Green Thumbs Keynote speakers coming March 24

The Delaware County Mas­ter Gar­den­ers will be host­ing the 12th annual Green Thumbs Gar­den­ers’ Fair on March 24.

Mar­ilou Suszko from Ver­mil­lion, Ohio will be one of the keynote speak­ers. Mar­ilou will be speak­ing about local food based on her first book, Farms and Foods of Ohio: From Gar­den Gate to Din­ner Plate. I recently inter­viewed Mar­ilou to dis­cover how she came up with the idea for her book.

Mar­ilou said she was part of the local food move­ment before it actu­ally became fash­ion­able. She wel­comes the return to learn­ing to cook, feed­ing our­selves, enjoy­ing home gar­den­ing and sup­port­ing local farm­ers. She was moti­vated to write her books about sea­sonal eat­ing and local food because of the farm­ers. They are hard work­ing, inter­est­ing and will­ing to share their sto­ries. She hopes that by read­ing her books, peo­ple will be moti­vated to develop bet­ter prac­tices for home­grown, sea­sonal and local foods.

She had won­der­ful expe­ri­ences and sto­ries about her trav­els around the state meet­ing more than 30 farm­ers fea­tured in her first book. One of her favorites was David Kline of Lark­song Farm in Fred­er­icks­burg. She enjoyed a lunch of fresh corn off the stalk with noth­ing on it, right in the field, and said it was the best corn she had ever had. She has other sto­ries she will share with the atten­dees on March 24.

She devel­oped her won­der­ful recipes in her sec­ond book, The Locavore’s Kitchen, by using sea­sonal cook­ing ideas. Cook­ing and using what is in sea­son just comes nat­u­rally. Every recipe was tested numer­ous times by her­self and other recipe testers.

Marilou’s sched­ule is fill­ing up quickly with talks sched­uled around the state. She will be at the Lau­rel Run Cook­ing School, The Ger­vasi Win­ery, Dorothy Lane Cook­ing School and many more.

I asked Mar­ilou how and where she gets her local prod­ucts in the win­ter. She does a lot of pre­serv­ing through the sea­son, and relies on her own resources to fill in all year round. She is lucky there are local sources for eggs, dairy, meats, grains and dried beans in her area. She has also had the same for­tune of a warm win­ter, and is still pick­ing turnips and kale out of her own gar­den. “Win­ter is a chal­lenge, but then I like being chal­lenged,” she said.

She has a very excit­ing new project com­ing up that involves the fab­u­lous West Side Mar­ket in Cleve­land. She is team­ing up with another Cleve­land local author, Laura Taxel, on a book regard­ing the 100-year his­tory of the mar­ket. If you have not been there, it’s a true treat and a must for this year’s travel plans. This gem is only a two-hour drive from Delaware.

Our sec­ond keynote speaker is Jen­nifer Rad­cliffe of William Natorp Nurs­ery in Mason, Ohio. She will speak on con­tainer gar­den­ing. Jen­nifer works as the con­tainer man­ager for the nurs­ery, where they pro­duce 350,000 con­tain­ers of shrubs and peren­ni­als anually.

She cur­rently offers pro­grams in the Cincin­nati area to gar­den orga­ni­za­tions, the gar­den cen­ter, and works as a vol­un­teer at the Cincin­nati Flower Show.

Jen­nifer has been involved in the hor­ti­cul­ture indus­try for more than 25 years since she attended the Ohio State Uni­ver­sity. She still main­tains a fas­ci­na­tion and curios­ity about the art and sci­ence of Horticulture.

Join the Delaware County Mas­ter Gar­den­ers from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. March 24 for the two keynotes, in addi­tion to other classes and speak­ers through­out the day. Jen­nifer will speak at 10:45 a.m. and Mar­ilou will speak at 1:30 p.m.

Upcom­ing gar­den workshop

Join the Delaware County Mas­ter Gar­den­ers and the Grow and Share Com­mu­nity Gar­den Com­mit­tee, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Thurs­day, March 15, for an instruc­tional pro­gram on how to start your veg­etable gar­den. Con­nie Zuga and Norma Lind will walk you through, step by step, on how to start seeds at home. The pro­gram will be held in the com­mu­nity room of the new YMCA at 1121 S. Houk Road, Delaware. This class is part of the Com­mu­nity Gar­den pro­gram series sched­uled for the third Thurs­day of every month. Pro­grams are free of charge and open to the pub­lic. Call the Exten­sion office at 740–833-2030 with any questions.

Susan Liechty is a Delaware County OSU Exten­sion Mas­ter Gardener.

Posted by Master Gardener on Mar 10 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.