Maine Master Gardener News
January 2007
Aroostook County Master Gardener
Projects Highlighted
By Casey Bowie,
Extension Agriculture Program Aid II
Where exactly is Fort Kent Maine? The clearest answer without being too ostentatious is, it’s just about as far north as you can drive your vehicle, where the pavement ends and meets the St. John River which forms the natural border between Maine and Canada. It is here, in the small town of Fort Kent where Casey Bowie, Extension Agriculture Program Aid II, coordinated the first Master Gardener Volunteer program to ever exist in the history of Aroostook County. With Aroostook County now on board with the rest of the state, the Maine Master Gardener Volunteer program is now offered in all 16 Maine counties!
A short distance from the Fort Kent Cooperative Extension office at the Fort Kent Elementary school is where Aroostook Master Gardeners volunteered their time to create a demonstration garden. They applied for and received a grant from the Stephen and Tabatha King Foundation for $1,400 to fund the project. The project consisted of revamping three raised beds and constructing an additional fourth raised bed.
Johnny’s Selected Seed’s donated a majority of the seeds used to plant in the raised beds. Pelletier Florist and Greenhouse donated a variety of vegetable transplants. The University of Maine at Fort Kent made space allocations in their campus greenhouse which allowed for a head start on our short growing season. These generous donations allowed for the planting of four beautiful theme gardens by Master Gardeners. The four themes were a Heritage vegetable garden, Children’s garden, Edible flowers garden and a Salsa garden.
Aroostook Master Gardener Volunteers were participants in Plant a Row for the Hungry in 2006. All produce grown at the Demonstration Garden was donated to the Fort Kent Ecumenical Food Pantry and to those in need throughout the St. John Valley.
The Demonstration Garden has provided Master Gardeners a place to hold educational events and to teach Fort Kent Elementary school children about the importance of gardening. At Demonstration Garden Day, (a one day program with concurrent sessions where various gardening practices were demonstrated), Master Gardeners presented educational talks on making herbal tea, edible flowers, the art of Bonsai and creating garden gadgets. This was the first year for the event, held on Saturday, September 16, 2006.
Six Master Gardeners received their certificates during Demonstration Garden Day. Tina Boucher and Heidi Carter are not included in the photograph to the right.
The first year of the demonstration garden project proved to be a successful one. Plans are currently underway to incorporate a children’s gardening curriculum into the demonstration garden in 2007.
Vegetable Varieties -
Try something new!
submitted by: Mark Hutton, vegetable specialist, Highmoor Farm
If you are like me your mail box has been filling-up with seed catalogs from your favorite suppliers. Now is the time to sit by the woodstove and peruse the offerings of old favorites and new releases while dreaming of spring. Oh, wait a minute it isn’t cold and it looks more like April than January, but we’ll all have to be content to read the catalogs until spring truly arrives.
Perhaps you vowed to try something new in this year’s garden and maybe I can help you with some ideas. Remember to only plant a few plants of any new variety in the off chance you don’t like it, or it doesn’t perform as well as your old stand-by.
Recent releases I have tried and liked:
Carrots
Purple Haze: an All America Selection winner in 2006. This is an Imperator type (tapers to a point) with a dark purple/red exterior and orange center. Fair as a fresh eating carrot and very good steamed, although the color fades with cooking.
Rainbow Mix: A nice looking mix of white, yellow, and orange carrots. This is something truly different to have in your harvest basket.
Cauliflower
Cheddar: If you like cauliflower you must try this orange cultivar. For two years it has been the hands down favorite here at Highmoor Farm. Plant in July in order to harvest in the fall especially sweet flavor and brilliant color.
Peppers
Lipstick: This is a fantastically sweet and tasty pimento shaped sweet pepper. Harvest it when the fruit are dark glossy red for greatest sweetness.
Carmen: An All American winner, developed at Johnny’s here in Maine. This is a “bull’s horn” type sweet pepper.
Tiburon: This is perhaps my favorite pepper. Tiburon is a poblanos type with medium heat and good flavor. You can stuff it and make chile rellenos, roast them, or eat them fresh. You can wait until they are fully mature, harvest and dry them then use to make mole sauce.
Squash:
Sunray: This is a prolific yellow summer squash with powdery mildew tolerance. It has great flavor.
Tomato:
Orange Blossom: This is an orange fruited variety developed at the University of New Hampshire. The fruit are about 7 oz. with little cracking. The flavor is mild and sweet.
Taxi: This yellow fruited variety produces small to medium fruit that are meaty and sweet. Be careful with this one as the fruit get over-mature they become mealy
Maine Master Gardener Publishes Gardening Book!
submitted by: Liz Stanley, Home Hort
Program Aide, Knox-Lincoln Counties
In her new book, The Spare-Time Gardener, Lincoln County Master Gardener Barbara Hill Freeman mixes practical advice with a way to look at gardening, a philosophy that says that it's okay to do things in stages, and that we don't need to achieve "the perfect landscape."
"Writing this book was an incredibly interesting experience, but it took quite a while because I had to do it in my own spare time," says Barbara, who works as Director of Communications at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay. "I've been thrilled with the response by readers and gardeners at all levels of expertise, from people who are just getting started to others who are respected horticulturists. What makes me happiest is that they say it's fun to read."
With chapters like "The Good Gardener vs. The Bad Seed," "Latin in the Landscape - Putting in a Good Word for a Dead Language," and "Gnomes We've Known and Loved," Barbara takes neither herself nor the subject too seriously. Nonetheless, she admits to having strong views and offers them unapologetically.
In writing the book, she drew on her experiences gardening on salt-sprayed ledge at her Boothbay Harbor home and focused on the plants she grows (and hopes to grow) there. She advises readers to participate in Master Gardener training and acknowledges how much she learned from the program, which she took in the fall of 2003. Even with her full-time job, writing, and the rigors of publishing, Barbara still manages to contribute substantial volunteer time to her community.
The Spare-Time Gardener is available in bookstores and botanical gardens across the country. It received a favorable review in a recent issue of Horticulture magazine, and soon after the book came out, Barbara was interviewed by Tom Atwell for an article in the Maine Sunday Telegram. "The biggest surprise," she says, "was finding it in the New York Botanical Garden’s bookstore!”
Newsletter created by:
Hancock County Cooperative Extension
63 Boggy Brook Road, Ellsworth, ME 04605
1-800-287-1479 or 667-8212 Fax: 667-2003
Editors:
Marjorie Peronto, Extension Educator
Sue Baez, Administrative Assistant II