Teaching Master Gardeners
University of Hawaii instructing how to care and nurture nature

Thursday, March 24, 2005 9:53 AM HST

By PETER SUR
Tribune-Herald staff writer

Living in Hilo, the saying goes, is as exciting as watching grass grow.

For several years, however, the University of Hawaii has operated a program dedicated to helping Big Island residents do just that.

In a small room in the Komohana Agricultural Complex, David Lahti and Maire Sanford sat by a phone Tuesday morning, waiting for the public to call. The couple were volunteering for the Master Gardener program, which twice a week tackles any horticultural problem.

Master Gardeners are graduates of an intensive, two-month class that covers everything from identifying plants to finding the right fertilizer mix to killing aphids, as one caller wanted to know.

" Neem oil works really good," Lahti told a caller, and then spelled it out. "Spray the underside, especially on the areas they like to hang out."

The Master Gardeners field such questions Tuesdays and Fridays, 9 a.m. to noon. Residents can call the Komohana complex at 981-5199 and ask for the Master Gardeners. They answer queries from around the island.

Sometimes people will bring in plants, hoping to get them identified. Aside from the classroom lectures, gardeners bring the knowledge gleaned from decades in the field.

" I grew up on a farm in Colorado and we always had a garden," Sanford said. The Mountain View couple describe themselves as organic gardeners. "Working with the earth and planting and weeding and everything else can really help your sanity," she said.

In addition to staffing the phones, they can volunteer for the annual plant sale or work in the Master Gardeners greenhouse on the grounds of the complex.

" Each person who completes the class puts in 40 hours of volunteer time," Sanford said.

All calls -- and solutions -- are recorded in a large three-ring binder and saved. In the future such data might be studied to look for botanical patterns. The recent infestation of cycad scales, for example, dominated calls for a while.

"You don't have to be a scientist to do it, and sometimes we get a lot of phone calls and some days we've been here and got one or two," Sanford said. She and Lahti believe the program should be called "Learning Gardeners," because they learn something with every call.

If the Master Gardeners can't answer a question, they take down phone numbers and find the answer on the Internet or refer the question to specialists. Andrew Kawabata, for one, is an assistant extension agent for the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources and the program's instructor.

" The program is set up basically to help our extension agents in the homeowners area," Kawabata said last Thursday. With a phone number staffed by volunteers available to answer questions, it frees the agents to assist with questions by businesses, he said.

Although it started in Washington state, "You will see the Master Gardeners at farmers markets all across the nation," he said.

Kawabata was walking with the Master Gardeners' newest class as the students wandered through the sprawling Waiakea Agricultural Experimental Station off Stainbeck Highway. On the field excursion, class members treated themselves to exotic fruits from around the world and went home with armfuls of food. Agricultural Technician Eric Notley took them on the walking tour, pointing out numerous fruiting trees.

" It makes a very good wine, excellent wine," Notley told the class about the jaboticaba. "In fact, the Volcano (Winery) people up there came to pick them."

Later, one man who carried a mango in one hand said, to nobody in particular, "Ah, I see a rambutan!" The class members walked over a stand of trees bearing the red, "hairy" fruit.

Similar programs exist on Kauai, Maui and Oahu, Kawabata said. Certified Master Gardeners, however, must first complete the class, which most people agree is hard.

" It's a pretty rigorous program," Kawabata said, adding that it combines elements of a four-year degree program within two months. "What we want to do is give them practical information so they can use it in the phone calls."

If applicants for the Master Gardener class are accepted, for $50 they receive twice-weekly lessons and a thick binder containing hundreds of pages of horticultural diagrams and PowerPoint slides.

Participants in the program came from varied backgrounds. Lahti is a chef at the Hilo Bay Hotel and Sanford works at the Abundant Life Natural Foods store in Hilo.

The third and latest class of Master Gardeners sat in a dark room Tuesday morning, at the Komohana complex and listened to a lecture about the efforts to save the Mauna Loa silversword plant from near extinction.

Earlier, during a break, participants stepped outside to digest the information thrown at them. Some looked at specimens of olive, creeping rosemary and other plants on a table.

One of the students, J.D. Thompson of Nanawale, is a retired physics professor who had taught for 42 years, mostly in South Dakota and for a while at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.

" I love gardening. There's so much I need to learn," he said.

Peter Sur can be reached at psur@hawaiitribune-herald.com.