I am delighted to tell you I will be starting an additional role soon.

Dr. Oliver, Assistant Dean, Urban & Metropolitan Affairs, has asked me to assume a 25 percent assignment in our region to provide leadership for our Master Gardener program and related projects as part of the new urban initiative. I will continue in my role as Unit Horticulture Educator for DuPage County.

This new assignment is effective April 4, 2005.

I look forward to this additional challenge of coordinating the efforts of the region's Master Gardener Coordinators and Horticulture Educators to enhance the Master Gardener Program for all.

Also, I am also pleased to tell you that I have received funding to hire another person to work with Mary and me in the DuPage horticulture program. We will be advertising soon and hope to fill this position quickly.

As you know, I have been serving as the Unit Leader for our office on an interim basis since September. Barbara Linek, our new Unit Leader will be starting with us on March 16. Barbara has a masters degree in organizational leadership, with a concentration in Training. In addition, she has 18 hours of graduate studies in English as a second language, and a bachelors degree in secondary education. Barbara comes to us from the Illinois Migrant Council where she was the Adult Education Services Coordinator for the Even Start program.

Please join me in welcoming Barbara Linek to our DuPage Unit staff!

Only three Master Gardener classes left and we will have almost 40 more Master Gardeners!! Class has been educational and it is great getting to know all of our new interns.

Many of you are wondering if we'll have enough slots for all the volunteers. We are hard at work on it. If anyone has any ideas for new volunteer opportunities, don't hesitate to give me a call.

There will be new opportunities to note in the next volunteer sign-up sheet, including: Downers Grove Garden Plots – "Plant-A-Row for the Hungry;" Help Desks at Bartlett Library, Addison Library and Hinsdale Library. These new projects are in the finalizing stages. Don't forget to sign-up for your volunteer time. The volunteer sign-up form will be in the mail soon.

Spanish-English Pesticide Safety Training Program
On April 6 and 7, our Extension office will be hosting a pesticide safety training program for green industry personnel who speak Spanish and English. I will be teaching both days, along with several of my colleagues. If you would like to help me, please call the office. I need one to two MG volunteers to help with registration, room setup and tear down, etc., for both days. This program will be held at the U of I office in Oak Brook, 1010 Jorie Blvd., Suite 200 (the same location as the MG training classes). Room set-up is 7:30 am and registration is 8-8:30 am. The program concludes at 12:30 pm. Thank you for your consideration!

Chicago Flower and Garden Show
If you need a dose of spring, consider attending the annual Chicago Flower and Garden Show. Along with several gardens and vendor booths, there are many gardening seminars offered throughout the day. Once again, Extension has been asked to provide a seminar each day. I hope you will stop by and listen! Any of the seminars (Extension's and others) will qualify toward continuing education for Master Gardener recertification. Also, don't forget Extension will have a beautiful display garden this year, and the theme is Tropical Punch. Many exotic and tropical plants have been planted and cared for by our very own Greg Stack. MG Don Obuch has helped install Extension's garden for several years, and once again he will be part of the crew this year. MG's will have a Help Desk (and several DuPage MG's are volunteering). We hope you will enjoy the show.

Extension's Seminar Schedule at the Flower Show:

Monday, March 14

1 pm - Greg Stack
Giving Your Garden a Tropical Punch

2:30 pm - Caroline Jacobsen, DuPage MG
Helebores: The First Flowers to Bloom in Spring

Tuesday, March 15

12:30 pm - Dave Robson
Flowering Trees and Shrubs for the Landscape

Thursday, March 17

1pm - Jim Schmidt
Flower Borders as Easy as 1-2-3

Friday, March 18

12:30pm - Susan Grupp
Designing Perennial Borders with Personality

Saturday, March 19

2:30pm - Sharon Yiesla
Flower Beds, Islands of Color

Sunday, March 20

11:30am Jim Schuster
Some Colorful Shrubs

School Lessons

MG Elaine Weil and her team of MG's have been busy presenting various garden lessons to children at Lester Elementary School in Downers Grove. From Seed Starting to Terrariums to Squirmin' Herman the Worm, MG's have taught over 200 students in nine classes since January. For March, April and May, teachers have requested MG's for 27 more presentations. Thank you for teaching and encouraging children to learn about gardening and nature.

