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O C T O B E R 2 0 1 8 V O L U M N E 1 9 , I S S U E 1 0
Queen Anne’s County Master Gardener Newsletter
The Watering Can I N S I D E T H I S
I S S U E :
Coordinators
Corner
2
MG Meetings 2
2019 MG Meetings 3
20th Anniversary
Updates
4
Centreville Day 4
Ask A Master
Gardener
5
Spiders in the Mist
continued
6
Longwood
Gardens trip
7
Demo Garden 8
Bay-Wise 9
Volunteer
Opportunities
10
Continuing
Education 11
MANTS 11
MG Hours 11
Calendar 12-13
Spiders in the Mist Taken from: Bug of the Week
By: Dr. Mike Raupp
One delightful meteorological event marking the transition from summer to autumn in the mid-Atlantic region is fog, small water droplets suspended just above the ground as moist air cools. Morning fog reveals the numerically astounding and perhaps somewhat dis-turbing presence of spiders whose webs usually go unnoticed in the landscape. Last week on one of these misty morn-ings, my neighbor’s pachysandra bed was festooned with more than a dozen gossamer webs. The webs were not the typical vertical orbs of concentric circle supported by radial strands like those of black and yellow garden spiders, spotted
orb weavers, or marbled orb weavers we met in previous episodes. Rather, these webs consisted of horizontal 8 by 12 inch sheets, each bearing a small remarkably round funnel at one end. The proprietor of the web, a handsome dappled brown and tan spider, often perched near the mouth of the funnel. My attempts to photograph these beauties were regularly thwarted by the agile spiders’ ability to disappear down the funnel in the blink of an eye. Funnel weaving spiders, a.k.a. grass spiders, are often confused by
Continued on page 6
Photo Credit: Dr. Paula Shrewsbury Ready to pounce on an unlucky passerby, the dappled Penn-sylvania Grass Spider waits in the mouth of her funnel.
P A G E 2
T H E W A T E R I N G C A N
Hello Everyone! I hope you’re doing well. The question on everyone’s mind—Will fall ever get here??? Just a few notes for this month:
Our 20th Anniversary Celebration is in a WEEK! Thank you to everyone who pitched in to help plan this event.
Now’s the time to start entering summer hours. If you enter hours in the month of September you’ll be entered in a drawing for a prize!
Exciting news— I’ll be out on maternity leave mid February to mid April! Sabine will spearhead the newsletter and MG Jim Persels will run our monthly meetings during this time. MG’s Cathy Tengwall & Laura Klingler will need help with the plant sale and greenhouse. Please let me know if you’d like to help with any other programs.
Best, Rachel
COORDINATOR’S CORNER
Meeting Date Topic Time Place
October 17, 2018 20th Anniversary Celebration Evening Prospect Bay Country Club
November 21, 2018 2019 Planning Meeting 9:30-11:30 a.m.
TBD
December 11, 2018 Trip to Longwood Gardens 8 A.M.- 5 P.M.
Cost $50
2018 MG Meetings
Planning has begun for our 2019 Meetings. If there is a speaker you’d like me to book please email me the information. We will need a speaker for our May, July, and November meetings. Also, if there’s a MG trip you’d like me to schedule I’d love to hear about it!
