Plant Management Systems: Urban Horticulture

Agent, at request of Bernalillo County Parks and Recreation Land Management Division, developed a training course to prepare Land Management personnel to take the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) certification exam. The request was based on County mid-level staff wishing to improve the professionalism of their field crews, with regard to tree care, while also allowing said crew members to obtain independent certification of skills and knowledge, useful to them for professional development in addition to actual field practices. The target audience was ten individuals who are responsible for a wide range of operations, from turf and tree maintenance to irrigation system repair, etc.
The Agent, who has held ISA certification himself for several years, used the ISA's own 16-chapter study guide as a text for the class, and developed PowerPoint presentations for each of the chapters. Classes were held roughly monthly starting in August, 2011, and terminating in January, 2012. Each class lasted about 4 hours, and covered two chapters.
The workers took the test as part of approximately 20 individuals who tested at the 2012 Think Trees Conference, an annual tree care conference occurring in Albuquerque early each year. As an aside, this conference brings in national-caliber speakers, with an typical attendance around 350 people. The Agent has been very involved in the non-profit entity which puts on this conference since the beginning of his time with NMSU. Of the ten Bernalillo County workers who took the exam, only two were successful in passing it. Of the approximately 20 persons who took the exam, only three passed (two of whom were Bernalillo County workers who had taken the prep course being described herein).
The Agent had the class members do an evaluation, after having taken the test. The evaluation asked five questions: 1) Did you learn new information and or skills? 2) Do you thing you will use this new information/skill set in the future? 3) Will this new information/skill set be directly useful to you? 4) Prior to taking the Exam, how useful did you feel the class was? 5) After taking the exam, how useful did the class actually turn out to be?
100% responded "yes" to both question 1 and question 2. For question 3, 20% felt the new information would be "somewhat" useful, 20% felt it would be "quite a bit" useful and 60% felt it would be "very much" useful. For question 4, prior to taking the exam, 20% felt that the class was "somewhat" useful, 60% felt it was "quite a bit" useful, and 20% felt is was "very much" useful. For question 5, after taking the exam, 30% felt the class had been "somewhat" useful, 50% felt it had been "quite a bit" useful, and 20% felt it had been "very much" useful.
It is helpful to know that this particular audience was composed of men who spend their time working outdoors, and both the classroom setting of the class and the paper testing procedure were a bit out of their comfort zone. Nonetheless, it would appear that the class was helpful, in that 2 out of 3 people who passed the exam had taken the class. In the future, the Agent would try to find ways to make some of the learning more hands-on, as well as some direct test-taking skill development.

Advised on a greenhouse hoop house construction project in Alexandria, LA. I was contacted by a former student at NMSU who is currently the Keller Enterprises Director of the Good Food Project in Alexandria, LA. I advised via phone on resources and supplies necessary to build one of the NMSU greenhouse projects. The greenhouse was built on November 19, 2011 in Alexandria, LA.

Over 42 news paper articles were writen on urban horticulture that were published in three different news papers or broadcst on 5 different radio station. Also the county agent worked with local TV-22 cable vision and produced 6 program on urban horticulture of different topics.

Eddy County master gardeners supported the fourth annual farmers market this year. Also teh second annual community garden for the general public. They also started a community garden with produce going to the soup kitchen and they supervised a therapeutic garden at Carlsbad Mental Health Treasure house and Marvin Watts center. on the the therapist told me there was a young man in his early twenty's who had not responded to any activities of therapy for the last eight years, who enthusiastically participated in the garden project. His parents were delighted.

Eddy County Agent continued to work with the therapeutic garden at Crossroads drug rehab. center. The clients from last year in a voluntary return survey said the garden made a difference. There was a 62.6% return in surveys. Of these 43% had continued to garden in some fashion.

ABC Garden Club
A one-half hour presentation on the Basics of Pruning was presented to the ABC Garden Club in Santa Fe at their January monthly meeting. The 23 members expressed that the information presented re-affirmed their knowledge about pruning and that things haven’t changed much in the last 5 years, but were still grateful for the presentation.

