It’s only two weeks until the 2008 Cherry County Fair! The next three weeks are the busiest of the whole year for the 4-H Program.
Today is Clothing Day and Presentations Contest at the Fairgrounds 4H Building. The judging of clothing exhibits and presentations will begin at 1:30 pm Central Time. They will start judging styling at 2:00. The contestants will present a Style Review and give their Presentations for the public at 5:00 pm.
Livestock and Small Animal entry forms are due today.
The 4-H Shooting Sports Contest is this Thursday, July 31. The contest starts at 9:00 am Central Time at the Fairgrounds.
The 4-H Horse Show is next Tuesday, August 5. Exhibitors need to get their horse’s I.D.s checked at 8:00, the show will start at 8:30. Horse project members; don’t forget that your levels testing has to be complete by this Friday, August 1.
The Open Class fairbooks are out. You can get them at our office and several other places around town.
I want to remind those of you who are into canning, that Pat Jones, the new Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Educator for Brown, Keya Paha, and Rock Counties, will be offering free pressure canner testing here at the Extension Office in Valentine this Wednesday afternoon. If you can’t come into the office Wednesday afternoon you can bring in your canner and leave it at our office and pick it up later.
I also want to talk just a little bit about watering you lawns. We basically water lawns only as needed to prevent wilting and drought. That takes About 1 inch of water per week during the spring and the fall, but right now in the middle of the summer, bluegrass lawns need about 1.5 inches per week in summer. UNL Tall Fescue lawn calendar NebGuide says tall fescue lawns don’t need watered, but I don’t believe it. I would water them an inch a week during the summer.
In any case, you should deep water every two to three days. There are two main reasons to avoid daily, light watering. It encourages a shallow root system, which makes the lawn more susceptible to drought symptoms on the really hot days. Shallow rooted lawns are also less able to keep out the weeds. Leaf diseases are the other reason to avoid watering every day. Lawn diseases love the wet conditions created by every day watering. You still need to supply the same amount of water to the lawns, just in bigger doses.
As always, you can contact the extension office at 402-376-1850, or visit us on the web at cherry.unl.edu for more information on any of the things I’ve covered.
