– Christine Gelley, Agriculture and Natural Resources Educator, Noble County, OSU Extension

With mushroom season upon us, when foraging for wild edibles be sure you know which are safe to eat.

Every spring questions ring in about some of the most desirable and delicious wild foods you can find in Ohio- morel mushrooms. Foraging for wild edibles is a topic that I find incredibly challenging to address with clientele because proper identification of a plant or fungus can be the difference between a gourmet dinner and a grueling stomachache or worse, an untimely death.

Fortunately, morels are one of the easiest mushrooms to identify, but if you have any doubt that the mushrooms you have found are not true morels, you should not consume them or prepare them for others. There are false morels that appear in the same time frame and habitat that are poisonous. Proceed to forage with Continue reading Gourmet Goodies for Rural Foodies →

– Christine Gelley, Agriculture and Natural Resources Educator, Noble County, OSU Extension

We’re talkin’ potatoes at the March Farm Talk Breakfast!

Let the taters roll! Grab your morning cup of go juice and your favorite breakfast potato and let’s talk potatoes on March 19. We will welcome Gigi Neal of Clermont County OSU Extension as our guest speaker for March’s Farm Talk Breakfast from 8:30-9:30 AM on Zoom.

Have you ever wondered:

• What is a seed potato versus food potato?
• When is the best time to set potatoes?
• Where do I find seed potatoes and how do I set them?
• Can I use a container instead of a garden?
• Is there really a rainbow of potatoes?

These questions and more will be answered with plenty of time for you to get your potato bed ready for the 2021 planting season. We will talk about Continue reading Potatoes for Breakfast →

– Christine Gelley, Agriculture and Natural Resources Educator, Noble County OSU Extension

Photo: Pinterest @ https://morningchores.com/clothesline-ideas/

Readers raise your hand if you use a laundry line to dry clothes outside. Raise your hand if you want to dry clothes on a line outside, but do not have one. Now, raise your hand if you have an herb garden or want to grow an herb garden this year! If you have a hand up right now, keep on reading. I have an idea for you.

The idea is not my own, but it is one I read recently and want to try myself!

The credit goes to Reginald Blomfield and F. Inigo Thomas who published the idea of planting a knot garden of herbs clipped to a uniform height and used as a drying table for laundry in a publication called The Formal Garden in England in 1892. I read the idea in a book called 1,001 Old-Time Garden Tips gathered by Roger Yepsen.

A knot garden is a precisely planted and clipped garden layout common in Continue reading Herbs & Laundry Lines; A match made in the back yard →

– Christine Gelley, Agriculture and Natural Resources Educator, Noble County OSU Extension

It’s not only cold temperatures that can destroy the best laid plans of the antsy gardener, but working wet soils can be equally destructive!

Hello March!

The end of winter is approaching. We are two weeks away from Spring Forward and three weeks from the first day of spring. The month of March is a very tempting time for green thumbs to start gardening. It can be a challenge to practice restraint when the sun begins to shine for more hours of the day, the air is warmer, the birds are singing, and our first early blooming flowers are starting to pop up. As tempting as it can be to go out to the garden and start digging, resist.

A condition known as “February Fever” was referenced by W.C McCollom in The Garden Magazine back in 1908 as the cause on many undue plant deaths in the month of March. McCollom’s advice was this:

“Don’t get the garden fever in February and uncover things on the Continue reading Green Thumbs Are Getting Antsy →

– Christine Gelley, Agriculture and Natural Resources Educator, Noble County OSU Extension

Happy New Year Readers!

Now that you’ve enjoyed your tree, re-purpose it for the birds!

A new year lays before us with a whole calendar of days to fill with aspirations and memories in the making. Over the past year, many of us have learned to embrace the moment, find joy in the little things, and tell people how much we care about them every chance we get, knowing that tomorrow is waiting on the horizon, but not promised to each of us. I hope that each day you will wake with a sense of purpose and that on the days that purpose seems lost, you will persist to another bright morning.

