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June is National Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Month!
Jose Gamiz, SNAP-Ed Food Demonstration Lead
Traci Armstrong Florian, MS, RDN, Associate Agent, FCHS
June is National Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Month, but for Maricopa County SNAP-Ed, promoting “Fresh Fruits and Vegetables” is a part of every month. The SNAP-Ed team works hard to provide nutrition classes, gardening classes, and food demonstrations to help our community eat more fruits and vegetables every day. Our direct education team has classes for youth, adults, and seniors through a trauma-informed curriculum that is shared with community members. We teach not only why it is important to eat more fruits and vegetables, but how to prepare fresh fruits and vegetables. The SNAP-Ed Food Demonstration Lead works closely with the Direct Education Team. The purpose of a food demonstration paired with direct education is to show our participants topic-specific recipes, and how to cook some familiar foods while using less fat, salt, and sugar whenever possible. Additionally, the Food Demonstration Lead also teaches participants how to cook new recipes using ingredients they might not have tasted before. Two key limiting factors for people to try new recipes in the communities SNAP-Ed serves are Time and Money. Many participants ask: Why would someone spend time and money cooking with a new ingredient if in the end they don’t like it? By providing a food demonstration, it helps our participants try new foods without having to spend their own money and without having to take time for prepping and cooking. In this manner, once they have tried the new food, and know they like it, and also know how to cook it, they are more likely to make it at home, thus increasing their consumption of fruits and vegetables one recipe at a time for themselves and their family members.
When it comes to youth, our Food Demonstration program uses age-appropriate curricula and food demonstrations depending on the age of the children. Having a fun food demo creates excitement that helps kids step out of their comfort zone and try new things, or try things they didn’t like before, but find out they do so now. We explain that their taste buds change over time and that they should at least give a new food a try, even if they have tried it before and didn’t like it. Having their peers there being bold and trying new foods and saying they have tried the new food and liked it, also helps encourage youth to take a chance. With older teens, and whenever possible, we have them learn by having more hands-on experiences with the food preparation. When youth are involved in the preparation of food, they are more likely to try it. In one of our kitchen skills classes for high school teens, participants shared their excitement with the instructor to take that day’s recipe home and make it for their families. We consider this very encouraging news when we hear teen participants wanting to do this!
Another important component of what the Maricopa County SNAP-Ed team teaches, and guides is about home, school, and community gardens. Some of our community members live in food deserts. Others struggle with the resources it takes to buy famers-market-quality, fresh produce. Whatever impedes access to fresh fruits and vegetables, we try to mitigate that by teaching people about gardening. Even if they do not have much space at home, our gardening team provides lessons on how to garden in limited space. Our garden team educates participants on the benefits of growing and consuming their own produce. It is very satisfying for people, overall, to be able to eat something they have grown themselves; and we show our participants how to achieve that self-sufficiency. Likewise, our Food Demonstration Program and Garden Program staff are working closely together to develop a series of classes where students learn kitchen skills, gardening skills, and then combine these hands-on skills in the kitchen by cooking meals themselves from what they harvest from the garden. It provides a garden-to-plate connection that helps children, adults, and seniors to eat more fruits and vegetables—and that is one of our main goals in the SNAP-Ed program!
For more information on anything you just read, please reach out to Jose Gamiz: JGamiz@cals.arizona.edu
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Urban Horticulture Program
Michael Chamberland
May was a busy month for Master Gardeners, starting with the Phoenix Home and Garden Show at Westworld in Scottsdale. Staff and Master Gardeners offered gardening information and presented talks on popular landscape topics through the three-day weekend show. We are hosting a Spanish language information table every month at the Mexican Consulate in downtown Phoenix. Free plants or seeds are offered, including a fact sheet in Spanish. This month we gave out small agave plants to 42 individuals.
Our Spring Session of the Master Gardener Training Course graduated in May. Sixty-four Trainees graduated, and seventeen Trainees certified as Master Gardeners on the day of graduation. We also celebrated twenty-one students who completed the Home Horticulture Course, a non-certification course run alongside Master Gardener training.
Our annual Master Gardener Recognition Ceremony was held in May. We gave certificates of appreciation to our standing committees, DIG volunteers, Ask a Master Gardener lead volunteers, lead mentor team, our Speaker’s Bureau, community gardens, West Valley office team, and many others.
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Master Gardeners were recognized for top earners of volunteer hours and continuing education hours. Several anniversaries were celebrated for those reaching 5, 10, 15, 20 and 30 years with the Program. We also honored Lenora Stewart, a long-standing volunteer with the Plant Help Desk, as a Master Gardener Emeritus.
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Project CENTRL
Scott Koenig
One of the three key aspects to the Project CENTRL 12-month leadership development program is connecting leaders and experts. (Along with the other two of individual leadership skill building and learning about rural Arizona’s issues.) This time of year, there’s a strong focus on the network building through connections as members of Classes 28 and 29 joined Class 30 in Washington, D.C. and Gettysburg, PA in late April.
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In Gettysburg they learned leadership lessons from the Civil War battle and in our nation’s capital they learned how to build relationships with our Congressional delegation and their staffs. Finally, the first weekend of June, when Class 30 will graduate, they along with all of the CENTRL community will meet Class 31 as they begin their CENTRL experience during Seminar 1: Fundamentals of Leadership.
