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www.dagc.us Newsletter of the Danville-Alamo Garden Club March 2015

March Program

Our March 12th speaker is Michael Elola, owner of Lucky Garden in Dublin, a new sponsor for DAGC. The store specializes in aquaponics and hydroponics. Hydroponics is a very recent technology first noted in the 17th Century: the name itself was coined in 1937 from the Greek words for 'water'

and for 'work' by William Frederick Gericke of the University of California at Berkeley. He grew a 25' tomato plant in his backyard using only mineral salts in water.

Hydroponic systems use water and a non-soil growing medium to provide plants with nutrients. Bub-ble systems feed the plant roots and a reservoir holds both the water and the nutrient solution.

Aquaponic systems are a part-hydroponic system, but rather than growing only plants, aquaponics

takes advantage of the symbiotic relationship between plants and fish. The waste contained in the aquarium water is pumped up to a growing tray that houses the plants and contains the growing me-dium. Plants rely on the waste for their nutrients, and the clean, relatively waste-free water goes

back into the aquarium for the fish.

Lucky Garden supplies everything needed to start and maintain these systems. Join Mi-chael on March 12th to find out how you can incorporate aquaponics and/or hydroponics into your garden.

Nancy Peterson, Programs

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Volume XLIIU, Issue 3

President’s Message

I know by the number of members who have been

attending our monthly General Meetings that most of

you enjoy our gatherings and our program speakers.

There is a lot of time and work done by some very

dedicated volunteers, several of them new members.

Our club would not be such a huge success with a long

waiting list if not for member leadership and support.

Our Nominating Committee has been working dili-

gently trying to fill board positions for the 2015-16

year. We still have some important positions to place.

I want to thank those of you who filled out the Mem-

bership Volunteer Forms at our last meeting. We still

are asking our members to think about taking on

leadership in our club. You could consider taking on a

board position or co-chairing one with a friend. It is a

great way to see how the club runs and provides you

with an opportunity to have input into the club’s op-

erations.

For those of you who cannot commit to a board posi-

tion, volunteers are needed to support our Social

Committee. This is a very important committee.

Members walk in to our meetings seeing all the tables

in place with table cloths, chairs set up, and coffee

and tea made. Without volunteers to do these tasks

we will have to simplify our meetings, leading to the

possibility of doing without refreshments. Almost

everyone partakes of the treats that are set out each

month, yet the sign-up sheets to provide these treats

remain unfilled. If everyone takes a turn, the burden

doesn’t fall on just a few.

Our club has hired a custodian to set up all the tables

and chairs so we have only to put our chairs back and

pick up after ourselves at the conclusion of our meet-

ings. Volunteers are needed before our meetings

start to make coffee, heat water for tea, and set out

plates and condiments for these drinks. An advantage

to coming early is getting a parking spot close to the

club house. If you cannot come early, the Social

Committee also needs volunteers to help clean up af-

ter our meetings. The Social Committee needs many

committed volunteers. Most important of all is if you

do volunteer, you honor that commitment for the du-

ration of our membership year unless you have travel

plans or are ill.

Ladies, a lot of other garden clubs have had to sim-

plify their organizations. I do not want to see that,

and I believe the majority of our members also do

not. Please consider how you can participate in our

club’s organization. It is a very rewarding experience.

If you have any questions about these opportunities,

please contact our Nominating Committee

Chair, Sheila Truschke.

Thank you. Sharon Williams, President

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After hearing Garth Jacober speak, I realized

that he gave some information that conflicts with what I have said. Also I was asked at the

meeting how much people should water right

now, and I had difficulty answering that ques-tion.

Gardening is not an exact science. Every inch

of soil is different in its chemical makeup. You might have clay soil or sandstone soil or

rocky soil. You may also have all these kinds on your own property. Furthermore, you may

have densely planted beds like I do, or newly planted beds, where all the soil is not at all

root bound.

In addition, it depends on how each individual gardener treats his soil. You may choose to

chip nearly everything in the garden and layer

it on your soil like I do. Or you may let your mow blow and go guys blow everywhere be-

cause you just are tired of arguing. You may try to garden with all kinds of chemicals or

you may do nothing except plant and either are always successful, or just think you have

a black thumb.

Watering is a whole other story. You can have a drip system, or overhead spray with heads

10 feet on center or 5 feet on center. You may have Rain Birds, or you may just water

with a hose when you remember. I had a teacher once call the last one, “the one mar-

tini watering.”

Your location is also very important. You

might be high elevation San Ramon Valley where frost is minimal and drainage is per-

fect, or low elevation San Ramon Valley where frost is frequent and drainage is poor.

