Ever
wonder
why a
plant just
won’t take
off?
Here’s a
hint….
It’s not the
plant’s
fault.
OSU Baker County
Extension Service
Janice Cowan
Horticulture Agent
2600 East Street
Baker City, OR 97814
Ph. 541.523.6418
Fax 541-523-8225
[email protected]
Eastern Oregon Gardening
January 2017
Getting The Yard
I Want!
Every year I strive to get the perfect
yard I want. I read garden magazines,
go to professional horticulture workshops, watch OPB gardening programs
AND put on my own gardening classes
and invite instructors with expertise to
teach them. Mindy and I have planned
quite a gardening series this year, for
us and for you. We call it “Getting The
Yard I Want”. We have divided our
program into two series, one on
designing your landscape, the other on
edible landscape.
The “Designing Your Landscape”
series will include:
How to Know What I Want: this
class explores different means to help
you understand what you want and
ideas on planning your landscape.
Knowing My Micro-Eco-Systems:
this class will help you know what the
different microclimates of your yard
are, i.e. microclimates dictate what you
can grow and where you can grow it.
Ever wonder why a plant just won’t
take off? Well, it could be that you
planted it in a microclimate in which it
just can’t survive! (It’s not the plant’s
fault. Well, it could be, but I want you
to come to the class. David is teaching
it.)
Lawns-the Area Rugs of My Yard: I
think of my lawn as an area rug.
Around it are my flower beds, etc.
People in Baker spend a lot of time and
work maintaining their lawns. Ever
wonder how to keep that lawn looking
lush, green, and weed-free? You’ll get
the answers in this class.
Remodeling My Landscape: lear ning
about the aesthetics of a landscape, i.e.
focal points, color coordination,
texture, shapes, the best use of and
defining space. This is what I need. I
waste a lot of space in my yard.
Shopping For My Landscape: Mindy
and I thought this was a catchy title.
This class puts all the knowledge you
have learned from the series into
creating your beautiful landscape
rooms.
The “ Your Edible Landscape and
Series” will include class topics:
Fruit Tree Care, Maintenance and
Pruning: You will be able to
take care of your fruit trees and
prune them yourself after
attending this class. We will be
going on-site to practice our
new pruning techniques so I
need someone to volunteer
their fruit orchard; not too far
out of town, please. The best
practice orchard would include
apple, peach/apricot, plum,
cherry. Each species has
different pruning techniques. Call the
office if you have a fruit orchard that
fits the need.
Vegetable Gardening: You will lear n
the specifics of some vegetable
families, planting, watering, fertilizing,
harvesting, etc. Soil and seeds will be
provided so you can bring a container
to start some veggies.
Small Farm Production: this is a
special class. Taught by Ariel
Agenbroad, University of Idaho Small
Farms Extension Agent, she will cover
The Largest
Snowball
Fight Took
Place in
exploratory topics for new and
beginning small farmers; what can I do
on a small farm, exploring options,
learning basics about planning and
marketing. This class will help you if
you want to start a small farm business.
Ariel is an expert in this field. I’ll have
more information in the next newsletter.
The Landscape Series will be from 5:30
pm - 7:30pm during the week. This will
be “brown bag dinner.” We provide
drinks. The Edible Landscape Series
will be on Saturday’s, 9 am - 2 pm. We
provide lunch. This was my idea– feed
them and they will come! We will need
to cover handouts, instructor expense
and Saturday meals so there will be a
cost. It won’t be much. More details and
registration information in the next
newsletter.
Cool Facts About
Seattle.
Snow
Had enough snow yet? Here are some
tid-bits that might make your snow
conversations a little more interesting?
5,834 People
Had a Snowball Fight!
1. IT’S A MYTH THAT NO TWO
SNOWFLAKES ARE EXACTLY
THE SAME.
In 1988, a scientist found two
identical snow crystals. They came from
a storm in Wisconsin.
2. THE LARGEST SNOWFLAKE
MIGHT HAVE BEEN 15 INCHES
WIDE.
According to some sources, the
largest snowflakes ever observed fell
during a snowstorm in January 1887 at
Montana’s Fort Keogh. While witnesses
said the flakes were “larger than milk
pans,” these claims have not been
substantiated.
3. SNOW IS TRANSLUCENT, NOT
WHITE.
Snow, like the ice particles it’s
made up of, is actually colorless. It’s
translucent, which means that light does
not pass through it easily, but is rather
reflected. It’s the light reflected off a
snowflake’s faceted surface that creates
its white appearance.
