Winter Is Finally Here; Can Spring Be Far Behind?

• Joseph Tychonievich, well known plant breeder and author of Plant Breeding for the Home Gardener (Timber Press, 2013) urges us to break out from a rut by finding new varieties of our old favorites. He recommends Johnny's Selected Seeds and Pinetree Garden Seeds for standard vegetables. For organic seed selections, High Mowing Organic Seeds is a good source.

• If your mission is to find the perfect tomato, the Dwarf Tomato Project will interest you. The project is a co-operative venture of several small farmers committed to growing delicious tomatoes on small plants. Their seeds are sold by the Heritage Seed Market, a virtual market made up of individual seed vendors.

• If you yearn for a meadow or have a problem area, Ernst Conservation Seeds is a great resource for native and non-native seeds and seed mixes. Ernst is a major seed provider for land reclamation and restoration projects like superfund sites, pipelines, coal mines and highway embankments.

    They also sell seed mixes to individual buyers. All their native seed mixes include an annual cover crop intended to keep away invasives while the natives get established. According to Ernst, many native plants tend to build their root systems first, investing a minimum amount of energy in top growth. However, by the third year, when they are fully established, they are able to shade out the cover crop and dominate the garden.

   Interesting fact - founder Calvin Ernst is a graduate of Penn State and a former employee of Penn State Department of Agriculture. He now lives and works on the family farm in western Pennsylvania.

• Finally, consider the Open Source Seed Initiative. OSSI is a nonprofit dedicated to maintaining fair and open access to plant genetic material worldwide. Their seeds come with a pledge that none of the genetic material or the genetic material that results from breeding programs using their seeds can ever be patented. The OSSI website has a list of company partners who sell their seeds.

• Our annual plant sale is scheduled for May 21st at the Mahoning Valley Farmers Market on PA-443 near Wal-Mart. All of the plants on sale are grown by Master Gardeners.

• We celebrate National Pollinator Week on June 25th with garden tours at all the Penn State Certified pollinator gardens in Carbon County. Our Master Gardener demonstration gardens will be open as well. There will be educational programs about gardening for pollinators, and native plant sales at selected gardens.

• Composting Campers at Hickory Run State Park in July is a fun evening where campers empty their campsites of food waste and trash to contribute it to a community compost pile. It's a festive atmosphere with  a big campfire and sing along and of course s'mores.  All campers are welcome.

• In August the Department of Agriculture wood mobile is scheduled to be at the Carbon County Fair. The wood mobile is a great educational experience - not to be missed. They have information on several devastating insects currently attacking our trees - emerald ash borer, wooly adelgid, and Asian longhorn beetle for example.

• Our information hotline, called the green line, will open on March 22nd and will be staffed on Tuesdays between 10AM-noon. We will take your phone calls directly on Tuesdays, and the office staff will notify us of calls and emails that come in when we aren't there. Please send photos along with your questions so we can see the problem. You can also drop off samples at the Extension office.