Bee Balm Be Gone????

So every time I get frustrated with the wildness of this Bee Balm, a hummingbird talks to me.


I keep thinking by the back-porch, I need less plants more conformity.But just as I am thinking about pulling the Bee Balm out a hummingbird zips pass me and is on the Bee Balm.

As I am stewing over the ugly Cone Flowers , a finch is hanging out eating the seeds out of the dying seed head.

So they are safe for another year!

Exciting News From Corinne

Hello, All!

It is with excitement and enthusiasm that I “introduce” to you our new Shelby County Horticulture Technician, Walt Reichert!  I know that introductions are not necessary since you all know Walt, but we are happy to have him on board as part of our Extension staff!  Walt will be working closely with the Master Gardeners Association as well as the MG course.  We are looking forward to the knowledge and experience Walt will share with our Extension clientele.  I have copied him on this email so you all will have his contact information and he yours.  I’m sure you are all looking forward to working with Walt!

Corinne

Corinne Kephart

County Extension Agent for Agriculture and Natural Resources

Shelby County Extension Service

Fun Event

Old  Louisville Garden Tour July 7th - 8th from 10 am -5 pm cost $12.00 advance $15 day of tour. 11 or more qualify for $11.00 group rate # (502-635-5244) or group # (502) 432-8665). Cash, check or CC accepted.
10 gardens a carriage house, plants for sale from Plant Kingdom and Art in the Garden at DuPont Mansion B&B. Ticket purchase qualifies for some purchase discounts. Plant vendors and gardening items available, and a silent auction.

Upcoming Events

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, May 11, 12 & 13 - 10 AM to 5 PM each day - the Locust Grove Gardener's Fair and Silent Auction.  This event features many vendors and offers the chance to purchase flowers, herbs, and plants - along with a variety of garden tools, artistic and practical garden accessories, wrought iron sculptures, water gardens, yard furniture and a host of other delightful finds you may not be able to live without! 

On May 19th & 20th, the Kentucky Gourd Society will hold their 18th annual Gourd Art Show at the Spencer County Elementary School at 1265 mt. Washington Road, KY Hwy 44, west of Taylorsville.  It is absolutely AMAZING what you can do with gourds!!  For more information, you may visit their website at http://www.kygourdsociety.org/.

On the first weekend in June, the Arts Association of Oldham County will offer "Arts on the Green", an annual world-class festival.  Visitors can meet and purchase from the best artisans in the region.   I will offer more information about this event in the future, but you may learn more by visiting their website - maryklausing@bellsouth.net - but mark your calendar now to reserve the dates.

OF COURSE - our next event is the Annual Garden and Art Fair on Saturday, April 28th.  We will be transporting plants from the Extension Office on Friday, starting about 5 PM.  If you have a van or truck, and can help us with this project, please come to the Extension Office at 5PM.   We will begin setting up at the fairgrounds Friday evening and be back there by 7 to 7:30 AM on Saturday.      The weather looks pretty "iffy", so I have obtained permission to use Floral Hall again if we need to.

Up Coming Events

Thursday April 12th   Potting Session at Becky Kirts  232 Colony Drive  5:00pm

Saturday, April 14 - Earth Day at Red Orchard Park   (If you would be willing to work in the Master

Gardener booth for a couple of hours, please let me know.)

Saturday, April 14 - Work Day at the Park - 9 AM to 1 PM (Rain date is Saturday, April 21)

Friday, April 27 - Garden Fair Preperation at the Fairgrounds and moving plants to the Fairgrounds.

Saturday, April 28 - GARDEN FAIR - 9AM - 2 PM  --- Workers report at 7 AM (or so)

Please mark these dates on your calendars.

Thank you - and hope to see you soon.

My best,  Carolyn

Annual Ky Herb Festival May 19th

Mark your calendars! Please share this information about the annual Ky Herb Festival!  The date is Saturday, May 19^th, 9am-3pm, at Lakeview Park, Frankfort.  This would be of interest to Master Gardeners, Garden Clubs, and plant enthusiasts in general. It is a great show- they have herb-based foods, spreads; creams and salves and soaps; plants; books and lots of other offerings.

Here is their website: http://www.kyherb.com/   For more info or questions, contact the Ky Herb Association officers.

Corinne has reserved the van! Call her to save a space. This sounds like a lot of Herbish Fun!

