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New varieties of ornamental sweet potatoes will be just one of the additions this year to the 2010 East Texas Horticultural Field Day. (Texas AgriLife Extension Service photo by Robert Burns)

By Robert Burns
Texas AgriLife Extension Service

Despite the recession, the ornamental bedding plant industry is doing quite well, and by association so is the East Texas Horticultural Field Day at Overton, said a Texas AgriLife Research scientist.

This year, the field day is set for June 24 at the Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Overton.

The field day, which is free and open to the public, will feature nearly 400 entries of everything from petunias to verbena to ornamental sweet potatoes, said Dr. Brent Pemberton, the AgriLife Research horticulturist who has conducted field trials every year since 1994. National and international seed companies send seed or rooted cuttings of established and new varieties to determine how they will do under East Texas conditions.

The field day will begin at 8:30 a.m. at the center's North Farm site. The tour will continue at the site until about 10:30 a.m., then move to the Overton center's headquarters building, where a demonstration garden is located. A free lunch will be served at about 11:45 a.m. Indoor presentations will begin at 1 p.m., and the program will conclude by 2:50 p.m.

The trials include thousands of square feet of plots planted with purple, pink, red and white flowers. Pemberton designed the tests to help local growers, but the event has become popular with local gardeners too, with hundreds showing up some years, including industry representatives. More than 230 people attended the 2009 field day.

This year, as usual, there will be new varieties of geranium, trailing petunias, verbena, begonias, lantana and lobelia, Pemberton said. And there will be continuing emphasis on vinca, a widely used landscape plant across the South.

Newer additions will include napier grasses, trial varieties of gomphrena and black pentunias with pinstripes, he said.

"The napier grasses are a new type of purple-leafed ornamental grass which I think will be really interesting for the future for us," Pemberton said. "A lot of them are experimental varieties. We also have a lot of new varieties of gomphrena which are strongly hitting the market this year which is really a great plant for the heat."

The black, pinstriped pentunias also show great promise as an addition to the more colorful varieties that have proven to do well in East Texas, he said.

"We also have new varieties of ornamental sweet potatoes, which are getting a resurgence in introduction of varieties onto the market and support of the ones that have been around for a while," he said. "We also have some new begonias, which you will see in our shade trials which are looking absolutely beautiful this time of the year."

After lunch, the program will move inside with a presentation by Pemberton and Jimmy Turner of the Dallas Arboretum on the 2010 California Spring Showcase, also known as Pack Trials. Another new program feature this year will include a talk on trapping feral hogs by Dr. Billy Higginbotham, Texas AgriLife Extension Service wildlife specialist.

"We also coordinate trial results with the Dallas Arboretum," Pemberton said. "Over 5 million consumers in the northeast Texas region now have the opportunity to see how promising new plants from all over the world perform in our climate."

Pemberton began trials of bedding plants at the Overton center to serve the commercial greenhouse and bedding plant industry. According to him, in recent years the industry has had a $500 million annual economic impact on the region, and bedding-plant industry sales haven't seen the downturn in consumer spending experienced by other businesses in the last year.

"Despite the struggling economy, producers growing plants with color have continued to do well as sales have remained steady," Pemberton said. "Even though consumers are cutting back on purchases and non-essential travel, they still seem to want to improve their home surroundings with flowering plants."

Before Pemberton began his trials, there were few if any tests under East Texas conditions of the many new varieties released by seed companies each year, he said.

The center is located 1 mile north of downtown Overton on Farm to Market Road 3053.

For driving directions go to http://overton.tamu.edu/flowers/fieldday.htm or call 903-834-6191.

By Paul Schattenberg
Texas AgriLife Extension Service

The Children's Vegetable Garden Program, presented by the Texas AgriLife Extension Service in Bexar County, the Bexar County Master Gardeners organization and San Antonio Botanical Garden, is one of the longest and most successful youth gardening education efforts in the nation, said coordinators.

"The program began in 1983 with the purpose of teaching inner-city kids the benefits of vegetable gardening," said David Rodriguez, AgriLife Extension agent for horticulture in Bexar County and the program's administrator.

Rodriguez and members of the Bexar County Master Gardeners organization, a volunteer horticultural organization which helps support area AgriLife Extension horticultural efforts, provide oversight and instruction at the one-acre Children's Vegetable Garden located within the botanical garden complex at 555 Funston Place.

