Extension News: April 2010 Archives

It’s time to play golf and support the 4-H Foundation of New Hampshire.

The Tom Fairchild Friend of 4-H Golf Tournament takes place May 14 at Candia Woods. The event is named after Tom Fairchild, a long-time UNH Cooperative Extension Dairy Extension specialist, UNH professor and interim UNH president, and supporter of the UNH Cooperative Extension 4-H Youth Development program throughout the state.

The 4-H Foundation of NH helps to underwrite the state and national 4-H events, activities, educational workshops and career trips. More than 20,000 youth and 3,500 adult volunteers are involved in the statewide 4-H Youth Development program.

Part of the fundraising event for the golf tournament is an auction that starts May 1. The online web site will offer items ranging from a membership to Candia Woods/The Oaks golf courses, to a fine piece of pottery from Great Bay Pottery, lots of lovely jewelry and golfing opportunities.

To learn more about the Tom Fairchild Friend of 4-H Golf Tournament and Auction, visit the web site. At this site, you can register for the tournament, become a tournament sponsor or start bidding on the auction items. New auction items will be added right up to the day of the tournament.

The fee to play in the tournament is $125 per individual player, or $400 for a four-member team. For more information about the tournament or auction, contact UNH Cooperative Extension 4-H Youth Development Leader Wendy Brock at 603-862-2187 or email wendy.brock@unh.edu

New Web pages help you use less energy, save money, lower your carbon footprint

Every year, New Hampshire spends some $5 billion to heat, cool and light our buildings, run our vehicles, and power our industries.

Granite State households consume about 30 percent of this energy. Some experts believe most New Hampshire homeowners could reduce their overall energy consumption by 20 percent or more. This would produce a collective savings of more than $200 million a year in New Hampshire.

To make it easy for you to learn more about energy-efficient home building or home renovation, saving energy inside your home, and financial incentives to help you make energy improvements, we've added a section of online energy resources to our website.

These resources complement the Energy Answers Info Line at our Education Center in Manchester. If you can't find answers to your home energy questions on our Web pages, call the Info Line, 1-877-398-4769, Monday through Friday, from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

Also, check out the extensive home-energy resources available at our national eXtension site. You may want to take advantage of the Ask-an-expert feature of that site.

According to the National Gardening Association, 43 million American households (37 percent) tended a food garden last year, up 19 percent from 2008.

Chris Hiller, regional sales representative for Albion, Maine-based Johnny's Selected Seeds, says that last year's explosion of interest in home vegetable gardening hasn't fallen off, noting three strong sales trends:

• Storage crops such as carrots, cabbage, onions, potatoes, and squash.
• "Microgreens" that people can grow in small containers, even indoors.
• Season-extending devices such as "low tunnels" that enable growers to extend the growing season and even overwinter many food crops.

First-time New Hampshire gardeners may have gotten discouraged last season, as weeks of rainy weather caused a host of plant diseases to infect their tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, beans, squash, and other crops.

Especially devastating: the late blight that came into our state on infected seedlings, causing an epidemic that destroyed both commercial and home garden crops of tomatoes and potatoes throughout the Northeast.

But try again! Plant health experts say the unusual combination of infected imports and a weather pattern that encouraged rapid spread of late blight and other plant diseases probably won't repeat this growing season.

Word of warning!

Though you may notice flats of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, basil and other frost-sensitive crops for sale now at big-box stores and garden centers, it's much too early to plant them. Sow lettuce, peas, carrots, beets and parsley, but hold off on the heat-loving crops until danger of frost has passed, usually around June 1.

Food gardening resources

Visit our Home and Community Food Gardening Web pages for information about seed selection, starting seeds indoors, preparing ground for a garden, planting and transplanting, ongoing care, managing pest and disease problems, using or preserving what you grow, food safety for gardeners, gardening with children, community gardening, and more.

Check out our interactive map of New Hampshire's community gardens. If you have a new garden to list or a correction to our current information, please email Charlie French with details.

Diagnostic services: Soil testing, insect identification, and plant disease diagnosis.

Can't find the information you need on our Web pages?

Call our Education Center's toll-free Info Line: 1-877-398-4769, Monday-Friday, 9:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. A trained Master Gardener volunteer will help answer your questions.

Photo credit: Community garden plot, by Janice Stillman. Used with permission.

UNH Cooperative Extension invites you to attend one of four upcoming "train the leader" training events on “Understanding Bullying.” These comprehensive trainings are designed for school personnel, family support, social service, and parent education professionals, and includes everything you need to give a well-informed and research-based presentation to parents whose children have been affected by the current explosion in bullying behavior among school-age children.

The one-day trainings are being held at four New Hampshire locations:

• May 12, YWCA of Manchester, Manchester,
• May 19, Stonewall Farm, Keene,
• May 26, Great Bay Gallery, Somersworth, and
• June 2, Red Jacket Mountain Resort, North Conway

Key presenter is UNH Cooperative Extension Family Life and Family Policy Specialist Malcolm Smith. Dr. Smith is considered a national expert on parent and professional strategies for dealing with bullying. He has over 30 years experience in the field of child anger, aggression, violence and social interaction and is the author of the “Understanding Bullying” curriculum.

A host of experts, parents and students will join us to share their experiences with bullying.