MG Class 2005

It is hard to believe we just completed our eighth class of Master Gardener training. Our new class is doing exceptionally well. They love to ask questions and it is apparent they are genuinely interested and eager to learn. One MG Intern, Len Muller, is piloting the On-Line MG Training program for us. Mary and I are anxious to learn of his experience. He will be completing a program evaluation for us soon.

MG Mentoring Program

We are off and running with our new MG Mentoring program. Regretfully we could not accept everyone's offer to be a mentor, but rest assured we appreciate your interest and of course, all of you should feel welcome to call and interact and support our class of 2005.

Be sure to sign up for our spring classes. All classes will be held in the Extension office conference room using the telenet equipment. There is a $5.00 registration fee for each class.

Tuesday, March 15 - 1pm
Low Input Landscaping with Groundcovers
Tired of mowing and watering turf? Why not try a groundcover that requires lower care and offers positive environmental qualities.

Tuesday, April 19– 1 pm
Spring Wildflowers
Learn to recognize spring blooming wildflowers.

Thursday, May 5 - 7pm
Ornamental Vines for the Home Landscape
Give a lift to your garden by planting vines.

Tuesday, May 17 - 1pm
Vegetable Garden Design-Beyond the Straight and Narrow
Who says vegetable gardens have to be all straight rows? Attractive vegetable garden design possibilities will be discussed.

All Extension volunteers who work with children must go through a screening process. This is a standard process designed to reassure parents that volunteers have been screened. It also serves to protect you as well. If you are interested in working with children and have not yet gone through this screening, please call Joan and we can get you the proper forms to complete.

It was a typical gloomy, cold, need to hibernate Saturday afternoon in DuPage County. What made this a special afternoon for me was I had clicker control. With lightening speed, I clicked to the cable "Garden Channel." The program turned out to be "Garden Giants" and was a real eye opener. They showed the (there's not an adjective to do it justice) largest pumpkins I had ever seen. Then there was a side story of a gentleman that grows huge turnips and cabbages. He grew a six foot tall bunch of celery! Amazing! This program got me thinking. What can I grow? I view January and February as my dream months because there are just a few garden chores. By this time, my fingernails are completely clean, other than a speck of dirt left from houseplant maintenance. My new plant catalogs have circles around everything. I'm bored.

Enter the sun, enter warm 40° to 50° weather...talk about a garden tease. Then it happened. I remembered the "Garden Giant" show and it is the perfect time to prune my grapevines. Could I grow a giant bunch of grapes? Could I grow one grape that would yield gallons of jelly? Rather than squishing 50 pounds of "eyeballs" (my term for skinned grapes), I'd only have to skin one, okay maybe two grapes. With visions of "Giant Grapes" dancing in my head, I surveyed my grapevines, for the first step to Giant Grapedom...proper pruning.

Grape vines should be pruned after the coldest part of winter is over and the buds start to swell. The best time in Illinois is the end of February to the beginning of March. Pruning grapes is not for the timid snipper. A properly pruned grapevine has 80 to 90 percent of the wood gone. All of that said, I prune my Concord grapes using the Four-Cane Kniffin Training System.

I have mature grapevines. What I'm looking to find are four, one year old lateral canes or arms. These arms should be 1/3 to ½ inch in diameter, straight, and preferably unbranched. Any canes that are smaller than ¼ inch or larger than ½ inch in diameter should be pruned away. Each arm should have six to twelve buds. Each bud can produce two to three clusters of grapes. Remember, grapes flower only on one year old arms. So when pruning, keep an eye out for a total of two renewal spurs located close to the main trunk for future arms. Once pruning is complete, loop or spiral arms to the structure and secure with twine.

As far as my "Garden Giant Grape"... a vision of "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" also came to mind.

Remember the little girl who ate the blueberry . . .

- Ambi Pellegrini

Parsley, sage...the second in our folk song's list of familiar herbs is one species in the genus "Salvia," where many of our familiar garden flowers reside; the perennial S. nemorosa, and the more fragile (in this climate) S. coccinea (Texas sage), S. elegans (pineapple sage), S. farinaceae (mealycup sage, the most common of the annual ones), and S. splendens, the red salvia found in great swaths in many a commercial planting.

Our herb, however, is S. officinalis, called garden or common sage, native to the Mediterranean region, and thus happy in our alkaline soils, especially the drier ones. Readers of this column may have noticed that the species name of this and many other herbs is "officinalis." I finally looked it up: it means "medicinal." The word "salvia" itself also comes from the Latin meaning "to be saved" or "to be well." The herb has antiseptic and astringent properties, causing it to be considered something of a cure-all from earliest times.