There are lots of combinations in between as well.

My point is that you need to observe and be

aware of your own garden and use your own practices that work for you. Although I am

not a fan of deep watering, perhaps you have a lot of mature trees that need a deep

watering. You have to understand that rain-fall in Danville and especially in Alamo is

relatively high. But if you live in San Ramon

you might be getting as much as 1/3 to ½ the amount of rainfall, and therefore your

soil hydration levels in the winter are proba-bly less than your northern neighbors.

It is good to go out and hear what others

are doing in their gardening practices. But in

the end they may not all work for you, and

you have to decide what you accept and

what you don’t. Because in the end, your

garden is a unique space. Part of the joy of

gardening is figuring out your space and

making it flourish.

Kristin Yanker-Hansen, Horticulture Chair

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Louise Wiggins, Calendar

Dates & Times Events Details Mar 7, Saturday

2 pm

Class: Berries, Berries, Berries

Navlet’s Garden Center

Learn how to plant and grow strawberries, blue-

berries, raspberries, and blackberries.

Mar 8, Sunday

1:30 pm

Class: Spring Edible Garden

Prep 101

Sloat Garden Center

Find out how to prep your garden to grow the food

you love. Call to register. Rewards Members free;

$10 for non-members.

Mar 12, Thursday

9:15 Social

9:45 Meeting

DAGC General Meeting

Alamo Women’s Club

Michael Elola of Lucky Garden will talk about his

store’s specialties, “Hydroponics and Aquaponics.”

Mar 17, Tuesday

9:00 Meet along

Stone Va Way,

Alamo

DAGC Tour: Dry Garden and

Cactus Jungle Nurseries

Berkeley

These nurseries specialize in water-wise garden-

ing. Find hand-blown terrariums, rare plants, and

more. Optional lunch to follow. Contact: terre-

hep@comcast.net to sign up.

Mar 18, Wednesday

10 am

DAGC Workshop: Container

Garden

Navlet’s Garden Center

Come get some inspiring ideas for spring contain-

ers by combining your favorite flowers with herbs.

Watch a demo; then make your own! Cost:

Approx $20. Contact: Kathy at designer-

girl@prodigy.net.

Mar 18, Wednesday

10 am

DAGC Bookworms

Home of Joyce Michalczyk

The group will enjoy brunch and then discuss

Winged Obsession by Jessica Speart.

Mar 18 -22

Wed – Sat, 10 – 7

Sun, 10 - 5

SF Flower and Garden Show:

“Going Wild”

San Mateo Event Center

Find the latest examples of garden design and

materials, seminars, exhibits, shopping. Bring a

notebook, some money, and a very large tote

bag! Cost: $22 at the door, $12 parking.

Mar 19, Thursday

9:30 am

DAGC Board Meeting

Home of Vicki Freeberg

RSVP at vfree111@gmail.com.

Mar 19, Thursday

6:30 pm

Master Gardener Talk: Seed-

Saving

San Ramon Library

Become a more self-sufficient gardener. Trish Clif-

ford will teach you how to grow your own vegeta-

bles & save seeds for next year’s crop.

Mar 21, Saturday

10 am

Class: Summer Vegetables

Navlet’s Garden Center

Join us for this year’s selection of spring and sum-

mer vegetable plants. We’ll teach you how to pre-

pare your soil and how to plant, fertilize, and wa-

ter all of your vegetables.

Mar 21, Saturday

1:30 pm

Class: Air Plants 101

Sloat Garden Center

Learn basic care, tips, and ideas for Air Plants with

expert guest speaker. Call to register. Rewards

Members free.

Mar 21, Saturday

9 am – 1 pm

Plant Sale

Markham Arboretum

Great prices on all sizes of containers.

Mar 28, Saturday

10: 30 am

Class: Lose Your Lawn

Sloat Garden Center

Qualified professionals will demonstrate the use of

sheet mulching to remove your lawn, saving time,

money, and resources. Call to register. Rewards

Members free.

Feb 28, Saturday

9 am

Class: Waterwise Gardening

Armstrong Garden Center

Learn which plants are best for waterwise garden-

ing and simple techniques to ensure you have a

healthy and beautiful low-water garden.

Terry Hepburn to signup

to Vicki

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Your Garden Club Needs You! Your Nominating Committee has begun the process to

fill the board positions for this next year 2015-2016. We are very fortunate to have many members sign up

again to fill many of the positions last month. Several of the members with current positions enjoyed it so

much they requested to keep it for one more year.

