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.

Education for all

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.

• Work with Junior Master Gardener curriculum in schools

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.

• Conduct activities for the community at Victoria Educational Gardens

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.

• Offer educational opportunities in 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.

• Encourage future gardening

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.

Expanding our reach

There are several new activities of note planned for the upcoming year.

• Citrus seminar and sale

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.

• Host to Texas State Conference in Victoria

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.

Learn from successes and failures

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.