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Groundwater - Arizona’s ace in the hole
Pamela J Justice, Project WET Program Coordinator Sr.
The plunging lake levels that determine Arizona’s allotment of Colorado River water are making headlines nationally. As is the warming climate which is melting our mountain snowpack earlier and earlier in the year. As the Arizona economy booms and population continues to grow, the question is: will we have enough water? To figure that out, we’d better pay attention to Arizona’s hidden water resource beneath our feet.
Currently, the Arizona Water Banking Authority has banked 4-million-acre feet of Colorado River water in aquifer storage within the state. Water managers have put reclaimed water, treated after use, back into rivers and recharge basins across the state, too. This groundwater, stored underground, doesn’t evaporate like our surface water supplies. Could groundwater be Arizona’s ace in the hole?
41% of the water used in Arizona comes from the ground and, in most areas, it is their only source of water. Understanding groundwater is of utmost importance to our continued survival in the arid southwest! Arizona Project WET is excited to share our new groundwater video series with our communities. APW worked with Esser Design to produce this series of 9 videos about our groundwater system through ADWR sponsorship. In this thought-provoking educational video series, we unearth the secrets of how and where groundwater accumulates, the processes for bringing it to the surface, and how we manage our water resources throughout the state. We hope that you will find these useful personally and, in your work, — if so, please share it with family and friends.
Learn more about groundwater in this video series at https://gw.projectwet.arizona.edu
For additional information contact Pam Justice at pjustice@arizona.edu
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Pesticide Safety Education Program
Arizona Pesticide Applicator Pre-Certification Training - Phoenix
Jennifer Weber
The Maricopa County Cooperative Extension, Pesticide Safety Education Program and the Arizona Department of Agriculture will provide a FREE 4-session Pre-Certification Training for people who would like to prepare for Arizona Pesticide Applicator's Certification. Maximum attendance is 30 people.
Some of the topics included in the course:
- Pests and Pest Management
- Environmental Protection
- Federal and State Pesticide Regulations
- Safe Pesticide Handling
- Mixing and Measuring Pesticides
- Ag and Structural Certification Process
- Pesticide Labels and Safety Data Sheets
The 2022 Sessions will be held August 2,4,9 &11 from 9:00am-Noon. PRE-REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED! Please register by Monday, July 25, 2022. To register or receive information please contact Jennifer Weber: (602) 827-8222 or jennyweber@arizona.edu. Each participant will receive a registration confirmation email immediately following registration. It will include the link to the course and a password.
More Sessions Coming Soon:
Arizona Pesticide Applicator Pre-Certification Training - September 2022 in Yuma
Arizona Pesticide Applicator Pre-Certification Training - October 2022 in Marina
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Interim Director's Cut
Kai Umeda
This director's cut will be my final as I will be retiring June 30. My intention was to work towards refilling my own Turfgrass Science Extension program. I am the last man standing representing a history of UArizona turfgrass scientists - Robert Kneebone who developed Texoka buffalograss and SR 1020 bentgrass; teaching/research faculty members Ken Marcum and Charlie Mancino; and Turfgrass Extension Specialist, David Kopec who covered all agronomy, irrigation, weed science, and pest management aspects for desert turfgrasses. I was not a trained turfgrass scientist but was fortunate to be a weed scientist with pest management background that fit into turf extension since 2004. Collaborating with the agricultural chemical industry, I was able to contribute to optimizing herbicide uses on turfgrasses as well as against invasive weeds and in vegetable crops when I first joined Cooperative Extension in 1994. Conducting experiments in vegetables provided lots of melons, onions, broccoli, and sweet corn. Moving into turf provided opportunities to conduct many experiments on golf courses with treatments replicated 18 times. For both turf and vegetable Extension programs, I’m extremely grateful to all the cooperators who provided experimental test plot sites where we found successful and effective weed or pest control and some not so safe uses when dead crops or turf resulted. Working in Extension couldn’t have been better anywhere else because it’s the only place where I was able to decide and select what I did for stakeholders; how I planned and accomplished it; who I worked with; and where and when I did the research and outreach education.
During the past year as interim county director, I was also interim 4-H Agent. The Maricopa County 4-H team delivered excellent youth development programming by establishing a solid foundation for the future whenever a new Agent comes aboard. A new urban agriculture/beginning farmer program is creating a unique demonstration “farm” on our office grounds. The SNAP-ED program will have a fully operational commercial kitchen this fall. The kitchen will also be preparing and serving beneficial healthy meals grown in the demo “farm” by College of Medicine, Phoenix, medical students. This integrated “farm” to table project engages all our Maricopa County Extension programs - 4-H, Master Gardeners, SNAP-ED, and commercial agriculture/integrated pest management. I’m grateful to all the colleagues and personnel of Maricopa County Cooperative Extension who contributed to delivering impactful programs to their clientele. With the new and exciting activities being created and enhanced for delivery, it will be difficult to leave, but I know that Cooperative Extension is moving into the future to continue serving the citizens of Maricopa County.
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