Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Energy Masters - New Year
On December 1 the Energy Masters volunteers completed their first work day for fiscal year 2013.
Six teams with three to four people on each provided energy and water saving services in 16 apartments at Marbella Apartments, a building owned by the Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing.
Teams consisted of newly trained volunteers and at least one experienced volunteer from last year. In each apartment team members caulked leaks, cleaned refrigerator coils, opened air vent covers and vacuumed out the accumulated dust, installed energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs,
outlet gaskets, and low-flow showerheads and faucet aerators.
The goal of this program is to help low-income apartment residents save at least 10% on their
utility bills and also to improve the efficiency in buildings so that greenhouse gas emissions will be minimized.
Since the program began in the fall of 2011 volunteers have provided energy retrofits in 121 apartments and have installed 812 energy efficient CFL light bulbs, 1,857 outlet gaskets, 186 faucet aerators, 101 low-flow showerheads, and gave out 85 power strips.
Six additional work days are scheduled for 2013 with the goal of providing services in 150 apartment units. Stay tuned for more reports of how much energy residents save as a result of these efforts.
If you would like to become an Energy Master, please contact Jennifer at jabel@vt.edu.
Winter Offerings from Ag and Natural Resources - ANR
Welcome to winter! Around here, we do not really have much cold weather until
January and February and some of our heaviest snows have come in March. With
reports of active insects as late as the middle of January to corroborate, we really
do not consider our landscape to be dormant until January. This information is
important to keep in mind as we look at the natural cycle of insect and disease pests
and contemplate the dormant woody plant pruning that is a regular winter
chore.
Our Master Gardener intern training that completed its classroom portion
will resume this month as we do our end of the month Pruning Practicum.
In January, the Master Gardener led public education outreach is conducting a 6-week
“Making Your Yard Sustainable” training. The curriculum utilizes the adapted
Landscape for Life materials developed by the U.S. Botanical Garden. They will
offer a small group of people a chance to do an in-depth analysis of the features and
processes of their home landscape with an eye to reducing the impact of
development and maximizing benefits to the environment.
Extension is proud to sponsor a joint Master Gardener/Master Naturalist volunteer led effort to provide home visits as part of the Audubon At Home program that seeks to educate residents
about ways to use their landscaped garden areas to enhance
and support our native insect and bird populations.
This training will be followed soon with the offering of a yearlong series of Sustainable Urban
Agriculture Classes that start with January’s ‘Grasses for the Masses’ on January 12.
This is all a warm up for public education pruning classes that are available to the public in February. Look for our calendar of pruning classes on our website that are
arranged in partnership with Tree Stewards of Arlington/Alexandria volunteers.
Tree Stewards work with county staff and city of Alexandria urban forestry programs to promote increased tree canopy, proper tree selection for planting, and beneficial maintenance practices.
Go to Tree Stewards website: www.treestewards.org to learn about the 2013 volunteer training class that will begin in February.
Welcome Megan Mauer, Nutrition Outreach Instructor
Megan Mauer is a 2010 graduate of Virginia Tech with a Bachelor of Science in Human Nutrition, Foods and Exercise concentrating in dietetics.
Previously Megan has served 1,700 hours with the Pittsburgh Health Corps where she assisted HIV positive clients with making healthy food choices from the agency’s food pantry. She also
interned with Share Our Strength’s, Cooking Matters program, where she provided support to the evaluation team. She has also worked for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) as a nutritionist educating and providing referrals for low-income moms and children under the age of 5.
Megan is very excited and eager to begin her new role as Nutrition Outreach Instructor for the Northern District. Through this opportunity Megan will be able to provide free trainings for volunteers to teach
wide-ranging nutrition curriculum for youth and adults. Megan is based out of Alexandria, and will be covering: Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William and Stafford Counties.
Welcome to Susan Pollack
On Dec. 28 Susan Pollack joined our staff in a temporary county-funded position
as coordinator of the Master Gardener volunteer program. She is filling in for Kim
Haun who has been temporarily re-assigned to head the county’s urban agriculture
task force.
Susan is retired after working at USDA's Economic Research Service
(ERS) for 30 years. While at ERS, Susan specialized in agricultural and rural
labor force issues, U.S. agricultural policy and legislation, US agricultural trade.
For her final 16 years, she was a senior analyst covering the world fruit and tree nut industries.