The reason we see objects as
colors is because some wavelengths of
light are absorbed while others are
reflected. Since snow is made up of so
many tiny surfaces, the light that hits it is
scattered in many directions and will
actually bounce around from one surface
to the next as it’s reflected. This means
no wavelength is absorbed or reflected
with any consistency, so the white light
bounces back as the color white.
4. EACH WINTER IN THE U.S. AT
LEAST 1 SEPTILLION ICE
CRYSTALS FALL FROM THE SKY.
That’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000 — 24 zeros!
5. THE MOST SNOW TO FALL IN
A 24-HOUR PERIOD IN THE U.S. IS
75.8 INCHES
In 1921, over six feet of snow
fell between April 14 at 2:30 p.m. and
April 15 at 2:30 p.m. in Silver Lake,
Colorado.
6. NOVA SCOTIA HOLDS THE
RECORD FOR THE MOST SNOW
ANGELS EVER MADE
SIMULTANEOULS IN MULTIPLE
LOCATIONS
In 2011, 22,022 Nova Scotia
residents in 130 separate locations all
plopped down in the snow to make snow
angels.
7. FEELING DEVILISH? THE
LARGEST SNOWBALL FIGHT ON
RECORD TOOK PLACE IN
SEATTLE.
Exactly 5,834 snow fighters
came together to exchange frozen
barrages to create the largest snowball
fight in the world on January 12, 2013.
#@!* Deer!
Not another article
on how to stop
deer from eating
your garden?!? I
assume you
already have your
fences up or you are unable to build
a fence to protect your garden. I did
find an article in Garden Gate on
repellents and unpalatable plants that
could be an alternative to a fence.
Before you blame the deer, check the
cuts. If you see clean cuts, they’re
most likely from a rabbit or groundhog. The photo at left shows the
ragged leaf edges deer typically
leave. Since deer don’t have upper
incisors, they tear instead of bite,
causing the damage you see here.
There are lots of ways to protect
your plants from hungry deer, but
the most effective is the fence. If you
don’t have a fence the next best
things are repellents, scare tactics or
plants they don’t like to eat.
While no repellent is 100-percent
effective, using one helps. The keys
are to start using the repellent early
and to rotate products so deer don’t
get used to the smell or taste. Deer
are creatures of habit and feed along
regular routes. If you can prevent
them from showing up in the first
place, you won’t have to retrain
them.
There are dozens of recipes for
homemade sprays using rotten eggs,
hot peppers or both. There’s one
home remedy that doesn’t require
any mixing and smells pretty good,
too. Get a bar of soap that contains
tallow, which is an animal-based fat.
(Irish Spring is one that’s often
suggested but the brand doesn’t
matter.) Avoid soap with coconut
oil. Place the tallow soap in a cheese
cloth or plastic mash bag and hang it
from a stake, within 3 feet of the
plant you want to protect. (see left)
Soap with tallow may attract
nibbling rodents; that’s why it’s best
to hang it from a stake rather than in
a tree.
Commercial repellents are
more costly but have the
advantages of a consistent
formula with a long shelf
life. The USDA National
Wildlife Research Center
found that those with a
sulfurous odor
of rotten eggs
are most
effective. “Liquid
Fence”, and Deer Away” have all
done well in various trails.
There really are plants that deer
won’t usually eat. Look for plants
with foliage that’s sticky, prickly,
thorny or hairy, bleeds thick sap or
has a pungent scent, such as mint or
citrus. Rutgers University has been
testing hundreds of plants and rating
them from A to D, depending on
how often that particular plant gets
eaten. You can see the complete list
of test results online at https://
njaes.rutgers.edu/deerresistance/ OR
I had Angela make a complete list of
the “A’s” only (1 1/2pages) and it’s
here in the office. It lists annuals,
shrubs, bulbs, trees, ornamental
grasses, perennials,
ferns, groundcovers,
of which many can
grow in our climate
zone. Come by the
office for a free
copy.
Even with all these ideas, gardening
with deer around is a big challenge,
but we can do it!
Annuals Report of OSU Master
Eastern Oregon
Baker, Union,
Grant Counties
Gardener Volunteers
Gail Langellotto, State Master Gardener Coordinator, files an annual report of
the statewide program every year. Below are some 2016 highlights of the
Oregon Master Gardener program and the volunteers that have made a
difference throughout the state. To the left shows what we accomplished in
Eastern Oregon. We may be small, but we do many good things too!
