane ounty extension master gardeners the...
TRANSCRIPT
The Lowdown
WSU Spokane County Extension Master Gardeners June 2016 The Lowdown
Inside this issue:
Foundation News 2
Fact Sheet Update 5
Book Review 6
Year of the Pulse 8
Self-study Quiz 12
Upcoming Events 14
Extension Information
Dr. Jeremy Cowan 477-2145
Regional Horticulture Specialist
Tim Kohlhauff 477-2172
Horticulture Program Coordinator
Anna Kestell 477-2195
Food Preservation/Safety
Jackie Sykes 477-2193
Clinic Coordinator
Master Gardener County Site
http://ext100.wsu.edu/spokane/
Master Gardener Foundation of Spo-
kane County
http://www.mgfsc.org/
WSU Master Gardener Site
http://ext100.wsu.edu/spokane/master-
gardener-program/
HortSense Fact Sheets
http://hortsense.cahnrs.wsu.edu/Home/
HortsenseHome.aspx
On Line Timelog Reporting:
http://ext.wsu.edu/Volunteers/logon.aspx
INFORMATION BOOTHS
One of the important and fun ways Master Gardeners get their message out to
the public is through Information Booths at various community events. We are
invited to provide a booth at many such events and we need people who can
give a few hours of their time to talk with the public about a subject that is near
and dear to our hearts … gardening!
These are the events to which we have been invited this summer:
Kendell Yards June 1, 15, 29 4-8pm
Millwood Farmers Market June 8, 29 3-7pm
Washington Grange Convention June 22-25 11:30am-1:30pm
(no volunteers yet!)
West Central Neighbor Days June 3 3pm-7pm (no volunteers yet!)
Cheney Farmers Market June 7, 14, 21, 28 2-6pm
Fire District 9 Wellness Fair June 4 10am-2pm (no volunteers yet!)
OutSpokane Pride Festival June 11 (one more volunteer) 4-6:30pm
(Riverfront Park)
If you are available for any of these fun events, please call Jackie or Tim. We
would love to spread the MG word at all of these opportunities!
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FOUNDATION NEWS
By Tim Stiess
Happy June!
Gardening season is now in full ‘glorious’ mode. Things are happening in every part of my yard,
even if some of it is just in my mind. Veggies are growing, foster plants from the Garden Fair are
happily in the ground, hardscaping is moving along, and hammock is up and has been in use.
Of course the big news from the Foundation this past month is Garden Fair 2016. This event fol-
lows closely behind our Cabin Fever event and we greatly appreciate the amount of volunteer
hours put forth in support of the Program for both events.
Now to the good stuff (if you hadn’t already skipped the beginning of this and jumped down here.)
We are still receiving invoices so I can’t report the final number, but …
Here are a few facts:
2,500 + : number of attendees at Garden Fair 2016 (1,200+ last year)
1,000+: number of attendees in the first hour of the event
90%+: percentage of MG volunteers that assisted during the three days of Garden Fair
$23,000+: gross revenue for the event (almost $2,000 more than last year)
April 29th: Garden Fair 2017 … Mark your calendars!
We had some challenges this year:
We had far more attendees than we ever had, which challenged our checkouts and layout.
We came close to maxing out on the space that we have to utilize.
We maxed out on the number of volunteers working the Garden Fair.
The first two, we can handle for next year with some smart planning, but the third one I am con-
cerned about. Although no one complained (at least to me), the event is A LOT of work. Past years
have been a lot of work but this year pushed us to our limit. Between the number of attendees and
not having reserves of volunteers, we had numerous people who didn’t have opportunities to take
breaks; we had jobs that were not done because there was no one available; and we had people
who went over and above what I would ask anyone to do.
So… The Garden Fair Team is looking for comments and suggestions. Not just on how the Gar-
den Fair could be better for the public, but more importantly, how the Garden Fair can be
better for you and your fellow volunteers. Please feel free to contact me by phone ((540)
557-7992) or email ([email protected]).
