Lynchburg Living

Departments

By Sarah Blanzy

The ground is hard and cold right now as winter’s icy fingers are squeezing out the warmth remaining from the summer. The months ahead will be much of the same with little prospect of outdoor activities. But spring will be here before we know it and with it will come gardening, planting and yardwork. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of dirt beneath your fingernails and the smell of the fresh earth as you plant vegetables in the ground or landscape your yard. The manual labor of gardening and working the land is often therapeutic and enjoyed by many. And the satisfaction of knowing the delicious food on your dinner table is the product of that labor is priceless.

During the warmer parts of the year, Saturday mornings downtown are a buzz of activity as throngs of people turn out to shop at the Lynchburg Community Market. They are looking to purchase locally grown fruits and vegetables, but what many of them may not realize is the resource they have right there in the market to learn about how to properly grow their own. A little booth set up by the Lynchburg unit of the Virginia Cooperative Extension is staffed by a team of volunteer Master Gardeners who have spent 100+ hours in training to become an excellent resource to the residents of Lynchburg City, Amherst and Campbell counties.

In addition to their booth at the Community Market, the Master Gardeners make themselves available to the community by running a hotline, working with five Lynchburg elementary schools, the Detention Center, Jubilee, the Boys and Girls Club and making personal visits to people’s homes to help answer questions and solve problems they have with their land.

The Virginia Cooperative Extension (VCE) is an educational outreach program of Virginia’s land-grant universities: Virginia Tech and Virginia State University and an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture. It exists to bring knowledge to the residents of Virginia about how to cultivate and take care of their land and contribute to the health of the environment and benefit them through many community-based programs. The Lynchburg unit of VCE was founded in the early 1970s through the federally funded Consumer Health Project. Shortly thereafter, the City of Lynchburg began contributing to the funding of the Lynchburg VCE and moved the unit to its current location in the Miller Building on Grove Street.

Earlier this year, the Lynchburg VCE partnered with Hill City Master Gardeners Association (HCMGA) to create the Home Visit Committee in an effort to better serve the community. Kevin Camm, an Extension Agent at the Lynchburg Unit, recognizes the way this committee is benefiting Lynchburg.

“[The committee] has completed almost 50 house calls and put in over 400 hours,” Camm said.

The VCE and HCMGA receive many calls weekly on a variety of topics including trees, insects, fruits, vegetables, invasive plants and turf management. In addition to these calls, which can be answered over the phone, “we get several calls weekly about certain plant problems, low production, dying off, etcetera, and it is hard to come up with what the cause could be or what a possible solution would be without seeing it. The Home Visit Committee goes out to answer those calls in person and speak with the homeowner about the situation and give them information about what to do,” Camm explained.

The Master Gardeners are very knowledgeable in all areas of horticultural and desire to educate Lynchburg residents while working to solve their problems. When making house calls, they are able to educate individuals in the community about how to properly take a soil test and send it to the Virginia Tech Soil Testing Laboratory. Camm says that soil tests can be highly beneficial to gardeners and landscapers because they provide valuable information on the content of the soil and can reveal how much lime and fertilizer needs to be added.

“When the soil test results are received back to the homeowner with information about how much lime and fertilizer is necessary to apply and at the appropriate time, nutrient run-off into surface or ground water is minimized, money is saved and plant health is optimized,” Camm said.

This is just one example of how the Master Gardeners can not only help resolve problems faced by landscapers and gardeners in the Hilly City, but can also help them be better stewards of their land and resources.

The services of the Master Gardeners are available to all Lynchburg City, Campbell and Amherst County residents and are completely free (although the Hill City Master Gardeners Association does accept donations). For any horticultural, 4-H, Agriculture, Nutrition, Training, issue, concern or question, call the Lynchburg VCE at (434) 455-3740.