Feb. 23 – "Joys of Gardening", 8 am to 4 pm at Highland Community College, Student Conference Center, Room 201, 2998 W. Pearl City Rd., Freeport, IL.

Keynote speaker is Trudy Temple, Market Day founder.

Breakout sessions include: "Sprouting 101", "Rain Gardens", "Gifts from the Kitchen", "Worms are Nature's Recyclers", "Soils, Sweat and Tears", "Edible Landscapes", "The Houses of Freeport", "An Armchair Tour of Area Gardens", "Gardening with Beneficial Insects", "Seed Saving for Dummies", "Willow Garden Structure", "Painting Flowers", "Container Gardening" and "Looking Forward to Spring Migration".

Full day fee $30 includes four workshops, materials, breaks and lunch.

Feb. 23 – "Nursery School, Lessons in Gardening", 8 am to 4 pm at the i-wireless Center (formerly The MARK). Keynote speaker is Denny Schrock, Author & Garden Editor, Meredith Corp. on Container Gardening.

Breakout sessions include: "What's New for 2008", "Going Evergreen", "Midwest Vegetable Gardening", "Beekeeping Basics", "Garden Thugs and Re-seeders", "Stone in the Landscape", "Landscaping with Herbs", "Everything You Want to Know About Orchids", "Miniature Landscapes", and "Gardening Q & A".

Fee is $45 and includes materials, breaks and lunch. Full details are available and registration information is available on the Rock Island County Extension website.

March 1 – "Horticulture in the Heartland", registration opens at 8am, at Clinton Community College, 1000 Lincoln Boulevard, Clinton, Iowa. Roy Klehm is the keynote speaker. For registration information, contact Anne Schmidt at 1-800-637-0559. Cost is $35 per person.

March 15 – "Growing of the Green" presented by the University of Illinois Master Gardeners of Jo Daviess County. Full details and registration information are included in this newsletter.

March 29 – "Ready, Set, Grow" presented by the Lee, Ogle and Whiteside County Master Gardeners at Sauk Valley College. From 9 am to 3 pm. Full details will be posted on each county's website later this month.

March 30 – "Know & Grow" by Carroll County MGs. Still a "work in progress", full details will be available later this month on the Jo-Carroll website.

University of Illinois Extension is once again presenting the Four Seasons Gardening program. Three seminars for each of the four seasons are offered.

The winter series of the program concludes with Climbers and Twiners: Vines for the Home Garden. The program is offered Tuesday, Feb. 26 at 1 pm at both the Elizabeth and Mt. Carroll offices. It will be repeated at the Carroll County office only on Thursday, Feb. 28 at 7 pm.

Greg Stack, U of I Extension horticulture educator, will present the program via teleconference. This program focuses on how to incorporate vines into the home garden. Participants will learn what to look for in vines and how to care for them.

The seminar features a color slide presentation accompanied by the voice of the instructor as people from all over the state participate.

Cost for the session is $5. Advance registration is needed. Phone or email your county extension office for details. In Jo Daviess County call 815-858-2273 and in Carroll County call 815-244-9444. The email address for both offices is:

http://web.extension.uiuc.edu/jdc

If you have disability needs, please indicate when registering.

The spring series leads off with "Orchids 101" on Tuesday, April 8 at 1 pm. Other topics include "Containers with Pizzazz" on April 22 and "A Palette of Annuals: A to Z" on May 6.

Many commercial seed companies manufacture seed tapes. Easy to use, these tapes are simply a strip of paper, with seeds glued on at the proper spacing for the particular variety. These tapes are well suited for small seeds that need to be thinned after germination, such as carrots, beets and lettuce.

To make your own, you will need some paper, flour, water, a small watercolor paintbrush and seeds.

Cut plain paper, such as copy paper or newspaper, into long one-inch wide strips. If you can find it, the perforated ends of computer paper, used in the older style tractor feed printers is ideal. It is already cut and has regularly spaced holes that serve as a gauge for spacing.

Make a glue by mixing the flour and water to the consistency of gravy. With the brush pick up a small dot of glue, then touch the brush to a seed, and place the seed with the adhering glueon the paper. Continue this

After the tapes have air dried on a flat surface, roll or fold them up and store in a plastic sandwich type baggie. Be sure to label and date the baggie. When it is time to plant, just unroll, lay it on the soil surface, cover with a thin layer of soil, and water.