Program Quick
Stats

7 trainees (92%
completed service)

4 veterans (74%
recertified)

11 Master
Gardeners

898 people
reached

106 MG CEU’s
earned

472 volunteer
hours valued at
$19,738
Expanding Our Reach:
Master Gardener certification training was delivered in Union county, and
provided to Grant and Baker Counties via a Webex connection
Volunteering in the Community:
Union county volunteers completed over 141 hours of community service work at
parks, gardens, and afterschool program sites. Conducted plant clinics at farmer’s
markets, county fairs.
Regional Garden Symposium:
Baker Master Gardeners sponsored their 3rd NE Oregon Garden Symposium. 42
attendees, 9 instructors and 4 local vendors. Classes included: organic gardening,
growing table grapes, pruning, xeriscaping, growing berries, lawns, garden
weeds, bees, and flower arranging.
A Quiz About Pests, Plagues and History
Do pests, plagues and history belong together? You’d better believe it. Insects have played, and
continue to play, an important role in history. It took centuries for the connections between many
diseases and insects to be verified, and a quick review of some of today’s plagues, such as malaria,
Zika virus and Lyme disease shows that political decisions regarding prevention, treatment and
funding are still making headlines. See where you stand when it comes to basic knowledge of the
impact of pests on human history.
1. What proportion of all animal species are insects?
A. 1/20
B. 1/10
C 2/3
D 4/5
2. Which insect-borne disease contributed to the failure of Napoleon’s campaign to conquer Russia?
A. Yellow fever
B. Bubonic plague
C. Malaria
D. Typhus
3. Which insect-borne disease contributed to the U.S. purchase of the Louisiana Territory?
A. Yellow fever
B. Bubonic plague
C. Malaria
D. Typhus
4. By weight, approximately how much insect is the average American going to (accidentally) eat in
his or her lifetime?
A. Zero to 0.1 lb.
B. 1 lb.
C. 2 to 4 lbs. D. 8 lbs.
5. Food nutrient levels: which of the following has the highest percent protein?
A. Beef
B. Termites
C. Eggs
D. Fish
6. Which insect-borne disease contributed to a boom in the European textile industry?
A. Yellow fever
B. Typhus
C. Lyme disease
D. Bubonic plague
1. D. Insects make up four-fifths of all animal species. The number of living species of insects has
been estimated to be as high as 30 million.
2. D. Researchers found evidence of typhus in a large percentage of the remains at a burial site of
Napoleon’s Grande A rmee soldiers. Typhus is spread by body lice, mites and fleas, but not head
lice and they had multiplied in the conquered and impoverished villages.
3. A. A yellow fever epidemic in the Caribbean in the late 18th century reduced the number of
French troops in what is present-day Haiti from 60,000 to 7,000. Napoleon abandoned his quest to
secure power in North America, leading to the famous sale of the Louisiana Territory and the
important seaport at New Orleans.
4. B. One pound. The Food and Drug Administration regulates the acceptable levels of insect parts
per food item to ensure that the food is not unsafe to consume, but the amounts add up over a
year. Standards allow an average of 30 or more insect fragments per 10 grams of ground allspice,
an average of more than 2,500 aphids per 10 grams of hops and an average of 20 or more Drosophila fly eggs per 100 grams of tomato puree.
5. B. Termites. The protein content can vary depending upon cooking method-from 20 percent when
eaten raw up to 37 percent fresh weight when fried or smoked.
6. D. Bubonic Plague, which is spread by fleas. The “great pestilence” which killed 25-60 percent of
the European population in the 14th and 15th centuries reduced many peasant populations to the
point that it was no longer profitable to till large acres of land for agriculture. Land owners turned
to the more lucrative raising of sheep, which required much less labor, and to the manufacture of
woolen cloth and other textiles.
Stress Less with
Mindfulness:
Mindful Eating
OSU Extension Office
Wednesday,
February 15,
12 noon – 1:00 pm
Mindful
Eating? Look
what I have
for breakfast
about every
day!
Come to this class with
me. Robin Maille, FCH
Extension Agent in
Union County, is
teaching this class
which will help us
become aware of and
focus on choosing to
eat food that is both
pleasing and nourishing
for our bodies. Mindful
eating can help reduce
over eating and binge
eating, which can
result in weight loss.
More important, it can
also help improve the
symptoms of Type 2
diabetes. It’s FREE!
Smarty Plants
Despite their lack of brains,
plants have exhibited a
certain level of awareness in
scientific tests.
