In This Issue ~
- From the Desk of Shelley King-Curry, Southern Area Extension Director
- Congratulations!
- New Master Gardener Coordinator!
- Insect Apocalypse!!
- Discover Nature's Many Wonders!
- Staying Active During COVID
- Composting and Rain Barrel Workshops
- Market Season is Upon Us!
- Gobbling Up Market Goodies
- Community Partner Event - Diabetes 101 Class
- What Do You Value?
- The Cicadas are Coming! Sort of . . .
- Nutrient Management Update
- Subscribe to other University of Maryland Extension publications
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Welcome to SPRING from the University of Maryland Charles County Extension!
Welcome to spring everyone! Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy lives to catch up with all that is happening at Charles County Extension! As our world moves to reopening and we embrace a new reality, we hope you are finding this to be a time of rejuvenation and hopefulness.
Our UME Charles County faculty and staff are gradually returning to the office space and are looking forward to connecting through the resumption of some in-person programming and providing appointments to meet and address the needs of clientele. We began offering these opportunities more broadly in April and will continue to expand throughout the summer as COVID caseloads are expected to decline. We are using procedures prepared by our UME Administration for in-person activities, and following CDC guidelines to assure the health and safety of all we serve.
We hope you have the opportunity to join us and engage in upcoming events and activities that we are involved in. Now that we are gradually returning to the office please take the opportunity to call, email or make an appointment if you have a question, need or concern that we can address. We look forward to hearing from you.
And, if you haven’t noticed, we have a new website! Please visit us at UME-Charles County Extension. There, you will find information regarding all our programs, lots of educational resources, and upcoming events, both local and statewide.
In this issue, as with the others, we continue to share progress and direction for our ongoing efforts and programs, provide notice of local UME events and activities, acknowledgements of service and accomplishments by our volunteers and local youth, along with updates on how our faculty and staff are working to continue to meet local needs to support you and others in the community.
Thank you for your continued support!
Shelley
Shelley T. King-Curry, MS
University of Maryland Extension
Area Extension Director - Southern Maryland Cluster
Calvert, Charles and St. Mary's Counties
9501 Crain Highway, Box 1
Bel Alton, MD 20611
skingcur@umd.edu
301-934-5403, Ext. 300
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Congratulations to Bonnie Boyden, 4-H Program Specialist, for receiving the 2021 Off-Campus Staff Excellence Award!
And to Jessica Conjour, Project Leader and Nutrition Educator, for receiving the Cornerstone Award as part of the SNAP-Ed Cafeteria Connections - Making the Most of School Meals Team!
Bonnie and Jessica were recognized in the University of Maryland, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, State of the College and Awards Program, held on May 12.
The full awards program can be viewed HERE.
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Welcome Kaitlyn Baligush,
New Master Gardener Coordinator
for Charles County!
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My name is Kaitlyn Baligush, and I am so excited to be the new Master Gardener Coordinator for Charles County.
I received my Bachelor’s degree in Wildlife Conservation from the University of Delaware. I have worked for the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Maryland State Park Service where I conducted wildlife surveys, habitat restoration projects, interpretive programs, and worked with many volunteers!
I hope my experience will lend itself to the advancement of the master gardener program. I’m excited to see the great work our volunteers have been doing across the county.
In my spare time, I like to paint, get outside, and be a cat-mom. I just recently completed a mural that I had been working on for over a year.
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"Pollinator"
Mural by Kaitlyn Baligush
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Discover Nature's Many Wonders!
Amy Lang
4-H Youth Development Educator
amlang@umd.edu
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Are you concerned about learning losses prompted by this year of COVID-19 virtual/hybrid instruction?
Are you looking for new ways to get out and enjoy this beautiful weather with your friends and family members?
Try putting a little spring in your step with a Spring STEM Walk!
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Many of us are emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic aware that young people in our families and communities have struggled with virtual learning. We’ve also been reminded that being outdoors is good for us during all times, but especially during a highly contagious pandemic. A fun way to incorporate these realities is by taking a STEM walk.
