Master Gardener Class Assignments – For March 6

February 28, 2019 Master Gardener Class

Hi All,

We will be covering Botany Part II this coming Wednesday.

Here is the link to the fact sheet on Cultivar vs. Variety

Here is a link to the awesome podcast From Tree to Shining Tree

Homework for this week

Finish reading the Botany Primer pages 42 -79

Web Soil Survey Assignment – do you best and let Frank or Sue know if you need help

Use this website: Web Soil Survey

This is a bit of a challenge task, please have fun with it and do the best you can!

Choose any area you wish to learn about – your home and garden, a nearby farm or any other land.

  • Initiate the survey by going to the address line and type in the address of your farm or a farm you would like to know more about (P.O. Boxes will not work). Hint: If the town is a subset of another town like Lyman is of Alfred, you may have to type in Alfred to get the farm located.
  • Click “View” after you type in the address and that will take you to a big map.
  • Use the 5-sided tool called AOI (area of interest) at the top of the web page. Click carefully, one click at a time to outline the field(s) you wish to know more about. If you make a mistake, which is easy to do, use the arrow key to go back – it takes a few seconds. Once you have an area outlined double click your cursor.
  • Now you should get a map with an area of blue lines drawn around the field(s) you highlighted.
  • To see which soil types with hotlinks to more information on each type now go to the tab at the top that says “Soil Map”. That will show you the soil types in a map on the right. On the left you will see acreage, and soil types. The soil types will have hotlinks to detailed information about each soil.

To save your soil report and create a pdf so you can share it:

  • Click on the tab (above right) called Soil Data Explorer. You will get a map with codes for the soil type(s) on the map.
  • Now click on the tab called “Shopping Cart Free”. Then hit Check Out and choose “Get Now”. This will generate a multiple page document.

Once you generate a report for the area you are researching you may wish to save this as a PDF file. Then you could save it to your computer and share the report via e-mail or any way you choose.

York County Soil Types: Use this web page for more detailed information on the soil types found from your Web Soil Survey.

Have fun with it, and if you get stuck, feel free to give me or Sue a call and we can work on it with you.