Thank you Ladies!

Our President, Tours and Auditor positions are cur-rently the only open positions for your consideration. Help us by volunteering for one of

these positions or consider sharing this experience with another garden member. Serving on the board is a fun experience, and you will be surprised at how much more you get out of

your club. Contact any of the nominating committee members if you are interested in serv-ing in any way or if you have any questions.

We can use additional members to help with our social commit-

tee, winter event, members helping members committee, com-munity outreach programs and installation luncheon committee.

At the March General Meeting, your Nominating Committee will an-

nounce the nominees and any openings to be filled. Additional nomina-

tions may be made from the floor at that time as long as the nominee has given consent.

Nominating Committee Members: Shelia Truschke, Rose Towery, and Judy Allen

Project Produce

DAGC donated 125

pounds of fresh pro-duce and non-

perishables in January, and 131 pounds of

fresh produce in Febru-ary!!

The Contra Costa/Solano County Food Bank ap-

preciates it all! Thank you,

Janet Howes,

Community Outreach

Contra Costa Food Bank

We did it again! We had a good time! Our crew of talented mem-bers inspected, sorted, repaired,

cleaned and packaged 1591 pounds of food, consisting of 57

boxes labeled and ready to go to the distribution centers. We all enjoyed a tour of the facility and again learned how organized

our CC Food Bank is and what a tremendous service they provide. We felt tired but exhila-

rated with the feeling we had a tiny part in helping the Food Bank feed 188,000 people a month.

A big Thank You to Nancy Norland, Louise

Wiggins, Loraine Ward-Theroux, Robbie Ridenour, Judy Lauper, Nancy Peterson, Linda Scotting and D’Arcy and Steve

James. A special thank you to Steve for doing the heavy lifting. Think they would like us back

again. We are a well oiled machine :-) Thanks again,

Kayrene Braden, Community Outreach

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Birthdays Catherine Bell

Janice Fassiotto

Donna Hannigan

Lynn Hoaglin

Verna Kershaw

Roseann Krane

Regina Martens

Joyce Michalczyk

Donna Samluk

Maria Sargent

Sharon Williams

Workshops

Our March Workshop will be at Navlets in Danville for Spring container ideas. We will learn new ways of mixing our container gardens with color

and herbs on Wednesday, March 18th, 10:00AM. Prices will vary based upon the container and plants you select. This is an event you surely will

not want to miss.

Looking ahead, bring your most challenging container to our April Work-

shop on Wednesday, April 15th, 10:00AM at my house. We will have our

resident floral expert, Kathy Younce, showing us how to tackle these more challenging floral containers.

If you are interested in either of these workshops please send me an email at

designergirl@prodigy.net or call my home number at (925) 735-5110.

As always, thanks for your continued support and interest!

Kathy Kaminski, Workshop Chair

Bookworms The Bookworms will meet

again on Wednesday, March 18th, 2015 at 10:00 A.M. at the

home of Joyce Michalczyk. Brunch will be served.

The book selection is Fifty Plants That Changed the Course of History by Bill

Laws. Please sign up at the General Meet-ing if you have not done so already.

Questions or ideas for book selections

should be directed to Page Krause (PTKrause70@gmail.com) or Joyce

Michalczyk (joymm@comcast.net)

Joyce Michalczyk and

Page Krause, Bookworms Leaders

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MARCH TOUR

For our tour this month we will be visiting The Dry Garden Nursery in Oakland and The Cactus Jungle in Berkeley. The Cactus Jun-gle has the largest selection of cactus and succulent plants in the bay area. They also have a large selection of hand blown glass terrari-ums and beautiful handmade succulent wreaths. The dry Garden Nursery is also known for its rare, unusual and bizarre plants! There is no fee for this tour. WHEN: Tuesday, March 17th

We will meet at 9:00 sharp along Stone Valley Way. Take Stone Valley East exit off of 680 and take the first left turn. Park on the left side of the street where there are no houses. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN ATTENDING THIS TOUR, PLEASE SEND ME YOUR RSVP WITH YOUR EMAIL AND PHONE NUMBER TO VFREE111@GMAIL.COM.

Terre Hepburn

Vicki Freeberg, Tours

March Social!

March is almost here along with our next meeting! Many thanks to those

members who brought goodies to the February meeting. The room was filled with hearts and flowers!

The following members have signed up to bring a Savory treat for our next

meeting: Vicki Freeberg, Nancy Norland, Jan Fassiotto, Tena Gallagher,

Betty Maddox Peggy Watkins, Sheila Truschke and Louise Wiggins.

