From: "Erica VD Ginter" <eginter at klgai.com>
To: <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] FW: [BGCNews] Digest Number 52
Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 19:49:21 -0500
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

There's info here on the Beltsville Garden Club plant sales, April 13 and
May 11. These sales are the best place I know to get cheap and healthy
plants. I go every year, spend about $100, and get at least $300 worth of
plants. Most plants are propagated from members' gardens. Flowers, herbs,
trees, vegetables, shrubberies. Get there early, because the sale ends
around noon.

Erica

-----Original Message-----
From: BGCNews at yahoogroups.com [mailto:BGCNews at yahoogroups.com]
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2002 4:01 AM
To: BGCNews at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [WSFA] [BGCNews] Digest Number 52

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Coming programs are described at the club's main web site at:
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There is 1 message in this issue.

Topics in this digest:

      1. BGC Newsletter 50:3 March 2002
           From: Harry Dewey <HTD10 at Columbia.edu>

________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________

Message: 1
   Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 07:15:20 -0800
   From: Harry Dewey <HTD10 at Columbia.edu>
Subject: [WSFA] BGC Newsletter 50:3 March 2002

Beltsville Garden
Club Newsletter
Volume 50 Number 3
http://www.beltsvillegardenclub.org     March 2002

March General Meeting

Join us for our March general meeting on Wednesday, March 27, 2002 at
7:30 pm in the Cafeteria
of the James E. Duckworth School, 11201 Evans Trail in Beltsville.  Our
speaker will be Gene
Sumi of Behnke Nurseries.

Mr. Sumi  will present a very timely topic:   \223Preparing your Garden for
Spring.\224  He'll
help us learn how to prepare our lawns and gardens for spring and
provide us with a
checklist of spring tasks so that our yards are in top shape.
Mr. Sumi is a Horticultural Technical Advisor at Behenke's in
Beltsville.  He is a Maryland
Certified Professional Horticulturist and lectures at Prince George's
Community College.
He is well known in the area for his many presentations on gardening
topics.

Plan to join us for this timely topic.  Refreshments will be provided
after Mr. Sumi's
presentation.  We'll also have our door prize drawings!  See you on the
27th!

Spring Plant Sales

The first of our popular spring plant sales will be held on Saturday,
April 13, 2002 from
8:00 am until 12 noon in the parking lot of High Point High School.
Come early to take
advantage of a wide variety of perennials, shrubs, and flowers for your
yard and garden.

Mark your calendar for the second plant sale to be held on Saturday, May
11, 2002.  Time
and location are the same.  The second plant sale is the club's biggest
one with a wider
variety of annual and vegetable seedlings as well as perennials, shrubs
and trees.  This
sale is just in time for Mother's Day as well as for spring planting of
annuals.

Just a reminder- the sale will start promptly at 8:00 am.  No early
sales will be accepted.

FloraBytes by Bil Koppes

Here are some gardening related websites you might be interested in.
Worth mentioning again
is the Ohio State University Factsheet database that has published
research on horticultural
topics available from many extension services across the US.  The
website is
http://hcs.osu.edu/fs/list.html.  The HortiPlex site has 100,000 plant
varieties with
photos and links to information:  www.hortiplex.com

While on our tour of the University of Maryland Landscape Architecture
program, we were
introduced to a collection of landscape photos on line at
www.lair.umd.edu.  This site is
a cooperative venture between several universities and is used for
instructional purposes.
Finally, here are some sites recommended by Dr. Steve Cohan in his
October presentation:
http://www.agnr.umd.edu/hgic; http://plants.usda.gov;
http://www.horticopia.com; and
http://www.asiatica-pa.com.  Check these out if you are looking for
gardening information.

BGC CALENDAR OF EVENTS

Wed. 3/27       General Meeting-Gene Sumi-      Preparing Your Garden
for Spring-A Checklist  Duckworth School 7:30 pm
Sat. 3/30       Roadside Pick up-8:00  Meet at  McDonald's on Powder
Mill Road
Wed. 4/3        Executive Committee Meeting     7:30 pm  Nancy Nickell's
house
Sat. 4/13       First Spring Plant Sale 8:00-12 noon  parking lot of
High Point HS
Wed. 4/24       General Meeting-Harold Winters  Horticultural Rewards
from Plant Ex-
                plorations  7:30 pm  Duckworth School
Wed. 5/1        Executive Committee Meeting     7:30 pm  Marcy Fallon's
house
Sat. 5/11       Second Spring Plant Sale  8:00- 12 noon  parking lot of
High Point HS
Wed. 5/22       General Meeting-Bob Stewart     Founding of BGC  7:30
pm  Duckworth School

Gardens On-Line
  by Robin Everly

Gardens On-line is back after a mini-break of sorts.  Don't you wish our
weather would
make up its mind.  It's warm, then it's cold, then it's warm again.  The
one constant is
that it is dry, which has been good for Geoff and me because we are
still cleaning up and
fixing outdoor structures from the tornado of last September.  But I've
been having to
water my flower beds and small trees all winter, which is unusual to say
the least.

This month we visit botanical gardens in North Carolina.  No other
reason than I was in
North Carolina taking a class at the John C. Campbell Folk School at
http://www.folkschool.org
and thought I would look to see if there were any botanical gardens near
Brasstown, North
Carolina.  The folk school is it, and my class took all my time anyway
but since I was
researching North Carolina's botanical gardens, I decided to stick with
them.

