Fall Board Meeting News from Ardith

Saturday, July 14th was a pricing party for the Trash and Treasure donations received so far.  Jennifer C (FH),  Chairperson, was  hostess.     Anna B., Jean G., Ardith  P. and Jennifer priced the items for your buying pleasure.  There were pictures, puzzles, scarves, belts, costume jewelry, handbags, lamps, kitchen items, vases, and numerous Christmas items which we hope will find new homes with garden clubbers attending the Fall Board Meeting.   More items are needed  Contact your club president if you have donations.

Remember you can visit our vendors, the Silent Auction table and the Trash and Treasure table, even if you do not register for the Fall Board Meeting.  

So gather your garden club friends together, come to the Durham Hilton, shop, listen to the Men in Black ensemble, enjoy a libation and view the honor floral arrangements done by members of the Piedmont Judges Council.  This is another way to discover what is happening in your North Carolina Garden Club and District 9.  You can even be piped in for dinner, have an enjoyable meal and hear Scott Mason, The Tarheel Traveler and WRAL personality,  discuss his adventures  in North Carolina's out of the way place and the memorable people he has encountered.

  Bruce Wright, noted Raleigh piper and  well-known instructor, will pipe us into dinner and bring in the color guard. Bruce has been piping for more than 25 years, not only at the Highland Scottish Games, but at numerous private and public events

 

The 100 Men in Black ensemble will entertain at the President's Cocktail Hour with a wide selection of music.  They will perform standards, soul, doo-wop, etc.  for our enjoyment

  Mark Weathington, Assistant Director and Curator of Collections for the J C Raulston Arboretum, will be the guest speaker at Monday morning's brunch.  Mark will discuss his work in creating and caring for one of the largest and most diverse landscape plant collections suited for use in Southeastern landscapes.  Mark has also generously donated some plant rarities from the Arboretum's collection to our Silent Auction

 

For detailed information and registration form go to

http://www.gardenclubofnc.org/index.php/meetings

Fall Board Meeting registration and Call Letter download print

and sign up.  WE ARE PUTTING ON THIS PARTY SO WE

WOULD LIKE YOU TO ENJOY AND LEARN  about the State Garden Clubs and meet new people. Please support your own
garden clubs.

Northern HS is in need of our help.

A teacher at Northern HS sent this to the GC of NC and they forwarded it to us.
If your club is looking for a Garden Therapy project this should be easy. Read the other article about the VA and that Garden Therapy project. I would be happy to discuss this with you and give you the contact person ( Marcia at Heritage). Heritage has too many GT projects and can't do more this year but will work with any club interested in starting this.


It would be a shoo-in for one of the Garden Therapy Awards next year. 
I am a special education teacher at Northern High School in Durham. My class along with the PTO and Durham Water Resources are trying to make an accessible garden for our students who are severely handicapped and to provide a place to develop gardening skills for our less disabled students. I would love to have some input from the clubs as far as which plants we need, possibly donating some cuttings of plants, and any physical assistance as far as getting the garden started would be greatly appreciated. Is this something that would interest a garden club in Durham? IF so, who would I contact? thanks
Susan

Community Living Center Residents prove their thumb is green!

The Grown With Love Gardening Club (The resident's garden club at the Durham VA Hospital) is a therapeutic gardening group co-facilitated by Recreation Therapy and Occupational Therapy.  Any Veteran residing in the Community Living Center is welcomed to join in on the year-round fun.  This year the Veterans have planted sweet potatoes, squash, a variety of tomatoes and sweet peppers.  Watering, pruning and feeding, the Veterans have cared for the plants as a group and independently. 

The fun doesn’t stop there… once the vegetables are harvested, both the Grown with Love Gardening Club and the therapeutic cooking group are able to enjoy the benefits.  So far…the Veterans have been able to make fried green tomatoes, fresh salsa, and tomato sandwiches.  The Veterans also enjoy the vine ripened delicacies with their lunch and dinner.