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Meeting Date Topic Time Place
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
Spotted Lanternfly, Kim Rice with the Maryland De-partment of Agriculture, Plant Protection
9:30-11:30
Queen Anne's County Government Building 110 Vincit St. Centreville, MD 21617 Meeting Room 1
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Lavender, Jay Falstead, Calico Fields
9:30-11:30
Queen Anne's County Government Building 110 Vincit St. Centreville, MD 21617 Meeting Room 1
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
Natural Lands Project at Washington College, Dan Small
9:30-11:30
Queen Anne's County Government Building 110 Vincit St. Centreville, MD 21617 Meeting Room 1
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
Ticks, Emily Zobel Universi-ty of Maryland Extension-Dorchester County
9:30-11:30
Queen Anne's County Government Building 110 Vincit St. Centreville, MD 21617 Meeting Room 1
Thursday, May 15, 2019 Speaker: TBD 9:30-11:30
Queen Anne's County Government Building 110 Vincit St. Centreville, MD 21617 Meeting Room 1
Wednesday, June 12, 2019 Picnic Time: TBD
Liz & Bob Hammonds 215 Thomas Rd Centreville, MD 21617
Wednesday, July 17, 2019 Speaker: TBD 5:30-7:30 Place TBD
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
“Pollinators,” Kerry Wixted, Maryland Department of Natural Resources
5:30-7:30 Place TBD
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Native Tree ID, Agnes Ked-menecz, UME Woodland Stewards Educator
9:30-11:30
Wye Research and Educa-tion Center
Wednesday, November 20, 2019 Speaker: TBD
9:30-11:30 Place TBD
December-Date TBD
2019 MG Meetings
P A G E 4
T H E W A T E R I N G C A N
20th Anniversary Our 20th Anniversary Celebration is a little over a week away and the committee has been busy bees planning the event. Here are a few ways you can help with the event— Help with Centerpieces-Tuesday, October 16th at 1 PM at the
UME Office in Centreville. We need at least 2 people. Email Ra-chel to sign up.
Office Help-Tuesday, October 16th in the AM. We need at least 2
people. Email Rachel to sign up.
Centreville Day
Wednesday, October 17th at
Prospect Bay Country Club
5:30 to 6:30 pm Social Hour
6:30 to 7:15 pm Plated Dinner
7:15 pm to 8 pm Volunteer Recognition
This year we’re going to have a booth at Centreville Day on Satur-day, October 27th from 11-3. We need several volunteers to help with the booth. You can volunteer for a specific slot or for the entire event. This is a family centered event so we will be doing a fall craft with the kids. Setup 10-11AM (2 people need-
ed) Booth Volunteer: 11-1 PM (2
people needed)
Booth Volunteer 1-3 (2 people needed)
Clean up 3-3:30(2 people need-ed)
I’ll also be prepping the craft for Centreville Day on Monday, Octo-ber 22nd at 9AM at the UME Cen-treville Office. If you are handy with a hot glue gun this is the volunteer time slot for you. I need at least 2 people to sign up. (I’m also looking for extra pine cones if you have any in your yard) Email Rachel to sign up for any of these time slots.
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It must have been a case of “hurricane mania” because, even though we had quite a few visitors to our booth at the Farmers Market, there were defi-nitely fewer overall visitors and fewer vendors as well. So, even though the weather in the afternoon was quite nice, I think people had it in their minds that there was supposed to be a hurricane, and they had cleaned out the grocery stores and were going to stay home and “hunker down.” No matter! We had about 25 peo-ple stop by to look at our beautiful dis-play board about butterflies. We had sev-eral conversations with visitors about ei-ther not seeing many butterflies this sum-mer or seeing lots of them. Many of the visitors asked what to plant to feed the butterflies so we had discussions about milkweed for the monarch caterpillars, and parsley, fennel, and dill for the black swallowtail caterpillars. We had a big dis-cussion about a caterpillar that someone had put on Facebook that looks very simi-lar to a black swallowtail, which of course it wasn’t, but after much “google” search-ing, we discovered it was the red-spotted purple butterfly. Apparently, the caterpil-lar has learned to disguise itself as a bird dropping to discourage predators from eating it! Kudos to Karen Wimsatt who identified the butterfly right away, but we still had to satisfy our minds with a “google” search. These photos are cour-tesy of Dr. Mike Raupp, Professor of Ento-mology, at the University of Maryland, and here is a link to his “Bug of the Week” page.
