Fellow Master Gardeners tell us about their 2023 Blooms, Buds Or Thorns
11/30/2023
The November monthly meeting was held both online via Zoom and in-person at the Roseville Oval from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m on Tuesday, November 21. Watching the recording of this meeting can be counted as 2 hours of Continuing Education. (Find the recording in the Archives of the Monthly Meeting page.)
THANK YOU
Many thanks to the RCMG volunteers involved with the November Meeting:
Education Committee: Jane Carlstrom & Simba Blood
Journalist: Stacey Ringness
Room-Set: Gene Ranieri & Cathy Challman
Greeters: Julie Coopet & Nancy Glass
Zoom Aide: Jan Fransen
Time Keeper: Alanna Kennedy
Room Clean-up: Dawn Cameron
Once again another gardening season has come to pass. Our tender bulbs have been dug up and put in storage. The vegetables have been harvested, or some of them at least. Sometimes the fates don’t allow you enough time to do such things in time, an overbusy chaotic time consuming fun mess of a summer gets in the way of even the best intentions. Suddenly fall has come and our vegetables have turned into beautiful arrays of flowers and/or sculpturesque guards. Milkweed seed pods are my personal favorite things to see in late fall. There is a certain joy in seeing vegetables make such variety displays of seeds. Collecting them seems to me like collecting a bit of magic that comes to life in spring.
Now that our gardens have been taken over by jack frost and our perennial roots sleep in the frozen ground. While we are left with no dirt to dig into, we are able to keep our gardening minds active by dreaming about and planning next years growing season. And what better way to do this than as a community. It is In this vein that the November’s meeting was focused on hearing stories from fellow Master Gardner’s Blooms (successes), Thorns (dissapointments), and Buds (new experiments) of this last years 2023 growing season.
The RCMG education committee believes the best way to strengthen our master gardener community is through volunteer and educational peer to peer learning opportunities. In order to showcase this the RCMG march meeting invited fellow master gardeners to discuss integrated pest management and highlighted such pests as lily leaf beetles, and jumping worms. The June meeting featured members of our master gardener community demonstrating ways to propagate plants with a hands-on learning opportunity made available at the ramsey county extension office. And this November’s meeting focused on fellow master gardener’s sharing their stories of successes, disapointments, and hopeful beginnings of the previous growing season.
A special thank you goes out to the volunteers who helped put the night together. Special thanks goes out to Katherine Tane, Susan Mason, Gene Ranieri and Sue Ellen Campbell. Thank you to the chair and co-chair of the education committee Jane Carlstrom and Simba Blood for their hard work and dedication to making RCMG a strong and thriving community.
But before these stories are shared business first
Board News (6:30-6:45)
Monthly Meetings
November was the last monthly meeting of 2023.
The first two meetings in 2024 are zoom only.
You can zoom from anywhere with glass of wine.
Our next meeting will not be until next March.
RCMG Board Announcements
Updates to the bylaws were voted on by 168 people voted and passed. Online forum worked fabulously There were 2 or 3 days of glitches, but it was finally a success.
There were someone who worried that the lack of term limits of the new bylaws went against state laws but this was checked out with the MN attorney’s general’s office and since we elect every 2 years we are well within MN state guidelines.
If you are interested in becoming part of the board, the best way to become involved is through committees.
Recognizing new 2024-2025 members to the board:
Kay Wimer- new board co-chair
Gene Ranieri - education
Tiffa Foster - new member
Stacy Sola - communications
New Financial Committee
We are starting a task force for a (much-needed) financial committee.
Any people who have experience with financial management and/or financial grants please put name in hat. There will be about six positions available.
2024 Budgets
We are currently working on our budget for next year. This means including both our income and expenses.
Project leads if you could give information of what kind of funding are you will be needing for your projects and what kind of income you are predicting.
Need project income and costs
January 9th will have meeting to formalize budget.
If you have any questions please contact Kathy Passe. Text or email. We are all easy to get a hold of will respond quickly.
Budgets don’t need to be down to the penny, but a generalized idea.
Darren Lochner's Coordinator Updates (7:05pm-7:15pm)
Take time to read the monthly newsletter sent by Tim Kenny, State Master Gardener Program Director (sent the first week of the month)
U of M Extension’s Spanish language website - https://es.extension.umn.edu/
Reminder to return Master Gardener materials and supplies. If you’ve borrowed anything please bring back by the end of December
Please remember to log your volunteer hours. If you’ve learned something about gardening you can count them as hours.
March 5th is our in-person Ramsey County Master Gardner Volunteer Program award recognition
Leonard Gloeb outstanding award winner - Frank Dolejsi: Has contributed significant impact to master gardener program across the state.
Ralph Thrane extraordinary partnership award - Jeanne Buck: Helped to organize the barn and has been very involved with trial seed program with the master gardener program
Guest Lecture (7:15-8pm)
Blooms, Thorns, and Buds of 2023
Presented by Kathryn Tane & Darren Lochner.
Blooms - things that worked.
Thorns - things that didn’t.
Buds - new ideas and hopeful experiments
The following is a synopses of the stories that were shared.
Alex Meyer- Annual poppies
Anneka Munsell – Tale of woe-turned0success over jumping worms
Debbie Lee – Blooms and thorns in growing under Black Walnut trees
Gary DeGrande – Beautiful water gardens
Mary Montagne - Dahlia trials
Julie Ann Wegscheid & Sue VonBank- St . "Paullinators" gardens
Darren Lochner - Redbud saplings from seed
Katherine Tane - Rain (less) gardens
Karen Randall - leaf miners
KT Robinson – Greenhouse Experiences
Laurel Watt - Loss of much-loved trees
Nanette Boudreau – learning an indoor irrigation system
Nilgun Tuna - Building a Stinzen garden
Sarah Broughton - Raising container plantings
Susie DeShon - First time brugmansia-grower
Vanessa Hazelton - Degraded planter replacement.
Scott Lore - thank you for a great intern year!
Recap provided by Stacey Ringness