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WaterWise
(new from the WSU Website)
Water is essential to our everyday lives. And, our supplies are limited…so please use water wisely. Cutting water use inside and outside our homes is really important. If each of us changed our water-use habits, we could save billions of gallons of water. Here are a few tips that can help conserve water out-doors:
Early morning watering is best. Some experts estimate that 50 percent of the water evaporates when watering between noon and 6 p.m.
Adjust your sprinkler to avoid the pavement; otherwise, evaporation will claim all the water that doesn’t end up on your lawn.
Turn your system off if it’s raining. A smart controller can do this for you and make sure your lawn gets the right amount of water.
Consider replacing lawn with native plantings. Native plants naturally need less water and thrive in our
environment.
Waterwise Garden on WSU campus
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Liz Stewart 1-Jun
Daniel Mueller 3-Jun
Vivian Powers 5-Jun
Beth Fairfax 5-Jun
Eberhard Schmidt 9-Jun
David Yarbrough 14-Jun
Margy Swenson 20-Jun
Karen Feyk 24-Jun
Janis Saiki 24-Jun
We are so glad you are with us!
GARDEN HUMOR !
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
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Fact Sheet Update
We have some new fact sheets available from the Garden team this month. These will be posted on
http://gardening.wsu.edu/ our state website for gardening information.
Viburnum leaf beetle FS 202 We have a newly discovered pest insect in the Spokane area. Viburnum leaf
beetle has been found west of the Cascade mountain range for years, but in spring 2015 it was discovered
in Finch Arboretum in Spokane. A rare pest because both larva and adult are damaging, they can actually
defoliate a mature viburnum shrub. If left untreated they may actually kill the plant with repeated annual
defoliation.
Pest Management Guide for Apples in Home Gardens Finally! A free guide to pest management on apples
in the HOME garden instead of the orchard. Lots of pictures, and recommendations for organic and con-
ventional growers. There is also a spray schedule for each pest. This guide will replace our Apple Spray
schedule C041
Fine Fescue grasses for home lawns FS 200 Fescues are a commonly used turf grass species in eastern
Washington. They are favored because they are drought tolerant, but unfortunately don’t tolerate foot
traffic as well as some other grasses. If a client is looking for a species to use in a rarely traveled part of
their landscape, this fact sheet will give them the information they need to cultivate fine fescue grasses.
Using Coffee Grounds in Home Landscapes Curious about the benefits of coffee
grounds in the home garden? This well-researched fact sheet gives answer about
coffee grounds in compost, as mulch, and whether they can be used to repel insects.
These publications have been taken out of print:
WSU Publications:
Spokane County Fact Sheets:
C041 Spray Schedule for Apples
C157 Local Rose Source List
Viburnum Leaf Beetle
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“The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming and Climate Change”
(Albert Bates, 2010, The New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada)
Reviewed by Kathleen E. Callum
I graduated in Quaternary Studies (now the Climate Change Institute) from University of Maine and have worked as professional archeologist and geologist now for over three decades. So, I absolutely adore both the history and the possibility of “biochar.” My favorite one liner is that biochar is an “archeology site in a bag.” Biochar is merely woody or fibrous material burned in the absence of oxy-gen. This process is actually called pyrolysis. Biochar acts like a “coral reef “in healthy, living soil, providing homes for many teaming microbes, thus the origin of the biology portion of this word. The Spokane Master Gardener Foundation’s keynote speaker, Gloria Flora, introduced biochar at this year’s Cabin Fever in “Finding Resilience in the Garden”.
Keynote speaker Gloria Flora also offered a more detailed seminar at Cabin Fever celebrating its po-tential for addressing climate change while feeding ourselves more sustainably. Afterward, many of us rushed right over to buy our own copies of the Albert Bates book The Biochar Solution. Bates is a for-mer environmental and civil rights lawyer, an influential educator in the planned “ecovillage” move-ment, and the author of Climate in Crisis along with other books about permaculture, global crisis and sustainability. I wholly support his vision that a truly regenerative agriculture which recognizes the promise of biochar is part of the answer to global warming. As one of the people praising the book on its flyleaf observes, “this book should be required reading for every policymaker, as well as everyone who eats food, breathes air, enjoys life and wishes to continue doing so.”