Ask a Master Gardener
Kent Island Farmers Market
Submitted by: MG Liz Hammond &
Deane Horowitz, KI Plant Clinic Chair
In addition to the display board about butterflies, we had the usual handouts about gardening tips for September. Many people who stopped by complained that their toma-toes did not do as well this year as in the past – maybe be-cause of all the rain we had?! A lot of visitors said that they had already cleaned up their gardens. Deane and myself, were joined by Karen Wimsatt, Jackie Kelly, Suzanne Eaton, and Cathay Miller. Next month, October, is always a fun month at the farmers market and the “Ask a Master Gardener” booth. We always do a Halloween theme with a display board about “Spiders – Friend or Foe.” Hopefully, we will have the bat house again, and always lots of handouts about fall gardening tips. We encourage any of you who have not yet volunteered to join in on this experience on any of the second Thursdays of the month from 3:00 to 6:30 PM at Christ Church, Stevensville, 830 Romancoke Rd. Liz Hammond 410-758-2992 [email protected] Deane Horowitz 410-604-0969 [email protected] Upcoming Plant Clinic Dates: (at the Kent Island Farmers Mar-ket-unless otherwise noted)
10/11/18 11/08/18
12/13/18 To sign up for a particular day email Liz, come to an MG meeting or click on this link: http://signup.com/go/qWhYAOw
T H E W A T E R I N G C A N
P A G E 6
Spiders in the Mist
Continued from page 1
name with their more famous and perfidious relatives the funnel web spiders. The bite of Australian funnel web spider is potentially deadly to humans whereas the bite of Age-lenopsis pennsylvanica, the Pennsylvania Grass Spider, is deadly only to their tiny insect prey. It is difficult to image how a human could be bitten by these shy spiders. Despite the ability of the web to capture droplets of fog, the silken strands of funnel weaving spi-ders cannot snare small insects. They lack the sticky polymer found on the bug-catching strands of spider webs like those of the large orb weavers. Instead of trapping prey, funnel weaving spiders rely on a lightning fast attack and fang-strike to immobilize hapless victims that blunder onto their web. Like many other arthropods, including the praying mantis and black widow spider, the female Pennsylvania grass spider engages in sexual cannibalism. The she-spider often eats her mate. Why does she do this? Is she grumpy or did her suitor’s performance fail to meet expectations? In a clever study scien-tists discovered that hungry and particularly aggressive females tended to be cannibals. More importantly, the cannibalistic females produced heavier egg cases and the eggs within each case experienced increased suc-cess of hatching. If you are a female Pennsyl-vania Grass Spider, it pays to eat your mate. So for us humans, enjoy the handiwork of funnel weaving spiders on a foggy autumn morning; but if you are a male funnel weaving spider, think twice about who you date.
Acknowledgements
Bug of the Week thanks non-cannibalistic Dr. Shrewsbury for photographing and wrangling
Photo Credit: Dr. Paula Shrewsbury A foggy morning mist reveals the handiwork of funnel weaving spiders on a small boxwood shrub in a neighbor’s yard.
spiders for this week’s episode and Dr. Shultz for providing the identification. Two excellent references, “Some Commonly Encountered Pennsylvania Spiders” by Steve Jacobs and “Sexual cannibalism is associated with female behavioural type, hunger state and increased hatching success” by Aric Berning and col-leagues, were consulted.
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T H E W A T E R I N G C A N
P A G E 8
August Monthly Tips
Library Rain Garden Clean Up Schedule
Thursday Clean Up Schedule During the summer if the weather is hot we’ll
start earlier than 9 AM an email will be sent out prior to notify everyone
Thursday, October 18th at 9 AM
DEMO GARDEN AT THE CENTREVILLE
LIBRARY Submitted by: MG Debbie Pusey
Last month Queen Anne’s County Department of Pub-lic Works and Unity Land-scaping did a major over-haul of the Centreville Li-brary Rain Garden and it looks brand new. They re-
moved some un-wanted plants that had taken over, weeded, put down new river rock, cleaned up the outflow drainage and they mulched. After everything was said and done the Demo Garden crew did a walk through to
identify the plants that were left. There were sev-eral bare areas that will need to be replanted at our October 18th “clean up” date. All are welcome, please bring your shovels, gloves, and water.