502-633-4593

Jon Carloftis at Wallitsch Nursery

To all - Just got this from Joan and wanted to pass it along.  Jon is a 
wonderful speaker with amazing ideas.  And if you have never been to Wallitsch 
Nursery and Garden Center, I certainly encourage you to take this opportunity.  
Wallitsch's is located at 2608 Hikes Lane in Louisville.  If you would like to 
go and are interested in car-pooling, please give me a call at 633-5193 or 
e-mail me.
I will find out from Joan how we can pre-order tickets.
My best,    Carolyn

----- Forwarded Message -----
From: "Joan Brown" <jfwb@insightbb.com>
To: "carolyn a brenner" <cbrenner@insightbb.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 4, 2012 7:41:55 PM
Subject: wallitsch garden center

      Carolyn,   On Sat. April 7,  6;30p-8;30p  Jon Carloftis will be 
presenting a program at Wallitsch (454-3553)  prepurchase tickets; $10.00,
at the door $15.00.  Did not know if any of the Master Gardener would be 
interested in hearing him talk.  Joan

Up Coming Events ---Letter From Carolyn

Hello to all - It's finally starting to look a little like winter - just when I am ready for spring!

I wanted to remind you of our up-coming meetiong on Tuesday, March 13th at 6:45 PM.  This will be an important meeting as we will be discussing a restructuring plan for the MG Association. I hope that it will offer positive changes to the organization.  We will also be discussing the up-coming Spring Garden and Art Fair to be held on April 28th.  I hope you all will make an effort to attend this important meeting.

Also, a list of other up-coming events:

This Friday, March 9th - Brett will hold a "Landscape Pruning" demonstration at the Botanical Garden at 12:30 PM

On Friday, Saturday & Sunday, May 11, 12, & 13 - 10 am to 5 pm each day - the Locust Grove Gardener's Fair and Silent Auction.  This event features many venders and offers the chance to purchase flowers, herbs, and plants along with a variety of garden tools, artistic and practical garden accessories, wrought iron sculptures, water gardens, yard furniture and a host of other delightful finds.   If there is enough interest, we may be able to arrange carpools or take the van.  I will send more information about this event in the future, but mark your calendars now.

On May 19th & 20th, the Kentucky Gourd Society will hold their 18th annual Gourd Art Show at the Spencer County Elementary School at 1265 Mt. Washington Road, KY Hwy 44, west of Taylorsville. It is absolutely AMAZING what you can do with gourds!!  For more information, you may visit their website at http://www.kygourdsociety.org/. 

On the first weekend in June, The Arts Association of Oldham County will offer "Arts on the Green", an annual world-class festival.  Visitors can meet and purchase from the best artisans in the region,.  Again, I will offer more information about this event in the future, but you may learn more by vsiting their website - maryklausing@bellsouth.net -  but mark your calendar now to reserve the dates.

If anyone has information about any upcoming event that you think the Master Gardeners may be inteested in, please let me know and I will send it out to the membership.

My best to all,     Carolyn

Lending a Helping Hand

  We have been saddened by Linda's heartbreaking loss. But it was such a great show of love and friendship to have Master Gardeners show up to dig and move plants for Linda on Thursday. Who would ever have thought  that we could have moved hundreds of plants on February 2nd.  I have copied Carolyn's email....I think she summed it up perfectly!

To all -   I was almost overwhelmed by the turnout at Linda's home yesterday.  We had 16 folks who came for all or part of the day and over a dozen more who could not come either because they worked, were out of town, or had a commitment they could not get out of.  We got so much done - then had a wonderful "pot luck" lunch and sat and enjoyed the almost perfect day the Lord provided for us.  We sat and talked and laughed and enjoyed the sun on our faces.  I think that was good for Linda. 

The love and concern from the group was almost palpable.  I feel like this is the heart and soul of the Master Gardener Organization and am pleased and proud to be associated with this group of wonderful people.  I'm sure the response would be just as good for any of us that had a need. 

Thanks again to all who came out to help - and thanks to all who have offered their thoughts and prayers to Linda. 

- and my love to all,

Carolyn
***Thanks to Pam Dennison for the picture and the caption.

"Let us give thanks for loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts, and witherings"     Revernd Max Coots

Helping Linda Casey
Linda needs our help! Her home burned on Monday evening. Carolyn has been in contact with her and she needs help with saving all plant babies. The house is being bulldozed down early next week, so she wants to get starts of her plants saved. We are all great at digging and moving plants, sounds like a great opportunity to help a garden friend in need.



