Time to order evergreen seedlings
By ROBERT KESSLER Penn State Cooperative Extension Franklin County office

COMING EVENTS

Feb. 13 - Eight-Week Workshop in Landscape Design & Plant Selection, 7 to 9:30 p.m. Wednesdays, Franklin County Master Gardeners, Franklin County Extension office

Feb. 13 - Pesticide License Exam, 9 a.m., Extension office.

Feb. 16 - Holstein Club Annual Meeting and Banquet, 7 p.m., Solomon's Lutheran Church, Chambersburg.

Feb. 18 - Tri County Winter Vegetable and Greenhouse Growers meeting, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Shippensburg Area Senior High School.

Feb. 23 - Natural and Organic Beef Production Meeting, 9 a.m., Lancaster Farm & Home Center, Call Lancaster Extension Office, 717-394- 6851.

March 1 - Hands on Pruning Workshop, Sponsored by Franklin County Master Gardeners, 9:30 to 11:30 a.m.

March 10 - Franklin County Turf & Ornamental Meeting, 8:30 a.m., Penn State Mont Alto.

March 17 - Franklin County 4-H Pig Club re-organization Meeting, 7:30 p.m., Franklin County Extension office, 181 Franklin Farm Lane, Chambersburg.

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TREE SEEDLING SALE

The Franklin County Conservation District is again holding their annual Tree Seedling Sale. The trees are grown at a state certified nursery and will be sold in bundles of 25 per species. Orders will be taken through March 7, 2008. The seedlings will be available around the middle of April and you will be notified about the time and location.

The species vary in the height they will be when you get them, because some species grow faster than others. Most will be from eight to ten inches tall to as much as 28 inches.

Offered for sale are Douglas fir, Concolor Fir, Fraser Fir, Colorado blue spruce, Scotch pine, Eastern White Pine, Austrian Pine, White Oak, Red Maple and White Flowering Dogwood.

The cost for a bundle of 25 plants varies from $14.00 to $21.00, depending upon the species you order. You can place your order by stopping at our office and picking up an order form and mailing it. You

can also go to the Conservation District office at 100 Sunset Boulevard West, behind the Family Traditions Restaurant on Route 11 north in

Chambers-

burg and pick up an order form there. The order form is also on the website at www.franklinccd.com. It will print off on 81/2" X 14" paper.

This is a great offer if you have some land that you can plant some trees on. Most building lots would get very crowded with trees if you planted 25 Fir trees on it, but maybe you can get together with your neighbors and share a bundle.

FOOD CHECKOUT DAY

FOLLOW UP

February 6 was Food Check Out Day. That is the day that the average American would have earned enough money to pay for a year's supply of food, including eating out. There are other foods facts that you might like to know.

- Many people think that factory farms make up a large portion of our farmers. In reality only two percent of our farms are owned by non-family corporations. Ninety-eight percent of our farms are family farms. True, some of them have gotten very large, but they are still a family farm.

- More than twenty one million American workers produce, process and sell our food. This is about fifteen percent of the population.

- Farmers receive only $.19 out of every dollar that we spend on food. In 1980 farmers received $.31 of every dollar.

- Today each farmer produces food and fiber for 143 people.

- Farmers are also going more high tech. Ninety-two percent of today's young farmers and ranchers use computers. Most all farmers carry cell phones and have internet access. Nineteen percent of young farmers use Global Position Systems on their farm.

- Pennsylvania is the fifth largest dairy state and the seventh largest state in the production of eggs. We are the sixth largest producer of grapes in the United States. PRUNING YOUR FRUIT

TREES

Having a fruit tree in your backyard means you have to know how to prune it. Pruning is essential for the health of the tree and for the quality of your fruit. A well pruned fruit tree is easier to harvest.

Pruning doesn't require a lot of fancy equipment. A hand pruner is the most important tool to have. If you have a few trees, it is certainly worth purchasing a good one. It should be a bypass pruner rather than an anvil type, which has a cutting blade and flat surface that you cut against. You should also have a pruning saw to cut the larger branches. Both of these are easy to find in garden centers and catalogs.

February is the time that homeowners can go outside and prune your apple and pear trees. Your stone fruit like peaches and cherries should wait until March.

Pruning is not something that you can learn from an article in the newspaper. I think you need to be able to see how it is done, rather than read how to do it. There is a good slide series on a Penn State website that will walk you through all the steps starting with a newly planted tree to a mature tree. To view it, go to hortweb.cas.psu.edu/extension/ tree fruit/trfruit.html/.

You can find other fruit tree information at the same site as well as the link to pruning and training fruit trees.

IS GLOBALWARMING

REALLY HAPPENING?

I recently watched a video of a presentation that was held at Penn State recently on Global Warming. The talk was titled "Global Warming and Our Future," presented by Dr. Richard Alley. The Eberly College of Science is presenting a series of six lectures and this was the second. It can be seen by going to www.science. psu.edu/alert/frontiers/index2008. html. On the left of the page is a link entitled "Lecture Videos on the Web." Click on it and you will go to a page where you can select this lecture.

There are many interesting things I learned listening to him. We know that the climate is changing. He explains what has been happening. Did you realize that for every mile you drive your car, you release one pound of carbon dioxide into the air? Typically a person should eat 2400 calories a day to give us the energy we need. However, the typical person uses 240,000 calories a day in all of our energy use such as lights, heat, cooling, watching television, listening to music, etc. We use energy in everything we do. The plastic pen in my hand had energy used to produce it. In the future we will need to have other sources of energy to provide these things to us because we will run out of oil.

I don't want this to be a political discussion, but I do think we should all be better informed about what is happening and why and what needs to be done in the future.

The presentation last Saturday was on Solar Energy. The next one will be on renewable energy, then there will be a lecture on nuclear power and the series ends with a lecture on fuel cells. These are up on their website a few days after the presentation, so you can view them at home on your computer. If you don't have a computer, go to your local library and watch it there. If you have a problem seeing this, please contact our office at (717) 263-9226 and we will try to assist you to view it. You will need to have windows media player installed on your computer to see and hear the lecture. It is a free player and there is a link on the web page to get it if you don't have it.