Spring 2011

The second year of YEP! began on May 16 with fun introductions, a Bonsai show-and-tell from Master Gardener Ryan White.  The kids decorated terracotta flower pots that they filled with annuals and herbs to take home. 

We've already covered plant science, the water cycle, composting, planting vegetable seeds and flats of annuals at the Education Garden.

This past Monday we discussed soil structure.  The students collected soil samples from around the garden and added water.  We'll let the jars sit for a while and then we can see how the particles separated out.  We also did a quick chemical pH test and we all placed bets on what the number will be.  We'll find out in two weeks.

Master Gardener Kay Anderson did a wonderful presentation on plant propagation.  All the kids got to divide iris, hosta, daylilly, dahlia and geranium from Kay's garden.  They left with loads of new plants to put in their own gardens.

We have a great group of students this year and I'm very much enjoying their company and enthusiasm to learn about plants and nature.

And thanks to all the amazing Master Gardener Volunteers this season who are sharing their talents and helping me run the show.  I couldn't do it without you.

Grand Haven Farmer's Market

We started out in small groups to explore the Grand Haven Farmer's Market. We had a list of items to find and explore. We found 2 organic items for sale, eggs and cheese. Some of the food that was not familiar to many of us that we saw were koosa, kohlrabi, shallots, okra, and Stanley plums. The vendors were happy to tell us how to prepare these items. We all vowed to try a new fruit or vegetable this week.

This group had a list of items from all of the students of what we should buy to snack on when we were done. We had to make some important choices but we really couldn't go wrong.

Some of the vendors let us sample the fruits and vegetables. Oh and did I forget to mention that we also got to sample the donuts and fudge too. All of the vendors were helpful in teaching us about their products. We learned about sizes of packaging for the fruits and vegetables like a peck, and a quarter peck, or a bushel or half bushel along with pints and quarts.

We got to discuss our favorite fruits and vegetables. There were quite a variety of favorite foods.

We found out that there is much more that just fresh fruits and vegetables at the farmer's market. There were fresh cut flowers of many varieties, potted house plants (one called a goldfish plants with little orange flowers) and outdoor plants (one with very small orange ornamental pumpkins) , organic eggs and cheese, rootbeer and sour apple soda, granola, salsa, chocolate covered blueberries, donuts, coffecakes, jams and breads.

Most of us tasted something we had never eaten before. Some of the foods that we had not tasted before were tomatillo, plums, some dark colored small tomatoes and cherry tomatoes. Tomatillos are part of the tomato family. Tomatillos are small tangy tomatoes that have an outside paper like husk covering that you have to peel off before you can get to the tomatillo.

We got to taste 2 kinds of homemade soda and sparkling apple cider. They all were delicious.

We had a great day at the farmer's market!

Monarch butterfly caterpillars

Now is the time to find the Monarch butterfly caterpillars! I hope that all of you get a chance to find some of these caterpillars and put them in a jar with holes in the lid and watch them go through metamorphosis. All you need to do is find a caterpillar and then put a few milkweed leaves in the container with the caterpillar for them to eat. If the milkweed dries out put a fresh one in. After a small amount of time- usually within a day or two the caterpillar will climb to the top of the container and build a chrysalis. Then within a 2 week time spand the chrysalis will go from light green to black and orange. The butterfly will emerge from the chrysalis and fly away like we saw at the gardens one day. I hope you each have fun and get to experience this wonder of nature.

Signs of Monarch butterfly caterpillars!

Found at Ed Garden: Mexican Bean Beetle

On Monday 7/26/10 a Master Gardener Volunteer found these cute-ugly creatures that look like a nib of moldy corn. 

"What are these?"  She asked, turning over the leaf of a bush bean.  

"I will find out!" I declared.

It is the pupa of the Mexican  Bean Beetle. 

The Mexican bean beetle is actually a cousin of the ladybird beetle, one of the few destructive species of this primarily beneficial family of insects. The adult is oval shaped and copper colored, with 16 black spots on its back. It is about 5/16 inch long and 1/4 inch wide. Females lay yellow, oval-shaped eggs in clusters on the underside of bean leaves. From these eggs, hatch yellow larvae with branched spines that cover their soft bodies. There are 4 larval stages, the final one reaching a length of 1/3 inch, before transforming into a bright yellow pupae. The pupae are usually found attached to the underside of leaves.

 The best way for us to control these beetles is simply to pick them off by hand and toss them into a bucket of soapy water.  Or, if you like, squish them between your fingers!

The Beautiful White Pine, Our State Tree

The pollen-bearing staminate (male) yellow flowers of White Pine emerge with the new shoots (candles) in mid-spring, and fertilize the nearby pistillate (female) flowers that become immature pinkish cones. White Pine is therefore a monoecious species, like all Pines.

By summer, the light green fruits (or cones) of White Pine show characteristic splotches of silvery-white that dapple their surfaces. With maturity, the six-inch long fruits become slightly curved, their scales reflex to release the hidden seeds, and the brown cones eventually fall to the ground. The slender cones of White Pine do not have prickles on the backside of their scales, as many pines do.

White Pine is distinctive as it reaches middle age, as its whorled branches and the spaces between them create a layered visual sight. With time, the top of the canopy becomes flat-topped or scalloped, and the middle of the canopy grows wider.

The gray-green bark of White Pine remains relatively smooth for a number of years, until it finally begins to develop furrows and ridges that are dark gray to dark brown. Sap drippings from the bark are often a common sight and turn white upon exposure to air.

We had some questions about pine trees. So Shane looked up the answer on the Internet. Then we learned about them on a big screen. This was very informative.

We played a game with flowers and pollinators. The flowers had to guess what type of pollinator was circling them. We learned that there are many pollinators. A few of the pollinators that we talked about were beetles, honeybees, mosquitoes, butterflies, bats, hummingbirds, moths and the wind.


We learned the results of our soil test from last week. The color was a bluish green. We estimated that the PH was 6.5. We are going to get another soil test from Michigan State University and compare the two.