This year, 3 WSU Extension Master Gardener volunteers were recognized at the Advanced Education Conference for their dedication and commitment to the Master Gardener program.

Below are excerpts from their nominations. Please check out the awards page for more details about the awards, their 2023 recipients, as well as fellow nominees.

Yakima County Master Gardeners are busy bees with three thriving gardens that allow them to get their hands dirty. A fourth, the Kamiakin Food Garden, is in the developmental stage. Each garden serves a unique purpose in benefitting the community.

If you are in town, come visit the Garden. For a guided tour, call our clinic at (509)574-1600.

While we were busy building our soil in 2021- 2022, we met several times with the Highland Food Bank managers to determine which vegetables to grow for their clients. From there, our food garden plan was developed. Twenty-eight 28 raised beds, each 20 feet long, were created. Using steel stakes and cattle panels, we built trellises and tunnels for our peas, green beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, and tomatillos. A local tree service donated 20 yards of chips for the pathways, and we hauled in partially composted yard waste for mulch. Finally, we were ready to plant our food garden.

In April 2022, we started our tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos in the greenhouse. In the first part of May, we added squash and cucumbers to the greenhouse starts and then began planting our early direct-seed crops, such as peas, carrots, and radishes, in the garden beds.

Our harvest for 2022 was just over 2,800 pounds of produce, which was delivered to Highland Food Bank. We changed a couple of crops out for 2023 based on the foodbank’s needs and requests, and to date, we have harvested 2,600 pounds. We recently had a record-setting harvest of 125 pounds of tomatoes in one week with more on the way!

This year, classes were added to what we do at the West Valley Food Garden. Our vegetable gardening classes have been a big hit with attendees.

We are extremely proud of our awesome garden and what we have accomplished. Developing, planning, planting, and harvesting has been a labor of love for all of us.

As the winter solstice approaches, the sun travels its shortest path through our sky, marking the longest night of the year – and the return of longer days of sunlight.

The solstice, December 21 this year, is a turning point for plants, too. “We depend on plants for our food, shelter, and medicine, and plants depend on the sun. The return of the sun is the return of life and the promise that life will continue,” says Kevin Moss, Student & Public Engagement Coordinator at Cornell Botanic Gardens in Ithaca, NY.

Kevin explains that many plants are woven into winter solstice and holiday traditions around the world. Across cultures, evergreens represent nature’s hardiness and cycle of rebirth. A Celtic tradition holds that bringing evergreens indoors gives woodland spirits and faeries a warm place to spend the winter and, in return, brings good fortune.

In Norse mythology, mistletoe, an evergreen parasitic vine, signifies returning love and life to the world. Oaks, considered one of the most powerful trees, are the traditional choice for the Yule log burned on the night of the winter solstice. “It’s about bringing light into the darkness,” adds Kevin.

Cornell’s winter garden is laid out with a central courtyard and concentric circles, ancient symbols for the sun, and the circle of life. The garden features plants with persistent colorful fruit, exfoliating bark, and interesting growth forms like curly willow. Many are found in Pacific Northwest gardens, too: evergreens, dwarf conifers, winterberry, and deciduous trees like river birch, paper birch, paperbark maple, and hawthorne. Dogwoods can be coppiced every few years to produce bright, colorful twigs on full display in winter.

How are plants responding to the arrival of the solstice? Many have begun their winter survival strategies, surviving on the nutrients and energy stored in their roots. As the days shorten, their roots have released water, and the resulting concentration of sugars and starches acts as a kind of antifreeze.

Plants can track the length of daylight or darkness through special light-sensitive proteins, a phenomenon known as photoperiodism. According to OSU research, the amount of uninterrupted darkness – not the length of daylight – plays a key role in determining flower formation for most plant types.

Popular winter-blooming houseplants like poinsettia, Christmas or holiday cactus, and the tropical succulent Kalanchoe are known as “short-day” plants. Exposure to long nights of uninterrupted darkness triggers their growth response. Once the minimum threshold for darkness is met, the plant progresses from leaf formation to flower formation.

Some summer-blooming plants and crops are “long-day” plants, requiring a short night to flower; examples include aster, coneflower, spinach, and potatoes. Others are “day-neutral,” and will form flowers regardless of day length; examples are begonia, geranium, tomatoes, and corn.

Indoor lighting can be used to manipulate light and darkness patterns and stimulate flowering. Adding light to a long-day plant to stimulate bud formation and early blooming is a common practice in the nursery and floral industries. Covering short-day plants at least 12 hours a day several weeks before their normal blooming period can stimulate early flowering.