The idea behind a STEM walk is to leverage the physical, social, and emotional benefits of nature experiences while investigating the STEM that can be found in nature all around us. As we enjoy the fresh air and warm temperatures of spring, we can reinforce basic STEM skills.
As you walk in your neighborhood or local park, encourage children and companions to heighten their observation and investigation skills by asking questions like: where do you see STEM in this location? Or what do you see that you are curious about or would like to investigate further?
Observation Skills:
You might notice things like some plants grow taller than others based on access to light and water, birds’ nests are amazing feats of engineering, some plants attract more butterflies than others, some plants smell much better than others, ants can carry huge loads and walk tremendous distances despite their minimal size…this list goes on and on. There are countless natural wonders to observe. If you want to focus your discussion, you can point out themes or concepts and invite observation of those items.
Inquiry Skills:
Encourage each other to develop questions to investigate around these observations. Examples might include:
- Why are some of the tulips blooming when others aren’t?
- How does an ant carry a potato chip three times bigger than his body?
- What is it about purple flowers that attract butterflies?
- How do birds build their nests without hands?
Communication Skills:
In any setting, communication skills are key. Encourage STEM walk participants to think about how they might share their discoveries with others. Would they like to create a sign explaining their discoveries so others that pass by can notice as well? Would they like to invite a friend to join the walk next time and explain what they’ve observed? Would they like to host a family dinner discussion to explore the concept? They may even want to create a video to showcase what they observe and investigate. TalkSTEM has created a number of fun video presentations on their YouTube channel; one fun example measures how fast a whirlpool is moving.
Wherever you live there is so much to explore and investigate. Getting outside is a great way to inspire STEM curiosity while benefitting from the nature all around us. So go take a STEM walk today – see what you discover.
This article has been adapted from:
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Staying Active During COVID
Our Master Gardeners have found some creative ways to remain active volunteers even through the pandemic.
Last year the Virtual Learning Team (VLT) was created to provide virtual support for projects or community outreach during the shutdown. During February and March, the VLT created virtual activities for Melwood’s day program clients and residents at Victoria Park Senior Living Apartments. The VLT is continuing to create educational multimedia content to optimize our ability to deliver horticultural education.
Bay-Wise certifications have also gone virtual! The Bay-Wise program aims to educate homeowners on best landscaping practices for the Chesapeake Bay. If you are interested in having your landscape certified, please visit our website for more information.
On March 22, Master Gardeners were allowed to return to outside gardening activities, and our team of volunteers at the Southern Maryland Food Bank have been hard at work. There was no activity in the garden during 2020, so it had become quite overgrown. Food Bank staff will be rebuilding new raised beds, and CC MGs have been helping to clean-up and redesign the garden and plant potato baskets in preparation.
Another team of volunteers put in a huge effort to help redesign the Master Gardener pages on our new extension website! There is a plethora of gardening resources available as well as educational activities geared towards children.
See our notice below on two upcoming workshops. Also follow our Facebook Page for information on horticulture topics and virtual webinars.
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Kaitlyn Baligush
Charles County Master Gardener Coordinator
kbaligus@umd.edu
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Market Season is Upon Us! |
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Enjoy all of the bounty that Southern Maryland has to offer!
Do you have a farm that offers on-farm purchases or has a farm stand? Let me know! Jessica Conjour - jconjour@umd.edu or 667-240-9011.
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Gobbling Up Market Goodies |
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Now that you've got some delicious goodies from the farm or market, join us Thursdays at 11:00 am on our Facebook page for our Fresh from Maryland series. This spring and summer, we're focusing on seasonal produce.
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Community Partner Event - Diabetes 101 Class
The Diabetes 101 Class is an in-person, small group session that reviews the basic principles of managing diabetes, insulin administration, and glucometer teaching.
The next class is scheduled for Tuesday, June 8, 2021 at 1:00 pm. Anyone interested may contact the Diabetes Center at DiabetesCenter@umm.edu or 301-609-5444, for additional information and to reserve their seat.
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Jessica Conjour, MPH
Project Leader and Nutrition Educator
Maryland SNAP-Ed
jconjour@umd.edu
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What Do You VALUE?
Take a minute and answer this question, “The best thing I do with my money is ______."
