Summer weather is officially here! I'm sure many of you are gearing up for your individual county fairs as we get ready for the Maryland State fair. We're also very excited for our Summer Grow It Eat It meeting this Wednesday at the St. Mary's Fairgrounds. Hope to see you there!

Our newsletter this month includes the summer Volunteer of the Season, Maryland State Fair signup, new HGIC resources, and more!

Debra Mayfield was nominated by her coordinator, Mariah Dean, and is described as a gem in the St. Mary's County community. She tends to the Grow It Eat It container garden at the St. Mary's County Fairground among other Master Gardener efforts. At the GIEI container garden, she grows all sorts of fruits and vegetables for the local food pantries. She truly shines when she is educating others about the garden.

UME Master Gardeners will once again be garden docents at the State Fair this year! The Maryland State Fairgrounds is located at 2200 York Road in Lutherville-Timonium, MD. Maryland MGs will be serving as garden docents and staffing a tent next to the UME Master Gardener Learning Garden, a collaboration between Baltimore City and Baltimore County MGs. This volunteer opportunity is open to all MGs in all County/City programs in Maryland! To learn more about the UME Master Gardener Learning Garden, see the article by Maryland Grows Blog.

Volunteers can sign up for up to 2 shifts (only 1 shift can be a weekend). Please sign up by August 13. 

Note: We need to mail the parking passes out to each volunteer, and we will not have enough to send extras. Please only sign up for a shift if you are committed to volunteering during that shift.

Docents will greet and share new gardening ideas with the public!

The Learning Garden is home to plants of all shapes and sizes to interest all of our State Fair visitors

Join Emily May to learn more about the pollinators that come out to work as others turn in for the evening. Moths, flies, beetles, and other dusk and night-time pollinators can play important roles in pollinating wild and managed plants. Emily will talk about the ecology, diversity, and importance of these hidden pollinators, and how we can best support them.

Emily May is a Pollinator Conservation Specialist with the Xerces Society's Pesticide Program. She received a master's of science in entomology from Michigan State University, and has studied pollinator habitat restoration, bee nesting habits, and the effects of pest management practices on wild bee communities. Her work with Xerces since 2015 has focused on supporting crop pollinators through habitat creation and protecting bees and other beneficial insects from pesticides.

If you need a reasonable accommodation to participate in this webinar, please contact Stephanie Pully on or before July 20 at (410) 531-1754 or pully@umd.edu.

Did you miss any of our continuing education webinars last year?

Check out the recordings below! You can always see both upcoming continuing education opportunities and recorded webinars on the State MG Continuing Education webpage.

Home Grown National Park with Douglas Tallamy

Thursday, July 13th from 6:00-7:00 PM

Join Douglas Tallamy, author of Nature's Best Hope, for a virtual presentation on Homegrown National Park®, a grassroots call-to-action to regenerate biodiversity and ecosystem function. There is also an option to join a watch party at Exploration Commons in Westminster, MD.

This is a Carroll County Public Library event and counts towards continuing education hours.

The #MonarchBlitz invites individuals from across North America to look for monarch eggs, caterpillars, chrysalises and butterflies on milkweed plants in their community.

Learn more about what we accomplished together last year and learn how you can get involved here: https://bit.ly/3aYYr49.

The fall semester begins August 28^th and ends December 15^th. There are scholarships available for some fall classes.

The Basic Horticulture Technician Certificate, a fully funded Certificate, is available again for Fall 2023. BHTC more information 

Interested people can email Winny Tan in the CCBC Sustainable Horticulture office: wtan@ccbcmd.edu  with questions or for help with registration. Her office number is 443-840-3787. 

The 4 “E”s for Easy, Breezy, Beautiful Mosquito Source Reduction

By Sarah Rothman, University of Maryland PhD Candidate

In a Flash: How You Can Help Fireflies

By Anahí Espíndola, Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park

The University of Maryland Extension programs are open to any person and will not discriminate against anyone because of race, age, sex, color, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, religion, ancestry, national origin, marital status, genetic information, political affiliation, and gender identity or expression.