Outdoors, winter-flowering shrubs enter their blooming cycles as the days shorten and temperatures drop. Many are evergreen: heath and heather, hellebore, camellia, mahonia, daphne, and others. They can still be planted in early December if the ground is workable.

Excessive artificial light at night can disrupt plant life cycles. It can also interfere with wildlife patterns such as migration, navigation, and reproduction. To help reduce these impacts, consider less disruptive outdoor lights with yellow, pink, orange, or red tints. White and blue lights can be shaded and facing down to reduce light pollution. The International Dark Sky Association https://www.darksky.org/ offers more information about outdoor lighting that can meet safety needs and improve efficiency while reducing unnecessary light.

In winter, there is still plenty of microbial activity in the soil. Many microorganisms can withstand the winter cold. Their metabolic activity slows, but they continue to break down organic matter and release mineral nutrients to support plant growth in the spring.

Well-insulated soils – whether by snowfall or organic matter like compost, duff, mulch, or cover crop residues – are better able to absorb and store moisture. Layering organic matter in the winter garden has the added benefits of maintaining consistent soil temperature, helping deter weed germination, improving soil tilth, and preventing erosion.

Healthy soil also offers winter food and shelter for wildlife. Songbirds, toads, worms, spiders, and insects benefit from a rich layer of duff. To recreate what might be found in a healthy forest, use a combination of shredded leaves, twigs, moss and lichen fragments, conifer needles, and wood chips. Decomposers will break down the organic matter, releasing nutrients to support new spring growth.

As we welcome the winter solstice, take a walk in a garden. If it’s a sunny day, observe your shadow, the longest of the year, at high noon. Celebrate the return of longer days of sunlight and new life in the garden.

Originally published in the Port Townsend Leader on December 14, 2022.

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**Editor’s Note: Thank you, Debbie and the whole AEC team, for your work on the conference!

Summer 2023 was productive for Spokane County Master Gardeners. Two new demonstration gardens were created to encourage informed landscaping in our area.

A Perennial Demonstration Garden was created near the main entrance to the Extension building, and a Native Plant Demonstration Garden was created at the Quarry site in collaboration with the Spokane Conservation District, the Spokane County Noxious Weed Control Board, and Spokane County Certified Naturalists.

The creation of the Perennial Demonstration Garden started in early June with a design outlined in the existing turf. In that area, the turf was cut out and turned over, in place, to smother the grass. In late July, a deep layer of three-way mix soil was added to cover the upended roots, which had had enough time to dry out and kill the turf. On August 29, a group of dedicated Master Gardeners gathered to put donated perennials into the soil. Some of those plants had been stored for over a year, bringing this long-held dream to beautiful and satisfying fruition.

The Native Plant Demonstration Garden is located at the Spokane Conservation District Quarry site near the Master Gardener Raised Bed Vegetable Gardens. An Eastern Washington State University graduate student and employee of the Weed Board, Thurman Johnson, received a grant from the Washington Native Plant Society that provided the plants for this new garden. The collaboration worked through the spring and summer months to plan and prepare the garden site. Spokane Conservation District staff created the infrastructure for the Native Plant Demonstration Garden, including gravel paths, rock/timber placements, and a deep layer of arborist chips. On September 1, a group of Master Gardeners, Certified Naturalists, EWU students, Weed Board staff, and Conservation District staff joined together to plant over 300 native plants on the prepared site.

These new demonstration gardens join the Waterwise Demonstration & Research Garden, the Annual/Bulb Demonstration Garden, the Shade (Hosta & Heuchera) Demonstration Garden, and the other garden sites at the Spokane County Extension building. Spokane Master Gardeners plan to build more demonstration gardens in the future to aid in educating the public about horticultural and environmental stewardship topics.

On the first of August, 24 Master Gardeners attended an afternoon meet-and-greet hosted by the Foundation. The get-together included an informal talk on rose care by Dr. Gary Ritchie, nationally recognized rose expert and de facto leader of our rose garden volunteers. After a break for beverages and snacks, Gary and other existing volunteers led the newcomers on a tour of the rose garden, including a hands-on session on deadheading (removing spent blossoms to encourage new flowers).

A full dozen Master Gardeners signed up to continue volunteering in our garden! Midge Price, current president of the Master Gardener Foundation of Thurston County, was pleased to see such a big response. She says that our rose gardeners and Master Gardeners have many aligned interests. We all
look forward to a continuing friendship: the rose garden will get extra care, and the new gardeners will be able to learn from the best.”

What a fine example of alliance with community members! We at MGFTC look forward to a great community alliance!