How you answered was most likely influenced by what you value.
A value is a principle, or one’s judgement of what is important in life. Values are personal. What one person values highly, another person might not value at all. Some examples of values include security, health, responsibility, status, education, knowledge, friendship, family, religion, and independence. If you value education and knowledge, then you might spend more money on educational resources, or make saving for further education a financial priority.
So what do you value? Take a few minutes to reflect on ten things that you value the most in your life. Sometimes life circumstances will change how we prioritize our values. Perhaps you had a health crisis that scared you. If so, you may currently rank health as your number one priority when previously it wasn’t.
Write your values down and rank them from #1 being the most important value in your life, to #10 being the least important. Write that number next to the value. Ranking a value #10 does not mean it isn’t important, but rather it is less important right now than values #1 through #9.
How you spend and manage your money reflects what you value. Because values are personal, your relationship with money may differ from other people you know, including family members. It’s important to communicate what you value individually and as a family.
Get in touch with what you value and you may find that your goals and dreams really will come true!
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The Cicadas are Coming! Sort Of . . . .
Dr. Alan Leslie
Extension Educator, Agriculture and Food Systems
aleslie@umd.edu
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If you follow local entomology news like myself, you will have noticed that this is the year that we will see the return of the 17 year cicadas in Maryland. The synchronous emergence of these cicadas produces a spectacle on a massive scale, with trees covered in insects, a deafening chorus of their songs, and heaps and heaps of dead bodies once their relatively short adult stage is complete. All across the state, there are outreach and educations programs helping to inform the public about what to expect, when we should see the first bugs, and how to prepare for the ensuing madness. However, Charles County may be missing out on all the fun this year.
Periodical cicadas are a group of insect species that spend the majority of their lives as immature stages underground, and synchronize the development of the adult stage as a way of guaranteeing the survival of their species by overwhelming predators with far too many prey than they could possibly eat. The spectacular emergences of periodical cicadas are a phenomenon that is unique to the eastern half of North America, and there are several emergences that occur at distinct intervals in isolated geographic areas known as “broods” (Fig. 1). The broods are named using Roman numerals, with the numerals I - XVII designated for 17 year cicadas, and the numerals XVIII - XXX for 13 year cicadas. However, there are currently only 12 known broods of 17 year cicadas (I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XIII, and XIV), and only 3 known broods of 13 year cicadas (XIX, XXII, and XXIII).
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The brood that is due to emerge this year is brood X, and it is one of the largest of all cicada broods, covering portions of Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, as well as some Midwestern states. Within Maryland, some areas will see a lot more cicadas emerging than others, while some Marylanders may see no cicadas at all. There are a few different factors that will determine whether an area will see huge swarms, a few bugs, or nothing at all.
The immature stages of cicadas feed underground on tree roots. So if the trees and soil have been disturbed in the area in the past 17 years, through projects like new housing or urban development, the loss of trees would reduce the cicada population locally in that area. Cicadas also can’t tolerate wet soils. Since they are living underground, any land that stays wet or occasionally flooded (like the Zekiah Swamp) would not be good habitat for cicadas, since they would essentially drown. Another factor is geologic history. Maryland’s Eastern Shore was formed relatively recently, as water and wind-driven sediments formed the peninsula as the last glaciers melted and retreated around 10,000 years ago. Because of the relatively young age of the peninsula (in geological terms), cicadas apparently haven’t had enough time to expand their range into that area, and so the Eastern Shore will not see any of brood X this year.
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Southern Maryland also historically has not seen large emergences of the brood X cicadas. Existing records place the southern boundary of the brood X emergence in Maryland at a line roughly connecting Fort Washington to Upper Marlboro, which essentially excludes Charles County from the range map. There is a second brood of 17 year cicadas that emerges in Maryland, brood II. This brood does show up in southern Calvert and St Mary’s Counties, as well as areas of Indian Head and Nanjemoy in Charles County. However, this brood is not scheduled to emerge again until the year 2030. That means that at least on paper, residents of Charles County are going to have to head north this year if you want to witness this natural phenomenon that won’t show up again until the year 2038. |
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The brood X emergence is set to be a spectacular affair, with some areas seeing up to 1.5 million cicadas emerging per acre, and once they start singing, they can reach volumes up to 105 decibels. Early emergences have already begun, but the largest swarms won’t appear until the end of May. During this period, males will sing continuously during the day time to attract females to mate. Females will lay eggs in the tips of tree branches, and eventually those eggs will hatch, and nymphs will crawl to the ground to dig their way to the root system of the tree and start the process over again.
