All the Dirt on Gardening

Tulsa Master Gardeners Showcase Garden Tour Self-guided tours: Saturday June 26 from 9 to 5 and Sunday June 27 from 11 to 5 Contact: Sheryl Chadd, Garden Tour Chair, 918.742.7662 or mg@tulsamastergardeners.org and www.tulsamastergardeners.org, Tickets $7.50 includes tour and garden talks at the OSU Extension Center Saturday talks: 11:00 Safe Sex in the Garden by Sandie Bailey, 12 noon The Buzz About Bees by Helen Hickey, 1:00 Dealing With Tomato Problems by Lew Melone, 2:00 Gardening for Butterflies by Jim Thayer Sunday talks: 12 noon Safe Sex, 1:00 Butterflies, 2 Tomato Problems, 3:00 Bees Next weekend the Tulsa Master Gardeners Showcase Garden Tour will attract hundreds of plant lovers. Sheryl Chadd, tour chairwoman, said that 140-volunteers have been involved in putting on the tour this year. There will be Master Gardeners at each home answering gardening questions, Chadd said. And, we will have cold water at all of the homes. According to Chadd, the variety of gardens range from...

Normally, I only put my writing on my blog but here is a column about the Junior Master Gardeners at Whittier Elementary School learning about compost worms. The students made homes for their worms and then were excited to select a worm for their very own. Junior Master Gardeners learn, squirm with worms Program 'gives kids exposure to nature,' teacher says By Cathy Spaulding Phoenix Staff Writer The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out. Their duty is helping the vegetables sprout. That's what the Junior Master Gardeners at Whittier Elementary School will learn in a joint program with Muskogee's Farmers' Market. Students in Whittier's Junior Master Gardener program spent Friday afternoon filling jugs with dirt, coffee grounds, shredded paper, vegetable scraps, leaves and wet spaghetti and putting a worm in each jug. There, the worms will make compost for vegetable gardens. How?"The worm eats everything and poops," said Martha Stoodley, a volunteer wi...

Lowe's has their late winter vegetable starts in. Packs of 9 plants are about $3.50. I want to plant Brussel sprouts and broccoli using starts so I asked Sue Gray at the OSU Extension in Tulsa for some guidance. Here is her response. "Go ahead and plant your brassica starts, but DO protect those tops….especially whenever it's going below 32 degrees F……the storebought transplants are probably not hardened off….so you may want to spend a little quality time on them or go ahead and cover with some kind of protection from wind, extreme light AND cold." So, my new babies are inside under lights for now since we are supposed to get several more freezing nights this week. I'll transplant them out of these cells because there are two plants in some of them. THE WORM HOTEL Composting with worms, vermicomposting - Hubby built a four-story hotel for the compost worms we ordered from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm . I called Uncle Jim and the Red Wrigglers (Eisenia foetida) a...