Carolyn's email

To all:OK. I spoke with Linda this evening and she is doing OK. I asked how we could help and she said the fire and heat were maintained inside the house and did not burn or scorch the plants around the house, so she would like to save as many as she can. We are planning to gather at her (house) this Thursday, Feb. 2, at 10:30 - shovels in hand - to dig up and replant her "babies" before the bull-dozers get there next week to demolish what is left of her home. Thursday is supposed to be sunny and in the mid 50's, so it will be a good day to work. There is so little we can really do for her, but saving her plants is really important to her, so if any of you can come out to lend a hand, please do. We will try to start about 10:30, but you are welcome to come anytime you can after that. Linda has a place prepared in her garden where we can "heel" the plants in.

She can still receive mail at her address if you want to send a card or note: 3094 Woodlawn Road, Shelbyville 40065.If there is any way you can make, please come out and lend her a hand

Advanced MG Class

Last night I attended the first of the scheduled advanced Master Gardening Classes. It was on Understanding and Managing Plant Diseases. Nicole Ward was the presenter.

It did challenge me and I did walk away with some great information.

#1. I will work hard to clean up my garden at the end of the season

#2. I will disinfect tools used

#3. I now know signs to watch for and conditions to change

#4. The Extension Office and UK has a wealth of information just for the asking

Shelby County had 10 Master Gardeners at the class. It was interesting watching this with at least five other counties.

I am looking forward to the next session.

Exciting Additional Info on Advanced Classes!!

Hi to everyone -
Corinne just told me that she had just had a LYNC conference with Nicole Ward, who will be teaching the first session of the Advanced MG Classes. She got a preview of Nicole's presentation and said the information she is going to share is going to be AWESOME! Corinne feels that the material is really good and thinks that everyone who comes will be so glad they did!
I'm attending, and I hope to see a lot of you there - Wednesday, January 25th, 6:00 - 8:00 pm. Please call the Extension Office to make reservations.

As always, My Best, Carolyn

THANKS SO MUCH FOR THE UPDATE, SOUNDS LIKE AN EXCELLENT LEARNING EXPERIENCE.

GOOD LUCK BRETT!!!!

As many of you may already know, Brett has accepted a position as the East Kentucky regional agronomist for Southern States. He will still live and work in Shelby County, so we may still run into him from time to time. The Extension office will hold a FAREWELL RECEPTION for him on Monday, January 30th from 12:00 to 2:00 pm. Please drop by to tell Brett farewell and good luck.

Master Gardening Advanced Classes

To all -
From the Ext. office newsletter: "A short series of classes for currenet Master Gardeners will be held this winter. In an effort to continue to educate our Master Gardeners, we will be hosting four advanced training sessions, taught by specialists at UK, via the Lync video conferencing system. Courses are as follows:
--- Wednesday, January 25, from 6:00 - 8:00 pm - Plant Pathology, Dr. Nicole Ward via LYNC.
--- Monday, February 6, from 6:00 - 8:00 pm - Entomology, Dr. Lee Townsend, via LYNC.
--- Tuesday, February 21, from 6:00 - 8:00 pm - Soils, Dr. Bob Pearce, via LYNC.
--- Friday, March 9 - Pruning Demonstration - Brett Reese. Time and Location To Be Announced.

Please call 633-4593 to register for any or all of these free courses.

There will also be a Basic Pest Management Class on Thursday, February 2nd from 6:00 - 8:00 pm. Brett will be teaching this class. He will discuss "what's this weed and how do I get rid of it? I have some kind of tiny, flying insects on my tomato plants; what are they and are they harmful? What kinds of chemicals can I safely use on my garden vegetables: Can I spray for weed control? I want to be organic, how do I control weeds and bugs?"

This is also a free class, but you should call 633-4593 to register.

Special Events

Master Gardeners

We have some really great events coming up....Please check out the links!!Mark your calendars! There are no details at this time, but this is a good event to attend and would be of special interest to anyone who is interested in purchasing herbs, herbal products, crafts and other similar items. It is a fun event. Here is their website so you can watch for upcoming info on this year’s Festival!
http://www.kyherb.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6&Itemid=5
May 19th, 9:00-3:00; Lakeview Park, Frankfort Ky. This is our 20th year! The theme is Wine and Roses. The herb of the year is Roses.

Info on Meetings Message from Carolyn

To all - Just a reminder that there will be no Master Gardener meetings during the months of January or February. We will, however, be contacting folks about the upcoming Garden and Art Fair in April. Linda Casey will be the Chairperson this year. Please contact her if you are willing to work on the Fair. She can be reached at 633-6145 or by e-mail at farkydoodle@shelbywireless.net.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and I send my warmest wishes for a healthy, joyful and prosperous New Year.

My best, Carolyn