This sage is actually a sub-shrub. After a few years in the garden, the older stems become woody. While garden sage is usually described as hardy in zone 5, it seems that the older, woodier (and thus tougher looking) sages are actually less likely to survive a nasty winter than younger plants.

Garden sage grows best in full sun, in the aforementioned drier area of the herb patch. Wet feet give it root rot, but otherwise it is not bothered by diseases or insects. Leaves are long ovals, pebbly like a basketball (March Madness, anyone??) on the upper surface and softly furred. The latter quality gives many sages a grayish, ghostly look which provides an attractive contrast to the brighter greens of other plants. It has a loosely rounded growth habit, usually 12 to as much as 24 inches tall, producing purple-blue flowers in erect racemes in early summer. Its stems are square, marking it as a member of the Lamiaceae, or mint family. It does not take well to dividing; it is better grown from seed or a transplant. Attractive cultivars include "Icterina," with bright green leaves bordered with yellow-gold, "Tricolor" which has variegated foliage of red-purple, cream and green, and the highly ornamental oval-leafed "Berggarten," the latter reliably hardy in zone 5.

Culinarily, we think of sage most often as a flavoring for turkey stuffing, also in soups and sausages. Wonderfully aromatic, sage can scent your whole herb patch on a hot summer day. It was reputed to possess the power to cause longevity. As an Arab proverb has it, "How can a man die if he has sage in his garden?"

- Sandy Lentz

Our Sixth Annual Budding Gardeners Day will be held Saturday, May 21, 9:30 am - 11:30 am at the DuPage County Fairgrounds. This year we hope to have 50 children participate. We will need about 20 MG's to help us with this program. Also, please help us publicize it – tell your friends, relatives, scout groups, school groups, etc. It is open to the public, and targeted to youth 8 – 12 years old. You will receive the promotional flyer soon.

Included in this newsletter is an insert of the 2005 programs that are available through our Speakers Bureau. If you know of a group that might be interested, please share this list with them.

A series of entertaining "herbal" mysteries written by Susan Wittig Albert, features China Bayles and her eccentric friend Ruby Wilcox. China, an exlawyer, owns an herb shop in a small touristy town in Texas while Ruby has a "new age" shop next door. Together, they get involved in a mystery that features a different plant in each book. (Thyme of Death, Rosemary Remembered, Mistletoe Man, etc.)

In addition to solving a mystery and developing the characters a little more in each book, there is a lot of pretty good plant information (folklore, uses) and an occasional recipe.

There are now 13 books in the series, and I always like to try to read a series in order, but it's not necessary. They are fun to read either way.

I'd bet that most of us have a favorite tool – a special something that you feel you just couldn't garden without (maybe more than one). We welcome you to share your favorites with us! Please send your article to: ppieper2@sbcglobal.net.

- Pat Pieper

Do you have a plant to share with your fellow Master Gardeners? How about a piece of equipment you would like to sell or trade (or donate)? Is there a plant you are looking for that one of us might already have? We'd like to put you in touch with each other. Contact Pat Kosmach at Pkosmach@aol.com or 630-279-1655. She will take the information and put all of it together for the next newsletter.

Newsletter Deadlines for 2005...

"The Garden Thymes" is the official newsletter for DuPage area MG's. If you misplace your copy, it can be found at our DuPage County Extension website. From time to time, you may have something you would like to share with fellow MG's or perhaps include an article of your own. We would love to hear from you!! As always, your comments and suggestions are most welcome.

• Issue #3 – April 29
• Issue #4 - June 24
• Issue #5 - August 26
• Issue #6 - October 28

Wednesdays Through March 23
MG Training Classes 9:15am – 3:45 pm
1010 Jorie Blvd., Oakbrook

March 12 – March 20
Chicago Flower and Garden Show
Navy Pier

Tuesday, March 15
Low Input Landscaping with Groundcovers
Telenet class
1 pm – 2:30 pm
Extension Office Conference Room
Fee: $5.00

Tuesday, April 19
Spring Wildflowers Telenet Class
1 pm – 2:30 pm
Fee: $5.00
Friday, April 29
Newsletter articles deadline

Thursday Evening, May 5
Ornamental Vines Telenet Class
7 pm – 8:30 pm
Fee: $5.00

Tuesday, May 17
Vegetable Garden Design –
Beyond the Straight and Narrow
Telenet Class
1pm – 2:30 pm
Fee: $5.00