Meeting Reminder, Thursday, February 9, 6:30 PM

Our next meeting will be held on Thursday, February 9, 6:30 PM, at the Grantsburg High School, room 111. Joanne Gray of Sunshine Gardens will present on Heucheras (varieties of coral bells). Garden Club business includes last minute preparations for the WPT Garden Show in Madison, discussion of and vote on calling tree, Grantsburg Chamber of Commerce membership vote, change to our April meeting (date and time conflict for Dean at Wood River Garden Center), and presentation of a proposed budget from our treasurer. Becky T and Georgianne will provide refreshments.

Hope to see you are there!

Gutter garden! Great idea for growing vegies!

http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2009/04/gutter-gardens-grow-produce-without-taking-up-space/

This is such a cool idea for growing lettuce and other produce I had to share it with the club. Click on the link above to get more info.

January 2012 Meeting Minutes

Attendees: Pam, Kris H., Lucille, Mary G., Rosemary, Mary C., Carrie, Janet, Teresa, Georgianne, Tim and Becky T., Sue A., and Linnea. If I missed anyone, please excuse me.

Pam called the meeting to order at 6:35 PM.

The minutes from the November meeting, which are on the blog, were approved by a unanimous vote.

Treasurer's report shows that as of the end of 2011, we have $2332.64. Report was approved by unanimous vote.

Old Business:

Holiday in the Park was beautiful. Hope you all had the opportunity to view and enjoy it. Pam and Mary G. pulled it apart and are storing the items.

Kris H. is the Plant Sale Chair- she informed us that we will now be able to hold the annual plant sale at TDawgs on Hwy. 70 in their parking lot. This should work out well for us, since there will be lots of good parking spaces and a restroom and restaurant close by. Kris H. will look for someone to help with advertising.

It was discussed that members should continue to check out the blog and pay attention to the the advertising on the side and check out the interesting and informative links, for gardeners, that Pam puts on there. Contact Pam for information on how to submit information for the blog.

The 2012 booklets are printed (Thank you very much to Kris for printing them, they are beautiful) and available at the meeting tonight. Please check the listing and put a check mark by your name, if you picked up your booklet at the meeting.

We discussed the Garden Expo at Madison Feb. 10 - 12th. So far, we have six members going, they are Linnea, Janet, Kris H., Georgianne, Becky T., and Sue A. We still have room for 2 more people to go with. We need a $50 deposit tonight from those who want to go. We will leave on at 8 AM on Friday, Feb 10, and come back on Sunday, Feb 12. Please look at the previous letter from Pam Davies which explains about the Expo and you may sign up for your own workshops. Georgianne and Kris will each drive.

New Business:

A lady who has a cabin locally, contacted the Club to let us know that she needs someone to care for her garden at her cabin, since she lives in the Twin Cities and does not have much time to spend at the cabin. She is willing to pay for these services. A garden club member could decide to do this to make money, or the Club, as a group, may decide to take on this project to make money for the Club. This can be discussed further at the next meeting.

The meeting was adjourned.

Lucille Danielson brought in her photo albums full of photos of the previous 20 years of the Garden Club. Thanks to Lucille. It is fun to look through them.

Kris Henning showed us her wonderful power point presentation "20 Years of Growing"! What a terrific look back over the 20 years of the club! Thank you very much, Kris, for all the hard work you put in to making that wonderful program!

Our guest speaker was Nicki Peterson, of Crosstown Creative Solutions. She explained to us what she can do for businesses to promote their products and boost sales for them. She can help build web sites and help people with their advertising needs. Nicki is also the President of the Grantsburg Chamber of Commerce. She explained to us that the Chamber would like more non-profits to become members. The Chamber helps businesses to advance, they help with tourism and many community events. Nicki was instrumental in starting the Grantoberfest Festival. The cost for a non-profit, such as our Garden Club, to join the Chamber of Commerce is only $50.00 per year.

Refreshments were provided by Mary G. and Pam, this evening. Thanks for the great snacks.

Janet Byers

Secretary

Summary of our Brainstorming Session

Brainstorming session 1/12/2012

The club devoted some time to looking at our statement of purpose and what we want for the future of our club. We broke up into small groups and discussed some questions, brainstorming ideas.

We looked closely at the four points of our mission

• to stimulate the knowledge and love of indoor and outdoor gardening,
• to encourage civic planting and beautification,
• to help people of all ages learn the satisfaction of gardening and other horticultural pursuits,
• and to enjoy the gardens and friendships while sharing knowledge among our members.

