GARDEN SOIL
PH TEST
ebruary is the last month of winter (we hope)! Fortunately, February is a short month so spring will be arriving soon. It’s already time to work up the garden and plant some of the early season crops such as spinach, peas, lettuce and radishes. It’s also time to prune roses and fruit trees, and get the lawn mower serviced. There are just too many things to do all of a sudden! Here’s a rundown of my February events and activities.
Events: The Farmer’s Market Regional Workshop was held in Chanute on Saturday, February 10. There were approximately 70 producers in attendance. There were several excellent presentations including a producer’s panel discussing the issues of high tunnel production, a successful grower from the Wichita area describing how he grew into the business and how he’s implementing high tunnel production on his farm, official from Kansas Department of Agriculture discussing legal issues with production and market promotion through the “Land of Kansas” campaign, and a fellow horticulture agent, Pam Paulsen, giving a presentation on identifying morel mushrooms.
I also had a speaking event at the public library in Mound Valley. The topic for this event was container gardening, which I discussed at some length at the beginning of the program. This was followed by a “coffee shop” style presentation, what I call “Gardening Q & A.” This is the time when a tremendous amount of information is shared with the attendees because it’s focused on their immediate concerns. For a small town, and the inclement weather that day, we did have a very good turnout for the meeting.
Program Planning: As part of the local foods initiative Jeri Geren, Barbara Ames and I are looking into the possibility of hosting a tour of high tunnel research and production in the Kansas City area. We’ve created a survey form that was handed out at the Farmer’s Market Regional Workshop to poll the interest in having this tour. There were there options proposed:
1) Late May: Group tour of the Olathe Horticulture Research and Extension Center’s high tunnel research projects; lunch at a restaurant featuring locally grown foods (reservation made); tour a local vegetable produce (Kansas City area) using high tunnel production; return home (fast food meal stop on the way back).
2) August 17: Fast food meal on the way up; Group tour of a local food producer (Kansas
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Jacob Weber
Horticulture
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PLANNING A
FRUIT GARDEN
PLANTING A STRAWBERRY BED