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Vernal ponds are a significant component of Pennsylvania's natural heritage and provide critical habitat for a unique set of species adapted to seasonal wet and dry periods such as salamanders, frogs, and fairy shrimp.

There will be a 6:00PM Grain Marketing meeting held at Hoss's of Carlisle featuring Stewart-Peterson. A Pesticide meeting offering credits will be held at the Penn State Extension office of Cumberland County along with a Fumigation Procedures workshop.

Welcome to the 2012 Professional Pest Manager’s School. With 30 category and 10 core credit offerings, we believe the school will help you keep up with changes in regulations and product information.

Penn State Extension’s Food for Profit workshop takes you step-by-step through the information necessary to start and run a small food-product business, especially directed to individuals who will be making and packing their products for resale (through grocery stores, farm markets, or restaurants).

“Ready, Set, Grow!” If you are anxious to get outside and start digging in the garden, then don’t miss this informative workshop offered by the Penn State Master Gardeners in Cumberland County. Scheduled for Saturday, March 24, from 8:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. at the Cumberland County Extension office, 310 Allen Road, Carlisle, “Ready, Set, Grow!” covers vegetable gardening tips and organic gardening techniques to help you have a healthy and productive vegetable garden this year.

Recently, on January 25, the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service released its long-awaited plant hardiness zone map, the result of an almost eight year process to update and refine its previous map, issued 22 years ago in 1990.

Tim Abbey will be hosting an all day class on Proper Pruning.

Growing your own vegetables is a great way to eat healthy and have fun. Getting started can be both daunting and exciting if you are new to gardening. Paging through enticing gardening and seed catalogs, it’s hard not to get carried away or overwhelmed.

Penn State Extension and The Penn State Department of Horticulture are excited to announce the All-Day Strawberry / Bramble School. This school covers everything you wanted to know about strawberry, raspberry, and blackberry production in one intensive day.

If you are not on a public water supply, you probably get your water from a well. If you use private water supplies, such as wells, springs or cisterns, then the responsibility for the quality of your water is your own. You must take steps to ensure that your water is safe to drink. It must be free of pathogenic bacteria, viruses, and harmful chemical impurities. It should also be clean, clear, and nonstaining, without offensive odors. A water test can confirm the presence of contaminants in a private water supply.

While early registration for this week’s Southeast Greenhouse Growers Meeting this Thursday, 1/26 closed this past Friday, you can still participate.

Creating a garden in dry shade can be a challenge for the perennial gardener. The list of perennial plants that will tolerate, let alone thrive in, the combination of low light and thin, dry soil is a relatively short one. Shallow-rooted trees, such as maples or beeches, create or compound the problem by competing with perennials and shrubs planted under their canopy for moisture and nutrients.

Ten Penn State students, including eight enrolled in the College of Agricultural Sciences, were among 26 who were awarded scholarships by the Pennsylvania Farm Show Scholarship Foundation during the 96th Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg. For a complete list of recipients and photos click on the link provided.

Maybe you are not digging in the dirt, but winter is the best time to check out your garden structure and browse the internet, catalogs, and books for gardening ideas. If a new gardener or one of experience, January is the best time of year to really dig into garden design.

You may have noticed that your seed catalogs showed up earlier than ever this winter. With the rapid growth in vegetable gardening, demand promises to be higher than ever. If there are specific varieties of vegetables that you truly want for the coming season, you may want to get your orders in early.

Penn State Extension will be offering Strong Women in several locations this winter. This strength training program is geared for middle-aged to older women and is based upon years of research on how strength training and proper nutrition improve the health of women of all ages.

The Rose Bowl, the Tournament of Roses Parade, Valentine’s Day roses – everyone is familiar with roses, the “Queen of Flowers,” for beauty and fragrance. But as an herb? Each year since 1995, the International Herb Association has designated an “Herb of the Year”. In 2011, it was horseradish; for 2012, the rose has been selected – a surprising and unexpected choice.

Did you know that parasites are becoming resistant to the deworming products that are on the market today? Have you been faithfully deworming your horses every 6 weeks only to learn that this is no longer the recommended practice? Are you confused about when to worm your horse and how often? Do you know which horses on your farm have natural resistance to parasites and which may need to be dewormed more frequently? Have you ever had your horse colic, especially after being wormed?

Calls from landowners with questions about land rental rates come to the Extension office quite frequently. As you might expect the pace picks up when crop prices are high and there are rumors about someone in the neighborhood offering to pay abnormally high land rent. In most cases the landowner is happy with their current farmer tenant but since “the rent has been $x for a number of years” they think, “maybe they should be getting more”.

Pennsylvania's nearly 17 million acres of forest provide an array of values including clean air and water, recreation opportunities, wood products and habitat for thousands of plants and animals. On Thursday, January 12th at the Cumberland Woodland Owners’ Association meeting, Dr. James Finley, Penn State Professor of Forest Resources, will speak on the social, economical and ecological aspects of our forests and the benefits they provide.