Some thought that we do the forth and first items very well but might do more to encourage civic planting and to reach out to the community.

Discussions in both groups:

We thought that joining the Chamber of Commerce would help us with outreach (ads in the Chamber newsletter and networking). Also, word of mouth from members could help us promote meetings and events. We could also use Community Education to promote garden tours such as Arboretum, Munsinger Gardens, etc.

We could partner with the Chamber to encouraging civic planting and beautification: put together a planting day event for the businesses in Grantsburg. The Chamber would provide plants and we would help businesses get their planters planted coordinating with the hanging plant pots. The businesses would be responsible for watering and weeding.

Issues around encouraging member to serve as officers came down to time constraints. Offering premiums for members who serve was not thought to be very useful.

Some thought we should not offer a Master Gardener Scholarship program. Others thought that offering a Master Gardener Scholarship was a good idea but we need first to work on our ability to set up a budget so that we know what funds will be available for a scholarship. Partial scholarship rather than a full scholarship was thought to be a better idea—somewhere between $25.00 and $75.00 (cost last year for the course was $150.00. Details of how the scholarship would work would have to be worked out.

If we want to sponsor more programs such as the scholarship and additional advertising of meetings and speakers we may need to raise more money. Ideas for raising more money: silent auction as a Chamber event, weeding for hire (difficult when we have our own gardens to weed), plant sale gift certificates sold before the sale date, make crafts such as stepping stones, twig trellises, rhubarb leaf birdbaths. We could do a workshop day to make times to sell. Club supplies materials, members supply labor. Sell them at plant sale, through booths at fairs such as Experience North Woods Christmas in Siren or Chamber events. We could sell food items.

The question remains, are we satisfied with our club as it is or do we want to do more? If there is more we want to do, we will need to commit to the time and energy it will take to do more. For now we could do two things that will not involve a lot of additional time or effort for most members:

1. $50.00 to join the Chamber is easily accomplished. We can join for one year to see if we like it.

2. The first year we could advertise our monthly meetings and sales in the newsletter and participate in some Chamber events as they come up. Not a lot of extra time or energy needed. Needs a vote.

3. We can ask Mary to work up a budget for the year 2012 with normally expected expenditures and revenue and decide if we’d like to devote a few hundred dollars to a trial scholarship/grant program for members who want to take the Master Gardener course through Wisconsin Extension. Details need to be worked out but we’d want to vote on this.

Thanks to everyone who participated. Thanks to Lucille and Kris for a look at our history. Thanks to Nicki Peterson for talking to us about the Grantsburg Chamber.

Meeting Reminder, Thursday, January 12, 6:30 PM

The Burnett Garden Club will meet on Thursday, January 12th at 6:30 PM at Grantsburg High School, room 111. We will be sharing the history of the Burnett Garden Club with photo albums compiled by our historian, Lucille Danielson, and a PowerPoint presentation created by Kris Henning. We will discuss what our club means to us and ways to improve our club and attract new members in the coming year. Refreshments provided by Pam and Mary G.

Don't forget, we now give away a DOOR PRIZE at every meeting!!

Local enterpreneur (Crosstown Creative Solution) and Grantburg Chamber of Commerce President, Nicki Peterson, will be our special guest. Nicki will talk to us briefly about how Chamber membership can help our organization. Nicki will also be available to talk to members about her business (online marketing, social media, website design services, graphic design and printing). Members who have their own small businesses may find Nicki a great resource in the community.

Our 2012 Bulletins will be distributed at this meeting.

Membership dues for 2012 accepted.

Sign up for WPT Garden Expo trip to Madison, Feb 10-12 ($50.00 deposit required)

Scarification of Seeds

Scarifications of seeds: Seed scarification was really easy to remember once I remembered that what you're doing scarring seeds. A seed's hard outer coat makes it impervious to gases and moisture that would cause them to germinate. To overcome this you need to scratch, break or nick the seed coat. In nature this naturally occurs when seeds pass through the digestive tract of some animals, through freezing temperatures or microbial activities that break down the seed coat. Seeds that need to be scarified before sowing are usually large or have thick seed coatings like seeds in the morning glory family, runner beans like purple hyacinth beans vine or canna seeds.
--from Mrbrownthumb.blogspot.com

Stratify seeds

Stratify seeds: In horticulture, stratification is the process of pretreating seeds to simulate natural winter conditions that a seed must endure before germination. Many seed species undergo an embryonic dormancy phase, and generally will not sprout until this dormancy is broken. The time taken to stratify seeds depends on species and conditions; though in many cases two months is sufficient. --Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratification_(botany)