The word photography means "writing with light". Finding the best light to show off your garden is key to picture perfect. The best light can be found in the mornings, evening, and overcast days. By taking the picture during these timeframes the light looks longer, creating shadows and enhancing the colors of your subject. In contrast, pictures taken in the brightest light, at noon, actually wash out the intense color you're trying to capture. Hence the saying "timing is everything".

There are other elements to picture perfect. Obviously, any picture of your garden can be beautiful. We have all experienced beauty with our eyes, but when we try to capture that beauty on camera it's sometimes disappointing. After choosing your subject, start with framing. Framing is looking through the camera lens and seeing what the camera sees. When you're looking through the lens envision a Tic-Tac-Toe grid. A perfectly centered subject makes for a very uninteresting shot. Instead, place your subject on one of the cross lines of your grid. It's more interesting to see a garden bursting out of the frame than it is to see a lone flower stranded in the middle of no-man's land.

Framing your picture perfect garden can be easy. Use your own garden design to guide your picture framing. Paths draw your eyes in to wander through the picture, while dark branches help to frame. Leaves can be used to point to the beauty of the flower. If your garden is small, take close-ups. If your garden is too large for one photo, take a panoramic shot by piecing a couple of photos together. Once the lighting and the framing is set, picture perfect is a breeze.

Now all you have to worry about is those pesky shutter-bugs.

- from the DuPage Co. "Garden Thymes"

Recognizing that some common landscape plants offer food for the table and that many food plants have practical and aesthetic landscape value can double the benefits of gardening.

Historically plants that provided food for the family dinner table were the primary plants around the home. Today, most urban dwellers think in terms of low maintenance, beauty, screening for privacy and noise, and energy efficiency when they choose plants for their landscape.

Many plants that offer functionality and aesthetic appeal also offer interesting, tasty, healthful food.

A popular landscape plant for year-round landscape interest is Amelancier or Serviceberry.

It is an understory tree or large multi-stem shrub, with showy white flowers that precede the foliage in early spring. Fall color ranges from red to golden. Sweet blue-black berries ripen in June and are so delicious birds may beat you to them if you are not quick. The berries make an excellent pie.

There are several species of Amelanchier, each with its own unique habits. A. ainifolia is a native species with a shrubby habit while A. arbrea has tree form. Native Americans used the berries of Amelanchier in pemmican.

Viburnums are a large family of plants that offer multiple seasons of interestwithshowy flowers, attractive fruits, and colorful fall foliage. Many of the species are known for their fragrance. For eating, V. prunifolium or Blackhaw, is recommended. The purple-black fruits ripen in fall and are tasty eaten right off the plant or made into jams and jellies. Another native V. trilobum, or American cranberry bush, has bright red, edible fruits in the fall.

If edible flowers are of interest, you can plant Hybiscus syriacus commonly known as Rose of Sharon. It is an easy-to-grow, sun and drought-tolerant plant yielding masses of nutty-flavored blooms in late summer.

Traditional fruit trees such as pear, peach, plum, and apple should not be overlooked as landscape plants. Their form and bloom in the landscape is seasonally attractive. Rather than separate them into a home orchard, integrate them into borders and hedges.

Dwarf varieties, many of which have mature heights of less than 15 feet, can be effectively used as foundation or patio plantings. These plants need full sun for best fruit production, are pollinated by insects – including bees, and may require more than one plant for pollination. Look for self-pollinated types when purchasing. Once planted with food production in mind, failure to harvest fruit can create a messy landscape that will attract birds, squirrels, and yellow jackets if not cleaned up.

- Barb Bates, U of I Extension Horticulture Educator

Growing potatoes above the ground is an old-time method that results in easy picking rather than digging. Whether you use a barrel or a cage, the principle is the same.

Start by selecting an area of the garden that receives full sun. Loosen the soil by lightly turning it over, working in some balanced fertilizer at the same time.

Place the seed pieces in contact with the prepared soil, then add soil until the seeds are just barely covered. Position an open-ended cage over the planting area and add about four inches of straw or mulch and water well.

When the potatoes have sprouted and grown four to six inches above the straw, cover them with additional straw until about an inch of the plant remains exposed to the light and water well. Let them grow another four to six inches and again cover with straw or mulch and water. Repeat this procedure two or three more times until the cage is full of straw. If rain is in short supply, be sure to provide water. The plants will continue to grow producing flowers and eventually will spill out and over the cage.

The presence of flowers signifies it is time to reach in for the immature, small new potatoes. However, if you are looking for the big potatoes, wait until the plants have died back. After the plants have died, trim the vines, pull off the cage, loosen the straw and wallah – potatoes without digging.