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  North Country MGV

gARDEN bLOGS

Webster Elementary School Butterfly Garden

11/27/2018

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A butterfly garden installed by Master Gardener Volunteers in front of the Webster Elementary School has yielded a number of butterflies this year. The 4th grade garden buddies harvested milkweed pods this fall, separated the seeds and distributed them to interested families at an open house with instructions.  In addition to the Butterfly Garden MGVs have also volunteered in their school vegetable garden working with the teacher on a farm to table concept.  

​The children have applied their learning to the garden and area families are provided instructions on providing a food source to pollinators.
This is a  2018 success story from Burnett County. 
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LCO Ojibwa Elders Center

11/16/2018

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This is an other entry for activities in 2018 , this one in Sawyer County

This year six new raised bed gardens were created at the LCO Ojibwe Elders Center.  Along with creating the beds, Master GardenVolunteers worked cooperatively with UW-Extension FoodWise Nutrition Educators on teaching children in a summer LCO Boys and Girls Club program on how to care for the plants in the beds. 

This project provided an educational opportunity for both the elders and the children along with food used in meals at the Elder Center.
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Got Honey?

11/8/2018

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​By:  KATIE CHILDS
NORTH COUNTRY MASTER GARDENER VOLUNTEER

Yes we do! The Gardens on Golden Pond have been “Home Sweet Home” this past summer for thousands of bees! It was back on May 10th when a neighbor beekeeper agreed to set up a couple of hives on the edge of the woods near the vegetable garden/perennial beds. It has been an amazing experimental effort as the bees pollinated plants all around as well as produced an abundance of honey! A blog at the NCMGV website this past May first introduced the initial honeybee operation.

While some bees were caring for the ‘queen’ who lays eggs and the ‘drones’ mate the queen, the female ‘workers’ were extraordinarily busy - primarily guarding the hive, keeping it clean and producing honey! Also all summer long, the worker bees gathered the nectar and pollen. Some of their favorite flowers were asters, anise hyssop, cosmos, coneflowers rudbeckia, sunflowers, yarrow, and zinnias.
​The worker bees have a tiring and dangerous job laboring from sunrise to sunset with a lifespan of about six weeks. Based on their productivity, periodically additional components called ‘supers’ were added to the hives to ensure their high rise had adequate frames for construction of combs and honey yield. Each super holds ten frames where the bees create mass hexagonal prismatic wax cells to store their honey.

Labor Day weekend the beekeeper was as busy as the bees! As the photos indicate, it was time to harvest the excess honey. The process was as follows: first, the frames were removed; followed by scraping the honeycombs; third, the extraction process took place through centrifugal force in a barrel and the finale -the jars were filled with liquid gold!
Since the harvest, the bees have continued to produce more honey, which is their food source, for the winter months ahead. In October, the bees began receiving an additional sugar syrup supplement along with protein patties. Also, with a hard freeze and bitter cold fast approaching, the hives got a very techie “spaceship” look. They have been cloaked in an aluminum flexiwrap -similar to what is used in outer space - that is ¼” thick and has a R-6 value. Also a vapor board has been placed on the top of each hive along with a one inch styrofoam section on the bottom to ward off drafts. Along with all the protective layers, the thousands of bees in each hive must do their part as well. The “heater bees verses the housekeeping bees” maintain the warmth in the hives by shivering or vibrating their flight muscles, raising their body temperature thus elevating the surrounding air by several degrees. Note, it has been a common practice for some apiarists to transport their bees in the hives to warmer climates over winter, to continue pollination of other crops such as the California almond groves.
​It is a fact, nature is not an exact science. However, optimism remains for the honeybees who buzzed around the Gardens on Golden Pond to be the official greeters next Spring in search of tulips and daffodils!

For more information, please refer to wihoney.org; abfnet.org (American Bee Federation) and pollinator.org. Also plan a visit to the new Tashjian Bee and Pollinator Discovery Center at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska next year. It is the first building in a planned “farm to table” campus where the buzz is all about the bees!
“The hum of bees is the voice of the garden.”
Elizabeth Lawrence
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Teaching and Display Garden Wins Award

11/3/2018

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Attendees at the 2018 Annual Twilight Garden Tour.
​​The Spooner Agriculture Research Station Teaching & Display Garden once again had an award winning season receiving an Honorable Mention for collaboration with local community groups in the All-American Selections Landscape Design Contest.  This is the 6th consecutive year that the garden has been recognized for its educational efforts, creative landscape designs and promotion of new proven varieties of flowers and vegetables. The award-winning garden is a joint effort between the Spooner Agricultural Research Station, the Spooner Area UW-Extension Office and UW-Extension North Country Master Gardener Volunteers. The Spooner garden completed against entrants in their category from across the U.S. and in Canada.

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    Learn more about what's going on by checking out these local blogs and Facebook sites: 

    *No. Country MGV Facebook
    *Spooner Ag Station Facebook 
    ​* The River Flowing Blog
    ​
    *  GardenTrueNorth Blog

    (These blogs are not associated
    ​ with the UW-Extension except for the Spooner Ag Station Facebook page.)


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Visit the Teaching & Display Gardens

The Teaching and Display Gardens  are a joint effort between the Spooner Agriculture Research Station, operated by the University of Wisconsin - Madison College of Agriculture and Life Science, the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension and area UW-Extension Master Gardener Volunteers.  

Open to the public for self-guided tours during day light hours seven days a week mid-May through mid-September. 

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  • Home
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    • Calendar
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    • Master Gardeners Present....
    • Twilight Garden Tour >
      • 2020 Virtual Twilight Garden Tour
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