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nancyk
December 28, 2018
By Michael Martignoni - Victoria County Master Gardener
Edited by Charla Borchers Leon
PHOTO BY MICHAEL MARTIGNONI/VICTORIA COUNTY MASTER GARDENER
Six weeks after building beds and planting seeds and transplants, tomato plants are shown healthily growing in the raised beds at F. W. Gross Elementary School. Students tended to the beds through harvest after which the produce was prepared for a taste test by the students.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MISSION VALLEY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL FACULTY MEMBER IN COOPERATION WITH PAIGE MELTON
Master Gardeners, parents, teachers, students and AgriLife Extension Service partners built several raised garden beds at Mission Valley Elementary School for the students to grown fresh vegetables which they later harvested and prepared to eat. Shown here are the group that prepared the beds in conjunction with the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Junior Master Gardener Learn, Grow, Eat and Go curriculum.
Trained and knowledgeable Volunteers
committed to education of the Community
while enriching the public and our Members
through proven Gardening
and environmental practices and Activities
Save the dates
The Gardeners’ Dirt is written by members of the Victoria County Master Gardener Association, an educational outreach of Texas A&M AgriLife Extension – Victoria County. Mail your questions in care of the Advocate, P.O. Box 1518, Victoria, TX 77901; or vcmga@vicad.com, or comment on this column at VictoriaAdvocate.com.
PHOTO BY BRYNN LEE/VICTORIA COUNTY MASTER GARDENER
Master Gardeners James Mallett, left, Michael Martignoni and Bryan Serold along with F. W. Gross Elementary School staff members worked on building raised garden beds this past year. Master Gardeners assisted students in planting the beds with vegetable seeds and transplants for the students to raise and harvest in conjunction with the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Junior Master Gardener Learn, Grow, Eat and Go curriculum.
I started gardening and working side by side with my mom and dad in our family garden and then in my grandfather’s garden and graduated to my own garden plot and greenhouse to grow and revive almost dead or dying plants back to health. Now here I am today, president of the Victoria County Master Gardener Association (VCMGA).
I look back at my youth and wonder today what has happened to our children in that they do know where our food comes from and how to grow and harvest it. When you talk to our children today and ask where vegetables come from, their response is the grocery store – and not the garden, fields and farms.
As the new president of the Victoria County Master Gardener Association, I am committed to our organization meeting its mission by helping educate our community and teaching the grassroots of gardening.
I will do my best to create an environment that will be conducive to achieving our organization’s goal of providing education to the community as noted in the adjoining printed mission statement.
Last year, we helped build and plant raised gardens at the Victoria City-County Health Department as well as planting fruit trees. We also helped F.W. Gross Elementary and Mission Valley Elementary schools establish raised garden beds for their students.
The plan is to work in conjunction with the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension junior master gardener Learn, Grow, Eat and Go curriculum and have the kids raise, harvest and then have the food prepared for the children to try. Hopefully, this will get our future parents teaching their children healthy eating habits by eating fresh vegetables.
We will be working with several new schools this year to set up the same programs aiming to eventually get all schools involved with it.
VCMGA holds a weeklong summer camp at Victoria Educational Gardens (VEG) for approximately 60 children in June and provides scheduled educational tours for more than 1,200 school children annually during the school year. We also provide tours for garden clubs, other civic organizations and anyone with a desire to learn at pre-arranged times at VEG, which is open dawn to dusk free to the community.
Various educational training opportunities are offered throughout the year for the community and master gardeners such as Lunch and Learn with the Masters (usually attended by 60-100 people from as many as seven counties), Dig In Deeper sessions monthly for master gardeners, member-written articles in The Gardeners’ Dirt column published weekly in the Victoria Advocate and seminars conducted by Master Gardener specialists on various topics like propagation.
The Master Gardener training program is conducted in the fall of each year, gardening presentations can be arranged through the community speakers program, funding is awarded through teacher grants for projects at schools on growing food, scholarship monies are awarded for students in higher education majoring in horticulture, and collaborative gardening/beautification projects are shared with others in the community.
There are several new activities of note planned for the upcoming year.
A new citrus seminar will be offered to the public as to how to grow citrus in our area Feb. 9 to be followed by a huge citrus tree sale Feb. 23 featuring all Texas-grown trees. Both of these are new to the Master Gardener program this year.
April 24-27, VCMGA will be hosting the 2019 Texas Master Gardener State Conference in Victoria. We are expecting up to 500 Master Gardeners from all over the state as well as our 130 members from the local area. We will have many top-in-their-field speakers training Master Gardeners. Attendees will also tour and learn in the gardens at VEG as well as visit historical sites and homes in Victoria and surrounding areas.
As Master Gardeners, we know we do not know it all; it is a continued learning process and every day brings new challenges with Mother Nature. We try new things and learn from our successes and our failures, but do not let it get us down.
We have a very dedicated group who take great pride in what they do to help this community grow and make great strides into the future. I am very proud of all of them and what they do every day. I look forward to a great year ahead and encourage anyone interested in becoming a Master Gardener to apply for the training classes starting in August.
PHOTO CONTRIBUTED BY VICTORIA CONVENTION AND VISITORS BUREAU IN COOPERATION WITH VICTORIA COUNTY MASTER GARDENER BRYNN LEE.
A group of Victoria County Master Gardeners spent a full morning at Victoria Community Center earlier this year preparing a promotional video to promote and plan for the 2019 Texas Master Gardener Conference being hosted by Victoria County Master Gardener Association in April 2019. Functions will be held at the community center as well as Victoria Educational Gardens and nearby facilities at Victoria Regional Airport with more than 500 Master Gardeners from all over Texas expected in attendance.
ph: 361-935-1556
nancyk