The 17 year cicada swarms are actually made up of three different species (Magicicada septendecim, M. cassini, and M. septendecula), which all have red eyes, a dark body, and orange wings, setting them apart from the green dog-day cicadas (Neotibicen canicularis) that emerge every summer (photo above). For the month or so that cicadas are active, birds, snakes, spiders, dogs, cats, and even some humans will feast on them, but there will be far too many for predators to make a dent in the population. For all the excitement and fanfare that these insects bring, it’s a shame that they aren’t expected to make much of an appearance in Southern Maryland.
The actual boundaries of periodical cicada broods, like the brood X boundary with Southern Maryland, and how much boundaries change between emergences are phenomena that researchers are very interested in learning more about. Entomologists have been studying periodical cicadas and crudely mapping their range boundaries over the last century, which has made it difficult to tell if these broods are expanding, contracting, or maintaining their sizes.
That last emergence of brood X was in 2004, when smart phones were still relatively rare and impressive. Now almost everyone is equipped with their own personal GPS device and internet uplink to report cicada sightings across the state and beyond. Dr. John Cooley at the University of Connecticut is leading a project to use smartphones through a citizen-science project to produce a very fine-scale map of the boundaries of cicada broods like brood X. What makes this phenomenon interesting is that large-scale movement can really only happen every 17 years when adults are active, but also small founding populations of cicadas aren’t sustainable, since you need an overwhelming army of cicadas to emerge if the strategy of giving predators way more than they can eat will work. Dr. Cooley’s work will help answer some of these questions about cicada ecology.
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Francis Warring
Nutrient Management Advisor
fwarring@umd.edu
[You need a Nutrient Management Plan if you produce $2,500.00 in gross annual income from your agricultural operation annually OR have 8 animal units or more (animal units vary depending on species).]
Plan development time is almost over but there are still a few late-comers. It is ideal to have your plan complete prior to any nutrients being applied, but it is possible for me to write a partial plan that shows what you have already applied and future applications you plan to apply. Our next step would be to consider the Pre-Sidedress Nitrate Test (PSNT).
PSNT is applicable on fields where:
- Corn for silage or grain is being grown.
- Manure or biosolids have been applied this year or in the past two (2) years.
- A forage legume was grown last year.
- Less than 50 pounds of commercial fertilizer nitrogen per acre were applied prior to sidedress.
PSNT is not applicable on fields where:
- More than 50 pounds of commercial fertilizer nitrogen per acre have been applied prior to sidedress.
- Commercial fertilizer has historically been the only nutrient source.
- Irrigation is used.
Soil samples for the PSNT should be taken when the corn is between 6 and 12 inches tall, prior to the rapid growth stage when the plant will require adequate nitrogen to fuel its growth. The soil should be sampled to a depth of 12 inches and multiple samples (recommended 30 – 40) should be collected throughout the field/management unit. Just like traditional soil sampling, these samples should be mixed in a clean plastic bucket and a sub-sample taken for testing. Please allow 2 business days for the test results.
This test can either potentially save you money on nitrogen fertilizer if the results show adequate nitrate-nitrogen in the soil, or it can optimize your yield by making you aware that inadequate nitrate-nitrogen exist in the soil and so a sidedress is recommended.
Please contact me early in the season to sign up for this useful test.
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Feel free to contact our staff about any questions
or ideas you have to help make our community better.
Please send an email to jcrawfo4@umd.edu or visit our website.
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University programs, activities, and facilities are available to all without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, national origin, political affiliation, physical or mental disability, religion, protected veteran status. This institution is an equal opportunity provider. If you need a reasonable accommodation to participate in any event or activity, please contact us at (301) 934-5403.
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