Travis County Commissioners Court
October 31, 2006
Item 31
31, receive update on Texas cooperative extension's grow green program.
>> good morning.
>> thank you.
>> thank you.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners, jeff ripley, Travis County director, along with skip ripley, passing out information on the grow green program. Really I'm here this morning just to introduce skip and allow skip to give you a little update on this partnership program between the county, our office and the city of Austin. Skip? Nonresponsive.
>> good morning, we want torepog about our grow green program that we have been working on now for about three years intensely, about five years ago when we actually began our initiated the program. The program is a partnership between Texas cooperative extension and the city of Austin watershed protection department. They are our funder, our partner. They provide the funding for the publications that you have. The design work and other things. And assist us in many ways in the program. The purpose of the program is to address water quality. Here in Austin, we have a water quality problem. If you go to a particular stream and sample the stream outside the city and then coincide the city and sample the stream, you find that levels of nitrates from fertlizers, levels of various pesticides and herbicides are higher. One of the things that makes us a unique region of the state and a unique city is the fact that we have such a great recreational water, waterways from barton springs and other such places around town. The concern is not just surface water, but also underground water. It's real easy for water to move here down to the aquifer region, through sink hole, other natural recharge features. So what people do in their lawns does have an effect on the water they drink, as well as the water that we get to swim in. The program has really addressed this in a number of ways. We go to nurseries, we train employees at nurseries on various aspects of pest control, fertilizer, lawn care and other things like that. We also have workshops for nurseries throughout the year where they can come in and learn more about products. You see for most of the nurseries in town, that includes a big -- the big box stores and all, they are hiring folks that aren't necessarily trained to begin with. So one minute they may be working in a job totally unrelated to gardening, the next minute selling products to customers who may not also know how to apply them. We do workshops and we do fax alerts to various businesses as well, telling them of upcoming or current pest outbreaks, how she should be properly managed with a minimum of pesticide use, a minimum of the negative impact on the environment. We do a plan of the week that appears in the newspaper. You may have seen it in the Saturday's statesman or klru on central Texas garnner. Now joined in with Texas a&m Texas a&m in a number of research projects. A greenhouse study where we took Austin, grew grass in it, looked at various products used on the grass, how they percolated to the soils and washed off the surface. Now we are working at the wildflower center on turf, looking at the effects on that. Everything we do we evaluate. One of the things that's most important is to find out if we are making a difference. When we survey nursery employees off our trainings, it's essentially 100%. They are learning and they are gaining knowledge in the area of the effects of these products and how they should properly be applied. We have talked to nursery managers and found approximately a 60% increase of the plants that are in this book, an increase in sales of those plants. So we do know that people are looking at the material and making a change in the way they apply product. The reason the plant selection is so important is what we have done here is selected things that you don't have to spray when you plant. Rather than a product or plant that you are going to spend your Saturdays out pampering and spraying to keep alive, these are plants that know how to live here. That's the goal of that. When we have evaluated residents that come to our programs, we found about 82% plan on making a change in the way they garden. That's important because it's easy to say you learn something or yeah I understand the material, but the real difference is the question that says when you go home are you going to change what you are doing? We have found about an 82% effectiveness on that, which we are really excited about. The promise has been awarded several different awards for both publication categories as well as the governor's environmental excellence award and the keep Texas beautiful program. It's gotten attention from across the state, lcra has picked it up, taking it to other areas. We send publications all over the state for people who are interested in starting that in their own area. And even nationally now, we have sent -- started a program in missouri based on some of our materials, chesapeake bay on the east coast, both san francisco and puget sound, all of these areas are using our materials to enhance their programs. So we feel good about that. As I mentioned our funding is through the watershed protection department and we have found many ways to take the money that we are putting into the program and expand it. Our master gardener volunteers are going out and helping stock the publications that are now in 43 different nurseries around town. Also assisting us with the training programs. And that helps take what we have and really expand it in many ways over. So I would like to thank you for both your support and your encouragement in helping us make a positive impact on water quality here in Austin as well as our quality of life through the grow green training program.
>> so if your goal is to have the -- to have the prettiest lawn in the neighborhood and I guess the best one, the pamphlet that you should read is the earth wise guide to lawn care.
>> that's one of them. I have given you a sampling -- we have over 22 different publications.
>> I noticed that.
>> you can go on line, the website on the back, down load all of these if you have extra print cartridges, you can president clinton -- you can print them upat hom.
>> my goal is pretty -- if my goal is pretty simple, I'm not enthusiastic about doing a whole lot of research.
>> okay.
>> is that the one I should look at?
>> that's the one. It boils down to mowing, watering and fertilizing properly. If you overfertilize you create turfs that's going to have problems. Under fertilizing could be a problem. Those kind of educational messages.
>> right amount at the right time.
>> it's easy to remember. In the spring it's tax day, April 15th, in the fall it's about October 15th. So that makes it simple.
>> okay.
>> do you have one entitled make my hackberry and lugustrum trees go way.
>> go an inch above the ground, take the hackberry off right there. That takes care of most of the problems.
>> I've been trying to 20 years. I have got problems.
>> looking for something that -- with the lawn that -- that I see you got lawn problems. I was looking for something where your lawn is maybe brown in certain areas and then you don't understand why it is brown, everything is is green around it, you wonder what's going on there. I see lawn problems here, but --
>> yes, that will help you walk through it on your own. It's difficult sometimes to do that. One of the services that we offer, one of the things that we encourage the nursery employees to understand is people can come to our office any time with samples and we diagnosis it for free at the office. That way they won't put fungicide on cinch bugs or insecticide on a fungus problem. Maybe they don't need to treat at all. Also e-mails through the web and we have partnership with Texas a&m and other agencies where we have a digital diagnostic system. Send me an e-mail of your lawn problem, Commissioner Davis, if I can't answer it, I can send it up, maybe a pathologist or entomologist will look at it get us an answer back. All free. No charge for that.
>> if someone were to inquire about problems or conditions that may not be -- make what we discussed here today. How old they get that information? In other words someone watching us today, telephone numbers they need to know, e-mail addresses all of this other kind of stuff. Could you maybe go through that.
>> the simplest way is on the back of every grow green publication or if they want to go directly to growgreen.org, the website. Texas cooperative extension phone number to call it. We can walk them through, how to bring us a sample, take a sample, send Austin an e-mail.
>> those that do not have computers.
>> the phone number 845-9600.
>> all right. Okie-doke.
>> thank you very much, this is informative.
>>
>> [inaudible - no mic]
>> [multiple voices]
>> thanks very much.
>> if residents bring you a sample, what size sample should they aim for?
>> if it's a lawn sample, it should be about a four by four inch plug with some soil put in a zip lock or twist type bag so nothing can escape, between healthy and dead. We can't do autopsies but we can do diagnosis. Go to that zone between healthy and dead that's important to take the sample there.
>> if you have a doctor sitting up here that might do an autopsy if we have those kind of problems.
>> I'm not open today.
>> [laughter]
>> this stuff is fabulous. The other wonderful resource is the ladybird johnson wild flower center, their big fall plant sale. I have switched to much more hardy plants than the one that you all sent me.
>> [laughter] last time.
>> thank you all.
>> thanks.
>> thanks.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, November 1, 2006 11:30 AM