Agriculture

Tom Flowers received the Master Conservationist Award last week at the annual meeting of the Shelby County Conservation District, which was held at the Shelby County Extension Office.

The award is given to property owners who have been considered to have achieved more than 90 percent of the best management practices for conserving natural resources on their farms.

Flowers’ farm, located on La Grange Road, was purchased in the 1960s by the late Lewis Flowers, Tom’s father, and is owned by Flowers and his wife, Ginger and his mother, Rebecca.

Mulch has become a landscape staple, almost to a fault when it is over applied, smothering roots and girdling trunks.

When done properly mulch can help to suppress weeds, retain moisture and moderate temperature. These things can be achieved using a variety of materials, but which type of mulch suits your needs best?

Last year our serviceberry was afflicted with a whimsical-looking disease. Those beautiful blue berries that appear in the summer looked like something from a Dr. Seuss book. In a good year the cedar wax wings usually flock in and eat the berries as they ripen. Not so last year.

The strange, white, tubular protrusions that covered the berries were not only funny looking, but they kept the birds away, too.

I generally have seed trays full of little sprouts by now, but this year the lingering cold weather has me languishing, quite frankly. The seed potato and onion sets sit waiting for the soil to dry out a bit, and seed packets glare at me from their neat stack strategically placed on the kitchen work table.

So it is time to gather up all the paraphernalia needed to get the job done, and it probably a good thing that I am behind, because it will be a while before our soils warm to a cozy temperature for summer crops to be transplanted safely.