The flowers and vegetable plants were donated to the Community Living Center by the Heritage Garden Club, March 2012.

How Gross Are the Grubs?

By Lois Tilton (LTilton)
June 25, 2012

While there are several kinds of grubs that damage turfgrass, most are relatively harmless as adults. The most notable exception is the destructive import, the Japanese Beetle. Once it emerges from the ground where it has been gnawing the roots of your plants, its life of destruction goes into high gear. 


A typical white grub is a whitish color with a hard brown head capsule and a darker terminal segment.  Entomologists can identify the species of grub by inspecting the pattern of hairs on this anal segment.  White grubs are legged and their bodies curved in a characteristic C-shape.
While the life cycle of the different species varies, typically the adult female deposits her eggs in the soil, where they hatch into grubs.  These larvae then feed on the roots of plants, doing damage to crops and to turfgrass.  In the winter, they burrow deeper into the earth to avoid freezing, then tunnel upward again in spring.  Some species may spend more than a single year as larvae, others emerge in the next spring or summer as mature beetles.
In the lawn, a large infestation of grubs can destroy substantial sections of grass by eating away the roots so that the sod can be easily lifted from the soil.  When the grass is rolled away, the grubs can clearly be seen just below the sod.  Often, additional damage is done to the lawn when animals such as skunks and raccoons dig holes to hunt for the yummy and nutritious grubs.  This may reduce the grub population, but it doesn't help the grass!
It is this damage to lawns that has been the greatest motivation for the typical homeowner to make war on the grubs. It was once common to apply insecticides such as diazinon to the lawn, but such poisons kill indiscriminately and are now discouraged;  diazinon is now largely prohibited in the United States for non-agricultural use, but newer insecticides such as imidacloprid are still available.  Less toxic biological controls are becoming more widely used.  Spores of the bacterium Bacillus popilliae, often sold under the name of Milky Spore, can inoculate a lawn with bacterial milky disease, which effects the grubs of Japanese Beetles.  Another method of control is the introduction of several species of parasitic nematodes such as Steinernema carpocapsae applied to the lawn.
The problem with most these methods (Milky Spore is said to be specific to the Japanese Beetle) is their lack of target specificity.  A wide range of insects and other arthropods, many beneficial, live in the soil, particularly in their larval stages. Widespread application of toxic substances can do serious ecological damage.  This is also true of the use of nematodes.  Even if a species of nematodes only attacks grubs of the Scarabaeidae family, there are thousands of beetle species that might be affected, most of them harmless.
Few prevalent species of grubs grow up to be serious problems to gardeners.  The common June beetle, for example, is usually little more than an annoyance as it flies against window screens at night.  But in North America, a foreign invader has now changed the stakes.  Early in the last century, the Japanese Beetle Popillia japonica was accidentally introduced into an environment where it was free from natural enemies.  It has since spread westward, establishing itself in most areas east of the Mississippi.
This insect, while destructive as a grub, becomes an even worse pest as an adult.  The beetles can accumulate in vast numbers to feed on their preferred species of vegetation, and they are capable of serious damage, sometimes defoliating entire plants.  Their method of feeding on leaves is skeletonization, consuming the tissue between the veins.  They will also feed on flowers and fruit.  A few of their preferred targets are roses, grapes, plums and corn, as well as birch and maple trees.
As the Japanese Beetle enters a region, the use of both grub controls and insecticides rises in response as homeowners, gardeners and farmers combat the infestation.  Nontoxic methods have been tried.  Pheromone traps, which attract the beetles into a trap from which they are unable to escape, have had mixed results.  Many people insist that the traps attract more beetles to a location than were originally present.  This has been my own experience.  While I trapped thousands of beetles, the number of them feeding on my plants only seemed to increase.
So far, alas, the beetles seem to be winning, and causing unfortunate collateral damage among related species as humans attempt to control them.