The Biochar Solution reads like an engaging micro-biography. This page-turner explores biochar from the discovery of terra preta (black earth) on archeological sites in the Amazon jungle to the eco-nomics of future global carbon trading. I couldn’t put it down. However, I was lucky enough to know the archeologists who brought ancient terra preta agricultural sites to the attention of the world. The Quaternary scientist in the back of my mind kept continually flagging passages to recheck for their ac-curacy and validity. I flagged other sentences or citations as a reminder to hunt down the original source rather than rely on a secondary source reinterpretation. Between post-it notes that flagged the many inspirational quotes, as well as references to further verify and evaluate, my copy of The Biochar Solution started to look like a porcupine on a bad hair day. That’s when it dawned on me that this book is actually more of a testimonial for biochar rather than an actual science based publi-cation.
The Biochar Solution is not a how-to manual. It neither critically evaluates the effectiveness of bio-char nor provides an in depth coverage of its historical importance for traditional, regenerative agri-culture. Sure, Bates addresses a wide array of pertinent and pressing topics. He cites a lot of scientists
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and science. Unfortunately, he gives equal weight and time to any old source that says anything about bio-char. Bates’ book illustrates the big picture with flair and it holds some smolderingly hot chunks of biochar information. But there’s also some burned over ash drifting out of its pages that might mislead the un-wary. Each citation or topic needs to be further evaluated by the reader. Luckily, Bates provides an out-standing index, notes (citations), figure sources and bread crumbs so that the reader can easily further evaluate his sources.
I spent some time in vain surfing the internet in an attempt to find a critical or technical review of this book by an environment studies researcher, climate scientist, geologist, economist, forester, agriculture re-searcher or a policy maker to double check my impression. I did find one research reference on a Duke University site that uncritically cited Bates as a secondary source when the original archeological primary source material regarding jungle agriculture would have been more appropriate, so accepting this interdis-ciplinary treatise easily catches professionals. Most of excitement about this book and biochar itself arises from the permaculture and organic farming community. I wonder if Bates’ uncritical stance and una-bashed partisanship might possibly hinder biochar’s wholesale adoption as the insightful solution the world needs. A pivotal solution like biochar, regenerative agriculture, climate change and carbon farming cer-tainly merits more serious global research and public notoriety.
One might regard The Biochar Solution by Albert Bates as more of a guide to agricultural sustainability, as a blueprint for the future, or an insightful vision that might help save humanity. A phrase that biochar’s “use may help slow this troubling phenomenon” [emphasis added] in FS147E “Biochar: A Gardener’s Primer” by Linda Chalker-Scott absolutely raises my hackles. Despite Linda Chalker-Scott’s unfortunate choice of words on the urgency of climate change and resilience of agriculture, I highly recommend her fact sheet instead for anyone new to the subject of biochar. It states, “From a global standpoint, biochar’s ability to store rather than release carbon might be its single most important attribute. Properly “cooked” biochars do not release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere” … Since, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are three of the most important greenhouse gases contributing to climate change, both biochar production and use may help slow this troubling phenomenon.” (http://cru.cahe.wsu.edu/CEPublications/FS147E/FS147E.pdf)
While Linda Chalker-Scott dismisses climate change as a “troubling phenomenon” in FS147E, Albert Bates draws on his unique and abundant gifts for alerting the public to the urgency of the climate change crisis we all face today. More than that, he has an absolute genius for spreading the good word about a hopeful solution to this crisis. Unfortunately, the indigenous and poor are being disproportionately affected by the climate change that industrialization of the modern world has wrought. Our world is already seeing cli-mate refugees today. Villages and lighthouses alike have been forced to relocate to higher ground. We are now aware that what we eat and how we grow it has global consequence.