Those who have signed up for Sweets are: Charlene Geiger, Karlene Pau-fler, Penny Adams, Lynn Leavitt and Vegetable Platter: Barbara Odell.

It has been a long standing DAGC tradition to wear green to the March meeting. Everyone is

a little bit Irish that day! Do wear a little green just for fun!

If you have not yet signed up to bring goodies this year call or email Joyce to sign up for April or May. Several members have contributed 2 or 3 months to fill in the spaces.

Happy Spring! Happy Gardening!

Joyce Michalczyk and Ellen Frost,

Social Co-Chairs

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General Garden Care

Check drip systems: replace clogged emitters, filters, repair leaks, uncover sprinkler heads and

flush.

Fertilize lawns, fruit trees and shrubs if needed once it stops raining. Citrus will need nitrogen,

although it is unavailable to the plants until the soil warms.

Fertilize sparingly, using a slow release form—fertilizer run-off is a form of pollution. Nitrogen

has been depleted from most soils by the winter/spring rains.

Aerate lawns when rains have stopped, top dress with compost.

Fruits & Vegetables

Plant potato tubers, citrus by the end of the

month.

Plant herbs—most require full sun and well-

drained soil.

Plant seeds of beets, carrots, lettuce, radishes,

spinach, borage, radicchio.

Harvest strawberries. Strawberries need 6

hours of direct light a day to ripen fully.

Check the soil temperature—soil should be 60°F prior to planting summer crops. Garden soils can be heated using clear or black plastic

mulch.

Flowers & Landscaping

Divide fall blooming perennials. Start summer vegetables and flower seeds.

Prune azaleas and camellias that have finished blooming. Fertilize with coffee grounds…it’s a

good source of nitrogen and lowers the pH.

Plant summer blooming bulbs: Canna, calla lilies, Caladium,Dahlia, Gladiolus, lilies, Nerine, tube-

rose, tuberous begonia,Tigridia, Watsonia.

Plant perennials from 4” pots.

Fertilize roses as they begin to leaf out. Alfalfa pellets are a good slow-release form of ni-

trogen.

Garden Pests & Diseases

Wash off spittle bugs if they annoy you—they are primarily a visual nuisance.

Wash off aphids before population builds up.

Control snails and slugs – handpick, trap or use iron phosphate baits.

Check for scale crawlers with two-sided sticky tape. Spray with horticultural oil if found.

Spray roses for powdery mildew. A simple mixture is 2-4 teaspoons baking soda + 2-4 teaspoons

lightweight horticultural oil in 1 gallon of water. Mix well and spray to cover all foliage.

Spray apples, pears, loquats with Bordeaux mixture during blossom time for fire blight control.

Spray stone fruit (apricots, peaches, plums, cherries, etc.) for brown rot during bloom time.

March in the Contra Costa Garden by Contra Costa Master Gardeners

Master Gardener Hotline If you have gardening questions,

Master Gardeners can help!

9 am – 12 noon M-Th Telephone: 925-646-6586 Drop in at office (closed state holidays) or… Email: ccmg@ucanr.edu Website: http://ccmg.ucanr.edu Facebook: www.facebook.com/CoCoMasterGardeners

Contra Costa Master Gardeners University of California Cooperative Extension

75 Santa Barbara Rd., Second Floor Pleasant Hill, CA 94532-4215

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Newsletter of the Danville-Alamo Garden Club

Roseann Krane ~ Editor

Danville–Alamo Garden Club

P.O. Box 920

Danville, CA 94526

Our Sponsors

Ace Hardware 3211 Danville Blvd.

Alamo,CA,94507 (925) 837-2420

Annie’s Annuals 740 Market Ave,

Richmond, CA 94801 510-215-3301 or 888-266-4370

Armstrong Garden Centers 7360 San Ramon Road, Dublin

925-551-0231

Lucky Garden Hydroponics 7071 Village Pkwy, Dublin, CA 94568

(925) 828-4769

Navlet’s 800 Camino Ramon, Danville

925-837-9144

Orchard

4010 Mt. Diablo Blvd. Lafayette, CA 94549

(925) 284-4474.

Regan Nursery

4268 Decoto Road, Fremont 510-797-3222

Sloat Garden Center 828 Diablo Road, Danville

925-743-0288

www.dagc.us

Please support our sponsors!

Remember, our commercial sponsors donate the door prizes, and they support us with speakers for our gen-

eral meetings. Please support them!

Sharon Cohune, Janice Fassiotto,

Lynn Hoaglin, Sponsor Reps

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