This training includes everything you need to teach parents and caregivers meaningful, change-inducing strategies for helping families deal with bullying and its effects. This is truly a "take and go" curriculum and is designed to use with the Understanding Bullying parent brochure to create an effective school, community, and organization, parent educational forum on bullying.

The training kit includes:

• A comprehensive, research-based curriculum.
• A PowerPoint presentation with detailed presenter's notes.
• Suggested reading lists for parents, children of all ages, and parent-education professionals.
• Additional resources and links to the latest online bullying research.
• A program CD containing all curriculum materials.
• The 16-page Understanding Bullying brochure, written for parents and caregivers that explains how to help children who experience, participate in, or witness bullying.

The registration fee is $80 per participants and includes lunch and training kit. Each workshop runs from 8:30-3 pm. To learn more or to register, contact Jamie Sherwood at (603) 862-1928 or email jamie.sherwood@unh.edu

Watch it! Living With Lyme: NH's Exploding Epidemic
(July 11 WMUR Chronicle show in six segments; click on Chronicle in lower left sidebar to find remaining segments)

Blacklegged ticks (formerly called deer ticks) are active now throughout much of New Hampshire.

New Hampshire is home to 15 species of ticks, many of which can deliver a nasty infection, but infected blacklegged ticks can transmit Lyme Disease a potentially serious bacterial illness.

"The blacklegged tick itself becomes infected with Lyme Disease-causing bacteria by feeding on an infected 'reservoir host,' an organism that carries high levels of the bacteria in its bloodstream," says Eaton. "In New Hampshire, the primary reservoir host for Lyme Disease is the white-footed mouse."

"The state monitoring program in previous years has found that half the adult blacklegged ticks collected in Strafford, Rockingham and Hillsborough Counties, and 20 percent to 50 percent in Merrimack County carried the Lyme Disease bacterium," says Eaton.

Protect yourself

"Although the risk of acquiring Lyme Disease is greatest in June and early July, adult blacklegged ticks are active now in many parts of New Hampshire," says Eaton. To protect yourself and your family, Eaton and public health officials offer the following tips:

• Perform tick checks after being outdoors. Inspect all body surfaces carefully (including scalp, hair, around and inside the ears, and between the toes).Removing ticks early can reduce the risk of infection. Remove attached ticks with tweezers. Grasp the tick firmly and as close to the skin as possible. With a steady motion, pull the tick's body away from the skin. Avoid crushing the tick's body.
• Try to avoid walking through tall grass and brushy areas, prime habitats for ticks.
• If you do walk into tick territory, wear protective clothing. Long pants and long sleeves help keep ticks off skin. Tuck pant legs into socks or boots and shirts into pants to keep ticks on the outside of clothing. Tape the area where pants and socks meet so ticks can't crawl under clothing.
• Light-colored clothing makes it easier to spot ticks.
• Use insect repellent on clothes and exposed skin. Always follow the label when applying a pesticide.
• Don't use DEET on babies younger than two months old, and use a preparation containing less than 30 percent DEET on young children.
• Pressurized spray products containing the insecticide permethrin sprayed on clothing will kill ticks that attach themselves to the clothing. Never apply permethrin-containing products directly to the skin. Spray them on clothing before you put it on.
• After being outdoors, wash and dry clothing at a high temperature to kill any ticks that may remain on clothing.
• Don't try to remove a tick using Vaseline, a hot match, nail polish, or other products.
• After removing the tick, clean the bitten area with an antiseptic.
• Monitor the site of any tick bite for signs of infection, and monitor your overall health closely after a tick bite, staying alert for signs and symptoms.
• To reduce ticks around the home where people spend time, keep grass short, remove leaf litter, and create a wood-chip or gravel barrier where the yard meets the woods.

Public awareness high, self-protection low

Key findings from a 2008 survey conducted by the UNH Survey Center show that state residents could do more to lower the incidence of Lyme Disease in New Hampshire:

• Most Granite Staters have heard of Lyme Disease and understand that it is transmitted by a tick bite.
• More than half the state's residents look for and remove ticks after they've been outdoors during tick season.
• Less than one in 10 residents use all three forms of tick protection: insect repellent, wearing long clothes, and performing a daily body check for ticks.

For more information

Insect Repellents includes information on several new active ingredients, including some that work on ticks.

Biology and Management of Ticks in New Hampshire Comprehensive fact sheet provides information on tick-borne diseases, tick species and their life cycles, and tick control measures.

NHDHHS Lyme Disease information
Lyme Disease fact sheet

The 2009 Lyme Disease report from the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (NHDHHS) notes that cases of Lyme Disease in the Granite State declined somewhat last year. The highest rates of disease occurred in Rockingham, Hillsborough and Strafford Counties.

For specific concerns or questions about tick-borne diseases, call the NHDHHS, Bureau of Communicable Disease Control at 271-4496 or 800-852-3345 x4496 (N.H. only).

To have a tick identified

Residents who want to have a tick identified have two options:

UNH Arthropod ID Laboratory
Fee is $5. Follow directions on submission form for preparing specimen. Mail or walk-ins.

Department of Agriculture, Markets & Food No fee. Residents can also take advantage of this service by dropping off specimens at the NHDHHS Building at 29 Hazen Drive in Concord. Please read the submission form for proper preparation of specimen.

Note: Laboratories identify tick species, but don't test for the presence of disease-causing organisms.

Photo credit: Blacklegged tick, by Alan Eaton, UNH Cooperative Extension