P A G E 9 V O L U M N E 1 9 , I S S U E 1 0
BAY-WISE Submitted by: MG Debbie Pusey
Bay-Wise Advanced Training was well attended by Master Gardeners from across the mid-shore. In addition to two days of training, we also did a site visit and certification of MG Bar-bara Grahams property. Towards the end of September we’ve had several Bay-Wise consul-tation. Our next Shore Rivers event will be on Wednesday, October 24th from 4:30-6 PM at CBEC. If you’d like to volunteer for this event for this event please email Debbie at [email protected] .
Vegetables Plant a late crop of basil, cilantro,
and dill. Plant a last crop of snap beans the
first week of August. Plant cool season crops, including
spinach, lettuce, carrots, beets, broccoli, cauliflower, Chinese cab-bage, turnips, kale and mustard. Keep seedlings moist and mulched.
Order garlic, walking onions, and shallots for fall planting.
Harvest leaves of herbs before they flower. Pick individually and dry indoors, or hang the stems in a dry, semi-shady room. Store dry leaves in air-tight jars. Fresh basil leaves freeze well in plastic bags that can be sealed.
Keep weeding and watering.
Lawn In dry periods grasses go dormant
but recover when rain returns. Newly seeded or sodded lawns may actually be dead and will need to be reseeded.
Mid-August through mid-October is the best time to start new lawns and renovate or overseed existing lawns. We recommend a turf-type tall fescue cultivar at a rate of 4 lbs. of seed per 1,000 sq. ft. of area for overseeding, or 8 lbs. per 1000 sq. ft. for new lawns.
P A G E 1 0
T H E W A T E R I N G C A N
Volunteer Opportunities
Nature Club in Chestertown Jennie Lee (Soil Conservation), Beth Hill (4-H) and Sabine are running a Nature Club for 3rd-5th graders. Most students come from Gar-nett. The club meets every 1st and 3rd Monday of the month at the yellow building (Library in Chestertown), from 4 until about 5:15pm. Over 4o kids are signed up so we are going to need some extra hands! Our next meeting will be Monday, October 1. That time we are prob-ably going to start out at the playground be-hind Garnett (320 Calvert Street) to collect leaves etc for some sort of fall art project. Please contact Sabine Harvey if you would like to help out on October 1 or any subsequent Mondays (1st and 3rd of the month). [email protected] or 410-778-1661.
Garden Program at Kent County Middle School Just like last year, we will be providing a pro-gram at Kent County Middle Schools on a num-ber of Thursday mornings. We did this last year as well and it was pretty successful. The main idea is that we work in the garden, try to grow food and prepare/cook food as well. We will have about 20 students from grades 6-8. We meet every three weeks Time: 7:30-9:00am!!!! We will have the same group of students from September-January and a new group from Feb-May. Last year the students made a salad, sweet po-tato pancakes and tortillas from scratch; we dissected flowers and started seeds indoors; we made insect hotels and did a lot of work in the garden. The dates are as follows: Fall: 10/17 (this is a Wednesday), 11/8, 11/29, 12/20, 1/10 Spring: 2/7, 2/28, 3/21, 4/11, 5/2, 5/23
Please contact Sabine Harvey if you would be interested in helping out with one or more of these sessions. [email protected], 410-778-1661
Centreville Day-Saturday, Octo-ber 27 See page 4 for details
20th Anniversary Celebration See page 4 for details
Newsletter
Do you have a knack for writing? Sub-mitting an article to the newsletter is a great way to earn a few hours during the winter months. To submit an article email Rachel
Bay-Wise River Friendly Yards partnership with Shore Rivers-We have teamed up with Shore Rivers and their “River Friendly Yards” initiative. Shore Rivers uses target-ed, science-based outreach from water quality monitoring data to target residen-tial areas. With this data on hand work-shops are held in communities that could benefit from nutrient and sediment re-duction strategies thus creating a “River-Friendly Yard.” For this program, home-owners learn that a river-friendly yard is one that mimics the natural environment and filters runoff with the goal of improv-ing water quality. Upcoming workshops are: Wednesday, October 24th at 4:30 PM at a CBEC 4 volunteers will be needed. To volunteer email Debbie Pusey at [email protected]
Howdy Partner…. It’s time to turn in Volunteer Hours
Before you know it December will be here, so get a head start and send in those volunteer hours. To access the online tracking system go to http://www.agnr.umd.edu/mg Every month from
now until the end of the year one MG’s who’s turned in their hours will win a prize.