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Can You Hear Earth’s Heartbeat When You Eat Your Lentils (Part IV)?
By Kathleen Callum
This year is “International Year of the Pulses” (#iyp2016). Nitrogen fixation by legumes can be in the range of 25–75 pounds of nitrogen per acre per year in a natural ecosystem and several hundred pounds in a cropping system. Biologically fixed nitrogen is critical to plants and thus up the entire food chain. Our Master Gardener manual observes in Chapters 3 and 5 that nitrogen is a primary nutrient. Like the other two primary nutrients obtained from the soil, P (phosphorus) and K (potassium), plants require nitrogen in greater quantities than other essential plant nutrients. The other three primary nutrients, carbon (C), hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O), are available from air and water. Insufficient quan-tities of primary nutrients in the soil can be a plant growth limiting factor. A soil researcher named Justus von Liebig formulated the “Law of the Minimum,” stating that the availability of the scarcest element sets the limit on plant growth. Secondary nutrients and micronutrients also furnished by the soil and required for plant survival include calcium, sulfur, magnesium, boron, copper and iron.
Laws mandate fertilizers specify their N-P-K ratio. Surprisingly, higher amounts (e.g., 10-10-10) are not necessarily an indication of fertilizer quality. Instead, high numbers indicate synthetic fertilizer. Lower N-P-K ratios (e.g., 5-5-5) signal an organic fertilizer designed to enrich the soil over the long term. Synthetic fertilizer heaps on nitrogen, triggering rapid depletion of organic matter and other elements in a soil. “Mining” or “burning out” the soil via synthetic fertilizer often results in imbalances
that typically worsen over time. Synthetic fertilizers slather on nitrogen in an immediately available form, often in the spring, in hopes that plant crops will take advantage of a fraction as it runs by. Just like overdosing a child with sugar, overdosing with the soil with nitrogen generates a burst of activity that rapidly burns up carbon and other nutrients, leaving behind an exhausted body (child or soil). In the words of USDA Agroecologist Ray Archuleta, soil depleted of organic matter is “naked, hungry, thirsty, and running a fever.” In addition, synthetic fertilizer is manufactured using fossil fuels and re-quires more petroleum to transport.
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In contrast, the impetus behind the organic and sustainable movement is to “feed the soil so soil feeds you.” Sustainable agriculture (e.g., permaculture, biointensive, agroe-cology, biodynamics) aims to rebuild healthy, living soil in place by closing on farm or local “poop loop” networks and recycle nutrients back into the soil food web. Natural (e.g., manure) rather than bagged fertility is emphasized. If an organic fertilizer is needed, such as on degraded land lacking an element, the amounts of nitrogen might be low. However, the nitrogen occurs in a more sustainable form for long-term contributions over the span of months or years. Plus, organic fertilizers often supply a more complete soil support package of other important secondary and micronutrients rather than merely N-P-K. Rebuilding soil health is equated with restoring sufficient lev-els of organic matter and thus biological activity. By stewarding a diverse and abundant soil biology, micro-bial life makes stored nutrients like carbon and nitrogen slowly available to plants in the form they prefer at
their preferred time.
The great majority of sustainable organic and “beyond organic” farmers and gardeners rebuild their living soil by the use of “green manure”, animal manure (grazing, never car-nivorous), compost, worm castings, wood ash, biochar or other sustainable methods, accompanied by only occasional inputs of kelp or rock dust. Manures, green and other-wise, typically feature highly in organic farming because of their high nitrogen (see “Holy
Shit” by Logsdon for more). Would you like a local example of closing the poop loop and use of green ma-nures? On a recent tour of the Marlé Worm Farm, owner Jeff Wood told the Spokane County Master Com-posters that he uses orchard pomace (leftover fruit) and scraps, which would otherwise be landfilled, to feed his worms.