Santa Fe Community Gardens
A presentation was given to 13 participants representing three city-sponsored community gardens on the basic home vegetable gardening. Some of those in attendance also interjected their ideas and experiences. After an hour and a half presentation, everyone present felt that a great discussion had be had.

City of Santa Fe Parks and Open Space Advisory Commission
The Santa Fe County Agent has been serving on the City of Santa Fe Parks and Open Space Advisory Commission for the past 4 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. As requirement to retain “Tree City USA” status, some type of an event must be had as part of Arbor Day. Therefore a tree planting and tree seedling distribution was had in which three trees were planted along a City trail with the assistance of 26 students from a private school and 200 seedling were given to those in attendance. Furthermore, another 500 seedling were given away at the annual City of Santa Fe Community Day.

Holy Cross Catholic School Garden
Assistance was provided to Holy Cross Catholic Schools in Santa Cruz in the development of a school garden. The goals of the garden were to: 1) provide some hands-on science learning on how food is grown, 2) teach the youth the vocabulary associated with growing vegetables, 3)teach the students about citizenship be having them donate the food to homeless or displaced citizens. The agent provided guidance in the purchasing of equipment and supplies utilizing monies the school received from the Catholic Foundation. Crops grown included: carrots, radishes, peas, scallions, pumpkins, chile, squash, jalapenos, cucumbers and plenty of tomatoes. The younger students were presented information on the life cycle of the plant –from seed to fruit , and the older students learned about the composition of soils and their the macro-nutrients. In the spring of 2011 each one of the 140+ got an opportunity to plant a crop either directly into the ground or to start some transplants. The garden was worked by volunteers over the summer. Upon the start of the new school year in late summer, the students assisted in harvesting the produce. All produce was donated to the San Martin de Porres Soup Kitchen in Espanola. Over 250 pounds of squash, 70 pounds of cucumbers, 12 pounds of radishes, 5 pounds of carrots, 25 pound s of chile, 15 pounds of jalapenos, 28 pounds of scallions, 80 pounds of tomatoes and68 pounds of pumpkins were donated to the soup kitchen. One of the volunteers at the soup kitchen expressed that one of the recipients had indicated that her family wouldn’t have been eating fresh vegetables had it not been for what they had received from the donations to the soup kitchen.

Master Gardener Program
Two different sections of the Master Gardener course were offered once again during the spring months of 2011 in Santa Fe. The second one was not offered in Eldorado this year for the reason that no one from the community was interested in serving as a host. The 16 week course prepared a total of 60 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 60 students who enrolled in the classes, 58 completed the course successfully. Furthermore, of those students submitting their course evaluation forms, 88% rated the course as "highly satisfactory" in terms of meeting their expectations, with the other 12% 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 Los Alamos County Master Gardener Program as well. Furthermore, due to vacancies in the some Specialist positions, some of the veteran Master Gardeners and Extension Agents assisted with instructing some of the class sessions. This Agent taught the sessions on Tree and Small Fruits in Santa Fe.
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 3700 hours of volunteer service valued at minimum of $59,500 was provided by the Master Gardeners from the Fall season of 2010 to the late summer of 2011. Some of the ways in which the Master Gardeners provide volunteer hours to the County Extension Office are as follows:
The seventh annual Gardening Fair was organized and facilitated which included four different gardening-related presentations and other short demonstrations. For the fifth 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. Also inclusive of the Gardening Fair once again this year was the trade-fair in which 34 organizations and businesses were invited to have an information table. The estimated attendance was 1900 people which is slightly less than 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. The planning of the Gardening Fair is becoming a year-round process.
The Master Gardener Home Gardening Hotline is staffed by Master Gardeners who take 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 4 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. 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. To support the master gardeners in their efforts, the Agent provided a pruning demonstration to the work crew at the Audobohn once again in April. The group 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.

In addition to some of the other Master Gardener projects, the Master Gardeners Continuing Education committee offered a Gardening 101 series in later winter which consisted of a series of4 class sessions. The class was full with 30 participants each time. The committee also co-sponsored a Meadows conference in the fall of 2010 with the Santa Fe Botanical Gardens. The attendance at the conference was 60 in which participants learned about the establishment of natural meadows in landscapes.

Day-to-Day Contacts
An average of 6 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.