Continuing Education
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For a complete list of eXtension webinars visit: https://learn.extension.org/events/upcoming 2018 All Bugs Good and Bad Webinar Series: Lice, Scabies, and Mites on Friday, November 2 at 2:00
pm EDT https://learn.extension.org/events/3263 Weed Management in the Garden & Landscape: Understanding Herbicides on Monday, December 17
at 2:00 pm EST https://extension.zoom.us/j/189114564 University of Maryland Webinars and Online Classes can be found: http://extension.umd.edu/mg/volunteer-resources/horticulture-webinars-online-classes-and-other-events
Save the date for 2019….. Show Dates: January 9-11, 2019 This trade show is the place where a diverse group of green industry professions from across the country showcase new plant varieties, tools, and other horti-
cultural related products. MANTS is open to anyone, you just have to pay to get in and you must register prior to the event. Registration to attend MANTS is $15.00 through 12/7/18 and is $20.00 beginning 12/8/18. If you are going to register to attend click on attendee registration not media or exhibitor. http://www.mants.com/attendees/After clicking on on-line registration, click on attendee, then option 3 "new registration." If it asks for a company name you can put UME Master Gardener.
T H E W A T E R I N G C A N
P A G E 1 2
Newsletter Submissions Due
October 2018 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 20th Anni-
versary meeting 1 PM at Extension Office
4 5 6 Advanced
Bay-Wise Training Site Visit
7 8 9 10 11 Kent
Island Plant Clinic 3:30-6:30 P.M.
12 13
14 15 16 20th An-
niversary Cen-terpieces 1 PM at UME Centre-ville Office
17 20th
Anniversary
Celebration
18 Planting
Day at the Cen-treville Library Rain Garden 9 AM
19 20
21 22 Work on
craft for Cen-treville Day. 9 AM at UME Centreville Office
23 24 25 26 27 Centre-
ville Day 11:00-3:00 in Centre-ville
28 29 30 31
Rachel Out of Office for Professional Development
Office Closed
Newsletter Submissions Due
P A G E 1 3 V O L U M N E 1 9 , I S S U E 1 0
November 2018 Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3
4 5 Plant Sale
Meeting 11 A.M. at UME Office in Cen-treville
6 7 8 Kent Is-
land Plant Clin-ic 3:30-6:30 P.M.
9 10
11 12 RSVP
due for Long-wood Gardens Trip
13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30
Office Closed
Office Closed
Office Closed
Newsletter Submissions Due
University of Maryland Extension
Queen Anne’s County
505 Railroad Ave.
Suite 4
Centreville, MD 21617
Vision Statement: A healthier world through environmental stewardship
It is the policy of the University of Maryland and University of Maryland Extension, that no person shall be subjected to discrimination on the grounds of race, color, gender, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital or parental status, or disability. Equal opportunity employers and equal access programs.
QACMG Website: http://extension.umd.edu/
queen-annes-county/master-gardener-home-
gardening
QACMG Facebook Page: https://
www.facebook.com/
QueenAnnesCountyMasterGardeners
University of Maryland Extension
505 Railroad Avenue, Suite 4
Centreville MD, 21617
Phone: (410) 758-0166
October Newsletter Submission
due on
October 26th