Each year, a spring and fall Children's Vegetable Garden Program is presented with 65 to 90 youth participants, he said. Programs are open to children 8-13 years of age from Bexar and surrounding counties. During the program period, which is from 9-11 a.m. over 16 consecutive Saturdays, children prepare soil, plant, weed, nurture, grow and harvest their own vegetables under the guidance of several Master Gardener volunteers.

"Many of the kids involved in the program don’t know where their vegetables come from and most have never even seen a vegetable garden, much less having tried to grow anything," Rodriguez said. "Typically the kids are fascinated with the bugs they find in the garden, the types and colors of the plants and watching their vegetables grow."

Rodriguez said the program has evolved over the years, but has kept its focus on helping inner-city youth develop an appreciation for nature.

Currently, more than 30 Bexar County Master Gardeners are involved in this program, showing kids how to grow vegetables while teaching them about nutrition, the environment, the benefits of outdoor interests and more, Rodriguez said. The program emphasizes environmentally friendly gardening techniques.

"We had about 85 kids in the latest Spring Children's Vegetable Garden Program and many were inner-city kids, including about 25 third-graders from Woodridge Elementary in near northeast San Antonio," he said.

Amalia "Molly" Martinez, a Master Gardener for 4 years, served as the spring program’s lead instructor.

"The kids learned a lot about things like sharing and working together and as a team,” Martinez said. “Many were afraid of bugs, so we showed them which insects were good and which were not. There was also some bilingual activity since many of the kids were more familiar with Spanish and labeled their vegetables in Spanish.”

Martinez added that the Master Gardeners and other volunteers involved also worked well together and supported one another in order to make the program a success.

"This is one of the oldest teaching gardens for children in the country and we couldn't be prouder than to work with AgriLife Extension in providing this opportunity for area youth," said Bob Brackman, director for the San Antonio Botanical Garden. "This program has grown and blossomed over the years, and for many people it represents their earliest memory of the botanical garden."

Brackman estimates as many as 10,000 children have participated in the program since its inception 27 years ago.

"The program's structure and implementation is conducive to almost any urban area that can commit a small plot of land and provide the materials and human resources needed to teach young people how to garden," he said.

Most of the Woodridge Elementary students who participated in the spring program ending June 5 were from lower-income families and not very familiar with nature, according to John Goodman, a third-grade teacher at the school who learned of the program and thought his students would benefit from it.

"Participating in the program helped show our students learn how to measure properly, which we emphasize in third grade, as well as taught them about plant science, vegetable growing and harvesting, composting, beneficial and non-beneficial insects, and even the impact of purple martins on the environment," Goodman said.

Goodman added that many of the academic concepts presented in the program through the Junior Master Gardener curriculum were in keeping with mandated Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills requirements for public schools.

"The program uses curriculum from the Junior Master Gardener program, an extensive youth gardening initiative of AgriLife Extension," said Rodriguez. "The JMG curriculum not only teaches the kids about gardening, but also acquaints them with math and science, both areas where the U.S. is behind academically as compared with other developed countries."

Rodriguez said the $25 registration fee, used to purchase seeds, plants, compost, fertilizer, mulch and other materials, is extremely reasonable, especially given the length of the program and amount of instruction and hands-on assistance provided.

He added that the fall Children's Vegetable Garden Program will take place from Aug. 21-Dec.1 with applications for that program due no later than Aug. 6.

For more information, contact David Rodriquez at 210-467-6575 or dhrodriguez@ag.tamu.edu.

Toads make a great garden partner because they help control insects. Just be sure to supply them with a source of water and a dark, damp place to hide from dogs and other predators.

Before modern insecticides were invented, folks used different concoctions to help deter pests. Soap sprays were commonly used and they seemed to work well. Insecticidal soaps are still used effectively today against many common insects including spider mites and aphids.

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Doug Welsh’s Texas Garden Almanac is a giant monthly calendar for the entire state — a practical, information-packed, month-by-month guide for gardeners and "yardeners." This book provides everything you need to know about flowers and garden design; trees, shrubs, and vines; lawns; vegetable, herb, and fruit gardening; and soil, mulch, water, pests, and plant care. It will help you to create beautiful, productive, healthy gardens and have fun doing it.

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