Plant Management Systems: Urban Horticulture

The six-week East Mountain Gardening Series was offered once again in Moriarty during March and April in collaboration with Torrance and Bernalillo County Extension Agentss. The Santa Fe Count Agent was responsible for developing the schedule, the speaker line-up and contacting them. In addition, the Agent presented the lecture on Fruit Production. Each of the session had an average attendance of 11 people and some as many as 16.

A one hour presentation was made in Novemeber 2009 to a group of 6 women on from a neighborhood associaiton on Winterizing Your Garden. Along with the information presented, the Agent answered many questions from those in attendance. They all expressed their appreciation for the presentation and indicated that the information that was received was very helpful.

The Santa Fe County Agent has been serving on the City of Santa Fe Parks and Open Space Advisory Commission for the past 3 years. In January of 2010 a subcommittee of the Advisory Commission was formed in which the County Agent was elected to serve as chair of what is the Municipal Tree Board. Soon after its inception the Municipal Tree Board applied to the National Arbor Day Foundation for a Tree City USA designation and was granted the status by late February.

The Agent conducted a workshop for nine employees of the City of Santa Fe Parks Department on pest management and sprayer calibration. All of the participants were preparing to take their Public Applicator Certification exam.

Two different sections of the Master Gardener course were offered once again during the spring months of 2010 in Santa Fe and Eldorado. The 16 week course prepared a total of 58 citizens from Santa Fe County with research-based knowledge on proper gardening techniques of the Santa Fe area. The information which was gained will assist the course participant not only with their own gardening experiences, but also to assist the County Agent in disseminating sound home horticultural advice to other gardeners who have inquiries or wanting to know how to correct their own horticultural problems. Of the 58 students who enrolled in the classes, 52 completed the course successfully. Furthermore, of those students submitting their course evaluation forms, 82% rated the course as "highly satisfactory" in terms of meeting their expectations, with the other 18% of the participants rating it as "satisfactory".

In order to facilitate travel cost savings for the specialists once again, the Agent took on the responsible for contacting speakers, developing the course syllabus, ordering manuals for the Taos and Los Alamos County Master Gardener Programs as well.

On one August afternoon as it is now becoming tradition, many of the prospective students were invited to attend a social gathering at the Audobohn Center (which is one of the sites in which the Master Gardeners do some volunteer work) so that they could interact with Certified Master Gardeners and ask questions about the program. Through this event, it becomes more apparent to many of the prospective students that this is a volunteer organization.

As Master Gardener interns and Certified Master Gardeners, this group of volunteers continues to provide a great amount of service to the greater Santa Fe area in the form of education, outreach and community service. Over 3600 hours of volunteer service valued at minimum of $57,600 was provided by the Master Gardeners from the Fall season of 2009 to the late summer of 2010. Some of the ways in which the Master Gardeners provide volunteer hours to the County Extension Office are as follows:

The sixth annual Gardening Fair was organized and facilitated which included 9 different gardening-related presentations. For the fourth consecutive year, the master gardeners also developed a directory of landscape and gardening related businesses and organizations which were distributed at this one day event and other public outreach venues. Also inclusive of the Gardening Fair once again this year was the trade-fair in which 36 organizations and businesses were invited to have an information table. Due to the weather pattern the day prior to this event,the estimated attendance was 2000 people which is about the same as last year. The one thing that remains constant from last year is that there is a renewed interest in people wanting to grow their own food. A plant sale was held once again in conjunction with the annual Garden Fair with the proceeds being used to cover the cost of projects that the Master Gardeners have been working on or are in the process of developing. Some of the plants that were sold were plants which the Master Gardeners themselves propagated in the hoophouse. The planning of the Gardening Fair is becoming a year-round process.

The Master Gardener Home Gardening Hotline was staffed a little differently this year. Master Gardeners took turns in checking messages on the hotline answering machine at least twice per week from May to the end of October. This dedicated phone line provided by the County Extension Office was established in 2002 received an average of 8 calls per week.