Susan has both an MS and BS in Agricultural Economics from Penn State and the University of Massachusetts. Since retiring in 2010, Susan has volunteered as an assistant Market
Master at the Upper King Street Farmers Market in Alexandria, and become a certified Master Gardener with the Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia (MGNV).
She is also an enthusiastic yoga student. Susan will be working in our office 20 hours/week, so please stop in to say hello.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Please Support the ‘Energy Elves’ - Volunteer or Donate!
Here from today's Sun GazetteIf you're interested in the next Arlington Energy Masters aka "Energy Elves" volunteer training program partnered between Cooperative Extension/ACE/AMEN please call:
ACE at 703 228 6406 or VCE at 703 228 6400
Conservation Group Seeks Support for ‘Energy Elves’
The homes of 16 Arlington families living in the Marbella Apartments received an early holiday present – energy and water efficiency improvements provided by “Energy Elves,” the Arlington Energy Masters volunteers trained by Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment (ACE) and Virginia Cooperative Extension (VCE).
A large group of the volunteers spent 154 hours collectively helping the residents conserve energy and water by installing compact-fluorescent light bulbs, power strips, and outlet and light switch gaskets; sealing cracks and leaks around windows and doors; and converting to low-flow aerators and showerheads.
The program was developed specifically to support families living in affordable housing buildings throughout our community.
“The energy program not only helps to make our apartments more energy efficient by reducing energy costs, but it also provides education on how to conserve energy,” said Shanette Yao, resident-services coordinator at Marbella Apartments, which is managed by the Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing.
ACE has set a goal to raise $15,000 and secure 300 donations by Dec. 31 to support the Arlington Energy Masters program and ACE’s other conservation and sustainability initiatives.
For information, see the Web site at www.arlingtonenvironment.org.Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Extension Master Gardener Blog Posts
Our group includes Linda Chalker-Scott from Washington State, Holly Scoggins, from Virginia Tech, Bert Cregg, from Michigan State, and myself, Jeff Gillman from University of Minnesota. You can read more about how the Garden Professors blog got started in our eXtension feature article
Our goal is to engage the public around research based gardening and horticulture
We cover topics from new trends, flowers, trees (and tree care), while also debating hot issues such as compost tea, using native vs. exotic plants in the landscape, or GMOs. While there are many differences in gardening across the U.S or even internationally, we find there is a lot of common ground (sometimes even literally) that science can help us understand about how to grow plants.
For example, did you know that adding gravel to the bottom of your containers does NOT improve drainage?
Adding Gravel to Increase the Drainage? Not so, says the Garden Professors Facebook Page
Adding to the Facebook page example above, here are just a few examples of topics we’ve covered on our blog this week:
- Planting Edibles in the City (contemplating favorite edible plants that would work well in cities)
- Why Oh Why? (Trees) buried alive (another example of trees being planted too deeply)
- Closing the Loop (how MSU food waste compost helps grow greens for dining halls)
- Eternal [gardening] optimist (sometimes we just can’t resist the urge to try some plants)
And in the future you can look to see more current events, issues, and questions addressed, aimed at keeping you up-to-date with reliable, research based gardening information.Please stop by our blog or our Facebook page (where we think the comments are just as fun to read as the posts)….And let us know, what questions do you have about gardening that you’d like to see discussed on the Garden Professors blog?Jeff Gillman
Associate Professor
Department of Horticultural Science
University of Minnesota
Friday, December 14, 2012
Interested in developing GreenSTEM?
Get Connected with Environmental Educators in Northern Virginia with NoVA Outside!
NoVA Outside Networking and Professional Development Event for Environmental Educators - Friday January 25
Guest Speaker: Vince Meldrum - Vice President of EarthEcho International
Register now at http://goo.gl/VFTQp
When: Friday January 25, 2013
Time: 11:00 AM - 2:00 PM
1952 Gallows Road
3rd floor conference room
Vienna, VA
This event will include:
- NoVA Outside’s business meeting to shape the future of this soon-to-be 501C3
- Discussion of NoVA Outside's 2013 events for students and educators
- Networking lunch
- Guest Speaker: Vince Meldrum, Vice President of EarthEcho International talks about organization development and fundraising
- This will be the first of four quarterly NoVA Outside networking events
Early bird registration http://goo.gl/VFTQp - now thru Jan 11th
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