The first one I want to feature is North Carolina Botanical Gardens at
http://www.unc.edu/depts/ncbg/.  As web site design goes, this site is
so-so, but it
contains a lot of useful information and a link to the Center for Plant
Conservation Garden
at http://www.mobot.org/CPC/welcome.html.   Start at the \223Explore our
Gardens\224,
\223Main Visitor Site\224, and take a tour of different North Carolina
habitats.

The next botanical garden to visit virtually is in Belmont, North
Carolina near Charlotte
and is called Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden at
http://www.stowegarden.org/index.html .
The web site is classy and easy to navigate with a left navigation  bar
that is located on the
left hand side of the page as you surf.  Reading the \223About DSBG\224
section, I found out
this botanical garden is new, created by Daniel Stowe in 1991 with a
donation of 450 acres
and a $14 million endowment.

Finally, the Biltmore Estate in Asheville at http://www.biltmore.com/ is
a place to visit
for real and not only virtually.  There you enter the world of the rich
and a beautiful
garden designed by Frederick Olmstead.  There is a four star inn and a
winery on the
premises.  The web site itself is well designed but high tech.  You
can't print out the
text of the web pages and may not have some of the plug ins to view
small videos on your
PC or Apple.

I'm still trying to figure out where Gardens-On-line will go next month
but we will stay on
the east coast.  Enjoy the warm weather and preparing your gardens for
spring.

The First Crocus of 2002
 The following poem was submitted by BGC Member Ingeborg Carsten-Miller.

        The air smells cool and damp.
        Clouds darken the sun.
        Naked tree branches reach
        to the winter sky.

        All of a sudden
        a small bird flies
        to rest on the top
        of our maple tree.

        To sing its song:
        \223Spring is in the air -
        The first crocus has
        Opened its yellow bloom!\224

Greenhouse Committee
  by Bill Koppes

We are at the stage of the potting cycle where the potting soil is
consumed rapidly.  The
large pots for hanging plants, cannas, and lilies need large dollops of
soil.  We purchase
the ingredients for a mix of peat moss, vermiculite, and perlite. At the
same time we blend
in ground pine bark, limestone, and solutions of kelp and soluble
fertilizer.  The result is
a mix that is cheaper and of better quality than commercial mixes.  For
the succulents and
some other plants, we amend this with sand for drainage and density.
The hanging pots also
get a serving of slow release fertilizer.  Based on experience with
certain plants, we will
also add a systemic pesticide so that we will have a clean plant for the
Spring sales.

In addition to our improvements to the greenhouse facilities mentioned
in previous columns,
it should be noted that Gilbane Construction Co. donated labor and
materials to replace the
wood planks in the greenhouse benches.  They also made special portable
potting benches for
the students to use in the courtyard.  A replacement swamp cooler for
the greenhouse was
also donated.

Roadside Pick Up

On Saturday, March 30, we will have our first roadside pick up of the
spring.  If you are interested in helping out, meet at McDonald's on
Powder Mill Road at 8:00 am.  We'll be picking up trash along the
stretch  of road between McDonald's and High Point High School.
Don't forget to bring a plant for the door prize table!!!

HOSPITALITY

Thanks go out to the following members who provided hospitality at our
last meeting:
Sue and Bill Koppes for the centerpiece; Bonnie Cronkhite, Ann Hoffman,
Eletheer Decker,
Shirley Zimmerman, Ellen Thorp, Shirley Tuthill, Pat Summer, and George
Farrell for
refreshments; and Ann Hoffman and Eletheer Decker for serving as
hostesses.

BGC Spring Plant Sales

Saturday, April 13, 2002

Saturday, May 11, 2002

8:00 am-12 noon
Parking Lot of High Point
High School

Lots of great plants at terrific prices!

Officers
President
 Bill Koppes  301-434-6380
  bilsukopp at aol.com
Vice President
Sue Shawhan 301-434-6666
Sjshawhan at bigzoo.net
Past Presidents
Geoff White 301-937-1539
 GeoffW831 at erols.com
Judy Erickson  301-572-4986
 jberickson at earthlink.net
Louise Clements  301-4595165
Treasurer
 John Lydon  301-595-1066
 j.lydon at verizon.net
 Secretary
 Helmut Jaehnigen  410-730-0160

Committee Chairpersons
Greenhouse
 Bill Koppes  301-434-6380
 bilsukopp at aol.com
Historian
 Bill Nickle  301-937-7917
Hospitality
 Nancy Nickell  301-490-8976
 nncynickell at aol.com
Membership
 Sue Koppes  301-434-5380
 bilsukopp at aol.com
Newsletter Editor
Marcy Fallon 301-937-3682
Talkdoc52 at msn.com
Publicity
 Helen Pechacek  301-384-2415
 hpechacek at comcast.net
Sales
 Francis Rupp  301-937-2937
Electronic Membership
 Harry Dewey  301-937-1446
 HTD10 at Columbia.edu
Webmaster
 Robin Everly  301-937-1539
 reverly at erols.com

Submissions to the newsletter are due by the second Wednesday of the
month and should be
submitted to the editor at 12217 Castle Pines Drive, Beltsville, MD
20705 or by e-mail
The Beltsville Garden Club is a not-for-profit organization designed to
promote gardening
interests of its members, increase their knowledge of horticulture, add
to their enjoyment
of gardening, and to encourage ornamental planting by individuals,
community and business
groups.

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