A local organic orchardist picks up Marlé Worm Farm’s vermicompost in bulk to better help the legumes he grows enrich the soil beneath his fruit trees. At first glance, the vermicompost sold by Marlé Worm Farm has relatively low N-P-K per-centages, 1-0.5-0. However, vermicompost contains undecomposed organic matter, humus, worm mucus, and biological and chemical substances that support a vibrant-ly healthy soil food web. Organic orchardists often grow a living mulch or green ma-nure of clover underneath their fruit trees, albeit one that does not get tilled in, be-cause tilling would harm tree roots and the living soil food web. Healthy legumes enriched with vermicom-post fix abundant nitrogen in a plethora of root nodules. Fruit trees require nitrogen in small amounts over a very extended period of time. So, the nitrogen supplied by a gradual break down of living clover mulch beneath them supplies all this element the fruit trees need.
Traditional small holders, rather than tie up a large acreages with a long lived green manure crops like clo-ver or alfalfa, rotate dried beans and other pulses through garden and field at frequent intervals, accom-plishing the same purpose as green manures yet also yielding a food staple. Pulses and other green ma-nures assure not only soil fertility but also healthy, living soil. As Archuleta reports, “soil carbon is the ‘keystone’ for all soil physical, chemical, and biological processes.” The “Soil Food Web Gardening Rules” in Teaming With Microbes specifies in “rule 2” that “Most vegetables, annuals, and grasses prefer their ni-trogen in nitrate form and do best in bacterially dominated soils,” and “rule 3” that “Most trees, shrubs, and perennials prefer their nitrogen in ammonium form and do best in fungally dominated soils.”
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Nitrogen in either nitrate or ammonium form is crucial for building plant life such as amino acids, proteins, and enzymes that control most plant functions; also a compo-nent of chlorophyll and DNA; promotes overall growth. In other words, without nitro-gen, there would be no plant life. Without thriving bacteria able to fix nitrogen on which plants depend, there would be no plants. Without plants, we would not enjoy an Earth surrounded by breathable oxygen or the natural biological recirculation of oxygen in our atmosphere. It is theorized that rising temperatures may disrupt photo-
synthesis, especially of oceanic phytoplankton. How we manage our soils and Earth’s other wonders just got a whole lot more important. Thus, the nitrogen-fixing bacteria Rhizobia pulse right at the vital heart of world’s natural biospheric or atmospheric cycles.
The fundamentally urgent crisis of global climate change inspired the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to focus attention on pulses. Planting pulses in your garden reduces the dangerous levels of greenhouse gases triggering climate change in three ways: First, the FAO hopes that the increasing popularity of the natural nitrogen fixation abilities of pulses will result in a significant reduction of the amount of synthetic N fertilizer, and consequently the fossil fuels used to produce and transport it throughout the industrial food system. Second, a healthier living soil food web functions to help plants fix even more nitrogen and sequester even more carbon, thus working overtime to lower the danger-ous levels of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere. Last, but not least, pulses simultaneously pro-vide high protein, healthy, low carbon footprint food at the same time as healthy, living soils while stimulating local economy and local food networks. Thus, pulses such as chickpeas, lentils, and other legumes are critical for maintaining the natural global atmospheric cycle. Legumes shelter the life force of our planet right at their very roots.
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Just Wondering
by Kris Moberg-Hendron
Here is one image you will find if
you search for photos of ‘healthy
soil’ on the internet.
What is your reaction to this?
Let me know at:
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The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming and Climate Change is a must read if you want to be better in-formed about agriculture’s promise to help ameliorate global crisis. However, do read Bates’ engaging and inspiring book with a critical eye. Make sure to do some more legwork on his sources and topics before making up your mind about any technical or economic issues this book raises. Especially do more legwork prior to helping draft any climate resilience and agriculture or garden policy on behalf of municipal, non-profit, business or government organizations. As for me, I am delighted to own a copy of The Biochar Solu-tion and personally practice what it preaches.