Several demonstration gardens continue to be managed and cared for by the Master Gardeners. 1) The Herb Demonstration Garden continues to be maintained by the master gardeners. The committee responsible for this garden pulled up some of the existing plants and replanted them after they developed a new design for the plot. This demonstration garden which was originally developed as a Rio Grande Basin Initiative project , demonstrates the efficiency of drip irrigation in backyard gardens while demonstrating varieties of culinary herbs suitable to grow in the Santa Fe area. 2) The Xeric Demonstration Garden in front of the County Extension Office continues to be maintained to demonstrate low water use ornamental landscape plant material. It also serves as an outdoor classroom to teach the interns how to maintain these types of plant material. 3) The Randall Davey Audobohn Center Native Plant Demonstration Plot is a small garden which was planted and has been maintained since 2003. The purpose of the plot is to demonstrate native plants that can make for an attractive landscape and yet attract small wildlife into the landscape. 4) Anew demonstration garden which the master gardeners helped to maintain during the 2010 growing season was the garden at the Friends Meeting House. To support the master gardeners in their efforts, the Agent provided a pruning demonstration to the work crew at the Audobohn Center and another demonstration to the crew at the Friends Meeting House. Both groups expressed that being able to see how to prune the trees and shrubs in the way that they were done helped them to understand why certain practices were used.

The nurseries recognize that Master Gardener volunteers are well trained in the subject of horticulture and can provided unbiased and sound information to the public. Two nurseries in Santa Fe asked the Master Gardener Association to come back to their locations to staff information tables while an additional nursery offered the same opportunity. One location had an information table staffed on Thursday mornings from May thru July and the other two locations had an information tables staffed on Sunday afternoons. Through the information table the master gardeners provided literature, answered questions, promoted the hotline and promoted the Master Gardener course. Approximately 1400 contacts were made through the course of the market season with the vast majority of the contact being related to gardening questions or problems.

An average of 12 calls were received on a daily basis beginning in March on best gardening practices including pest identification and their control, vertebrate pest management, soil fertility, watering practices, pruning, and the use of mulches. These types of call continued on through mid-October when Santa Fe has experienced a hard killing frost. This does not take into account the office walk-in traffic which would average out to 2 persons per day.

Master Gardener Program


With the growing interest in cultivating home gardens the agent has responded to a growing interest for a master gardener program. The agent has met with nine individuals once a month to start organizing the program. The agent has also organized two separate meetings with a specialist and the nine original members of the group to start setting dates for classes and locations. The agent worked along with the Valencia County agent and the specialists from around the state to schedule the 11 week program and schedule. The agent had to work with the New Mexico State University Information Technology Specialist to upload all the presenters’ presentations to Centra. The agent also worked with the Colfax County Commissioners to be allowed access to the Commissioner’s Chambers for 11 weeks to hold the classes. The agent started and piloted the first master gardener program to be offered in Colfax County and the first to use centra to offer a master gardener program in this manner. The agent has 25 out of the original 30 successfully complete the first year of the pilot program in Colfax County. The agent has been taking registrations for the 2011 program and is almost full at 10 members.

Gardening in the Schools

The 4-H agent and the agent worked with the Mora/Colfax Head start to incorporate some gardening classes into a green house curriculum they were working on. There were 70 head start students that participated. The agents conducted a series of classes that included soil preparation, water and sun requirements, area needed to grow different fruits and vegetables, followed by hands on planting experience. The agents then went and conducted a workshop on transplanting from the in classroom green house to the outside green house. The home economist then followed up with a nutrition workshop. As a result the teachers reported that about 50% of the students took the starter plants home and proceeded to grow a garden this past summer.

Gardening in Northeast New Mexico

The agent presented a workshop on fruit and vegetable varieties that would be conducive to grow in high elevations and short growing seasons. The agent also presented on soil preparation, watering, fertilizing, and harvesting. There were 14 members in attendance and as a result five of the attendees reported that they had vegetable to enter at the Colfax County Fair this year due to some slight changes they made in their green houses and gardens that they learned from the presentation.