Plants are certainly alive, but are
they conscious? Well, they don’t
have the apparatus-a brain and
nervous system-that makes us
conscious. But science has found
that many of the features of
awareness are found in plants.
Recent discoveries are pretty
amazing.
Do plants have memory? Dr.
Monica Gagliano, University of
Florence, chose to work with
Mimosa pudica, which droops and
folds up its leaves when touched.
Monica dropped the plants from a
six-inch height into cushiony
foam that prompted the folding
response but didn’t injure the
plant. After repeated falls with no
harms, the plants stopped folding
their leaves when dropped. They
seemed to remember that being
dropped into foam can be safely
ignored. Of course, forgetting is
the reverse of remembering;
another scientist suggested that
the sensitive plant might be
learning to forget to fold?
Anyway, the Gagliano study
showed that plants can at least
become accustomed to insults, and
that’s a form of learning.
As any human who has
experienced jet lag knows, we
have an internal clock in our
bodies that produces a 24-hourbased circadian rhythm; and so do
plants. Sunflowers that turn their
flower heads to follow the sun
across the sky show better growth
and development than the same
species that are prevented from
Sunflowers coordinate light signals, their
circadian clocks and genetically-driven
growth rates to follow the sun and to face
east by the morning.
following the sun and have their
circadian rhythm interrupted. When
night falls, how do unimpeded
sunflowers return to face east to wait
for sunrise? They have no muscles.
But they do have genes that control
growth. During the night, genes
stimulate growth on the west side of
the stems only, forcing the heads to
turn back to the east. During the
day, growth is stronger on the east
side, turning the heads with the sun,
all of which means the sunflowers
are coordinating light signals, their
circadian clocks, and geneticallydriven growth rates on different
sides of their stems.
Some plants can count. A team of
scientists at the University of
Wurzburg in Germany knew that
Venus flytraps only expend energy
to close their traps when the hairs on
the traps send 2 electrical signals
within 20 seconds. That means the
plant remembers the first signal for a
short time, but two taps on a trigger
hair will not induce the plant to
make digestive enzymes to turn its
prey into nutrient-rich soup. That
takes more than three taps—or as
many as a struggling victim would
produce. So not only can the plant
count, but it can decide something’s
fishy if the count isn’t right and
refuse to take the bait. If only we
humans were smart enough to do
that!
Oregon Small Farms Conference
OSU Campus in Corvallis at the LaSells Stewart Center and
CH2M Hill Alumni Center
Saturday, February 18, 2017
The Oregon Small Farms Conference is a daylong event geared toward farmers, agricultural
professionals, food policy advocates and managers of farmer’s markets. Twenty-seven educational
sessions are offered on a variety of topics relevant to the Oregon small farmers and include a track in
Spanish. Speakers include farmers, OSU Extension faculty, agribusiness and more.
PRICE: Register between Dec. 16 -Jan. 25: $50
Register between Jan. 26 - Feb. 10: $75
For more information type: smallfarms.oregonstate.edu/small-farms-conference-registration-open
2017 International Master Gardener Conference
July 10-14, 2017
Portland, Oregon
Oregon Convention Center
44 concurrent session classes
16 tours
Open reception
3 movie film festival
Keynote Speakers, and more
For registration information google and type in 2017 International Master Gardener Conference and
it will come right up. Registration has been extended to February 28, 2017.
Union County Extension Office
10507 N. McAlister Rd.
La Grande, Oregon
541-963-1010
Union County will also be having horticulture classes this winter/
spring. Nothing is set yet, but you could call their office and get on a
mailing list.
Why Does My Christmas Cactus Bloom Well Before Christmas?
It’s likely that you have a
Thanksgiving cactus, which
blooms about a month earlier
in the fall than its fellow
holiday bloomer. The most
obvious way to tell the
difference between the two
types is to look at the leaflike
stems. The Thanksgiving
cactus has pointy edges; the
Christmas cactus has
smooth, round edges. The
Easter cactus has star-shaped
flowers rather than the tubular shape of the Christmas and Thanksgiving. Each of these holiday cacti
require well-drained soil and do not like to be overwatered. Wait until the soil is dry before watering.
Cool evening temps, around 50 to 55° F. and 12 to 14 hour nights promote bloom set.
Oregon State University Extension Service offers educational programs, activities, and materials without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual
orientation, national origin, age, marital status, disability, and disabled veteran or Vietnam era veteran status as required by Title VI of the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.
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2600 East Street
Baker City, OR 97814
Horticulture Newsletter
OSU Baker County Extension Service
Non-Profit Org.
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