Having read the book, I’m now an even more enthusiastic advocate of biochar’s potential solutions to our current global crisis. On the job, I now tend to think of charcoal bits in archeological sites, kitchen mid-dens (refuse heaps or dung hills), and privies (outhouses deposits) in terms of living soil, microbe apart-ment houses, carbon, and nitrogen rather than as simply stratigraphic time indicators. With my volunteer hat, I recently purchased a bag of local, sustainably produced biochar for public outreach about its benefits at the Spokane Master Composter/Recyclers spring compost fair at the benefits station. I’m now running biochar though my compost to “charge” it (add nitrogen) before adding this carbon rich home for microbes to my beautiful, healthy, living soil. Flawed book or not, biochar done sustainably, is a solution we can readily put our hands on.
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JUNE 2016
1. Name one of the important and fun ways MGs get their message out to the public.
2. Who is encouraged to help at the above referenced activity?
3. How many people attended Garden Fair 2016?
4. What percent of all Spokane County MGs assisted with Garden Fair?
5. When is Garden Fair 2017?
6. Who do you contact with suggestions for improving Garden Fair?
7. How do you contact the person above?
8. When is the best time to water landscape plants for most efficient water usage?
9. Spring 2015 brought the discovery of what new pest to Finch Arboretum?
10. What is the free source of information on pest management of apples in the home garden?
11. Where would you look to find the benefits of using coffee grounds in your landscape?
12. Name two fact sheets that are now out of print.
13. What undersea ‘creature’ does biochar act like in healthy, living soil?
14. Is The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming and Climate Change more of a how-to manual or a
guide for sustainable agriculture, according to Kathy Callum?
15. Kathy Callum reviewed a WSU researcher’s work in her book review on biochar. What is that
researcher’s name?
16. What is a kitchen midden?
17. What type of nutrient is nitrogen?
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ANSWERS TO MAY 2016 QUIZ
1. Hundreds
2. Master Gardener Foundation of Spokane County
3. Bombus
4. No
5. http://gardening.wsu.edu
6. $500 Apple Card
7. No!
8. Marilyn Wadsworth
9. Phaseolus coccineus
10. Yes
11. Lasagne or no-till mulch
12. Green manure
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18. Explain Justus von Liebig’s “Law of the Minimum.”
19. Higher numbers listed on the fertilizer container usually indicate what type of source of the element?
20. Permaculture, biointensive, agroecology and biodynamics are all examples of what?
21. Name a local farm that uses green manure and closes the poop loop.
22. Vermicompost is created by what ‘critter’?
23. Vegetables, annuals and grasses prefer nitrogen in what form in their bacterially dominated soil?
24. What about trees, shrubs and perennials in their preferred fungally dominated soil?
25. Which nitrogen-fixing bacteria is found in pulse roots?
EXTRA CREDIT: Name the WSU building in the Waterwise Gardening photo.
Extension programs and policies are consistent with federal and state laws and regulations on nondiscrimination regarding race, sex, religion, age, color, creed, national or ethnic origin; physical, mental, or sensory disability; marital status, sexual orientation, or status as a Vietnam-era or disabled veteran. Evidence of noncompliance may be reported through your local Extension office.
Calendar of Events
Saturday 4 Friends of Manito Family Pollinator Event 10 a.m.—12 noon
Tuesday 7 MG Advisory Board Meeting 4:30 p.m.—6 p.m.
Saturday 11 Friends of Manito Plant Sale
Monday 13 MG Foundation Meeting 10 a.m.
Tuesday 14 Jams & Jellies @ Eastside Library 6 p.m.—7 p.m.
Monday 27 ID Clinic 3:30 p.m.—5 p.m.
PCS Training 5:30 p.m.—7 p.m.
Monday 4 Independence Day Holiday—Clinic closed
Saturday 9 Friends of Manito Rose Companion Planting 10 a.m.
Monday 11 MG Foundation Meeting 10 a.m.
Monday 25 ID Clinic 3:30 p.m.—5 p.m.
PCS Training 5:30 p.m.—7 p.m.
In a Pickle @ South Hill Library 6 p.m.—7 p.m.