Something that brings me joy in the mornings of cold winters is the colorful flutter of songbirds at my bird feeder. The area in which we live is prime for a variety of songbirds to inhabit with a plentiful mix of grassy meadows, early successional, and mid-successional forests. A fun way to draw songbirds close to your windows for viewing is to recycle your live Christmas tree into a Continue reading Tree Trimming for the Birds →

Find the Master Gardener, Winter 2020-21 Newsletter, “Through the Vine” posted here in PDF format. Articles include:

• Does the Woolly Bear Caterpillar Predict Winter Weather?
• CONNIE’S CORNER
• AHA! Children’s Learning Garden Receives State Master Gardener Excellence Award
• Wagnall’s Library Learning Gardens Receives State Master Gardener Award in Environmental Horticulture Category
• What Will the Holiday Season Look Like for You?
• Food Waste During the Holidays
• The Holiday Traditions of Rosemary
• How I Overwinter Geraniums
• A Gardener’s Winter Wait
• Purple Passion Vine (Passiflora, Maypop)
• The Gracious Snowdrop
• Shepherd’s Corner Ecology Center
• Winter Gardening for Old Folks
• The Gardener’s Book of Color by Andrew Lawson
• Praying Mantis Musings
• Fairfield County Ag Center is Still Open for Business via Appointments
• In and Around the Garden—You Won’t Want to Miss It!

– Christine Gelley, Agriculture and Natural Resources Educator, Noble County OSU Extension

What is your ‘perfect tree?’

In my opinion, there is something magical about a live evergreen tree decorated for the holidays that simply cannot be replaced by a synthetic look-a-like. Each year, I encourage my friends, family, and clientele to support local Christmas tree farmers and embrace the traditional experience of hunting for the perfect live tree.

Tree growers report that many Americans are concerned if utilizing live trees for decoration is “environmentally friendly”, but rest assured, it certainly is.

The National Christmas Tree Association reminds consumers that,

“It is much better environmentally to use a Continue reading Which live tree is right ‘fir’ you? →

– Christine Gelley, Agriculture and Natural Resources Educator, Noble County, OSU Extension

When placed in a box together, unripe fruit and veggies can be ripened!

Box ripening is a process that home gardeners can easily do to extend the productivity of their gardens later than the growing season. Although it seems like magic, there are scientific reasons why putting unripe fruits and veggies into a box, putting them on a shelf or under a bed, and finding ripe ones in a week or a few later happens.

The “magic” is attributed to ethylene gas. Ethylene is a growth hormone emitted from plant material as a gas. Ethylene regulates multiple aspects of plant growth including vegetative growth, fruit ripening, abscission (the hardening of plant cell tissue that causes leaf or fruit drop), and senescence (tissue aging).

When you place unripe fruit and actively ripening fruit in a box together, the Continue reading Box Ripening Success →

– Carri Jagger, Ag Educator Morrow County

There’s still plenty of time this fall to plant garlic. Photo by Timothy J. Malinich, Ohio State University Extension

If you have ever wanted to try your hand at growing garlic now is the time to think about planting it. Garlic should be planted between Halloween and Thanksgiving and you will want to start with a good seed source from a reputable seed company. Garlic is a relative of the onion, shallot, and leek. Garlic and onion can be differentiated by their leaves — garlic leaves are flat while onion leaves are round and hollow. A head of garlic is composed of individual cloves enclosed in a papery bulb cover. Each clove is actually a small bulb; that bulb is a collection of unexpanded leaves.

Your soil should be a well-drained sandy loam with a pH between 6.0 and 7.0. Garlic needs 1 to 1.25 pounds of 19-19-19 fertilizer per 100 square feet of bed or 1.5 to 2 pounds of 12-12-12 fertilizer per 100 square feet of bed. Only apply ½ of this at planting and then apply the other half in Continue reading PLANTING GARLIC . . . NO, it is not too late!! →

– Christine Gelley, Agriculture and Natural Resources Educator, Noble County OSU Extension

The logo of the Ohio Bat Working Group

Twenty percent of all mammal species worldwide are bats. Ohio is home to ten different types of bats. These creatures fulfill important roles in our ecosystems.

A single bat can consume its body weight in insects each night. Bats are found everywhere on Earth aside from the extreme desert and polar regions. Some are even responsible for pollinating popular crops.

The perfect pairing for a Halloween celebration is National Bat Week, which is held from October 24 to October 31.

Noble County OSU Extension will be celebrating bat week on social media all next week. Bat facts paired with pumpkin carving, building a bat box, and perspective to aide understanding threats to bat habitats and colonies will be shared on the Extension Office Facebook page every day at Noon. Follow the Facebook page online at https://www.facebook.com/osuenoble.

Bat Conservation International has stated that:

“Worldwide, about 24% of bats are considered critically endangered, endangered, or vulnerable. Bat numbers in the United States and Canada have declined dramatically as a new disease, White-Nose Syndrome (WNS), has killed over six million bats in just eight years. This, coupled with impact from wind energy, habitat alteration, and roost disturbances, has caused serious decline in bat populations in North America as well as around the world.”

Resources to plan your participation in National Bat Week are available online from Bat Conservation International at https://batweek.org/ and the Ohio Bat Working Group at https://u.osu.edu/obwg/.

Join us in the celebration!