Summer Garden Experience 2012 - Saturday, July 28th

2012 Calibrachoa and Petunias

Penn State Extension’s Summer Garden Experience will be held July 28, 2012 at the Penn State Southeast Ag Research and Extension Center in Manheim, PA from 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.  The day is filled with educational lectures, demonstrations, and farm tours.  Our feature speaker this year is Dr. John Scala from the News 8 Storm Team. He will be presenting Recent Temperature and Precipitation Extremes: What Do They Mean for Pennsylvania Gardeners?

Grill food and milkshakes are available for purchase. There is no registration fee other than $10/vehicle for parking, so bring a carload!

This is where new varieties of annual flowers are trialed and rated each year on how well they do in our climate.  In addition to annual flowers, tomatoes, vegetables, and other Agricultural Crop trials are also conducted here.  This year, there will also be a tomato tasting of new cherry and grape varieties, where the public gets to have their say, rating unnamed varieties for looks and taste.

Other learning activities at this year's event include: 

• Pollinator Certification   Gardens
• Overwintering Insects - How do insects survive our winters?
• Killing them Softly - Safer and more targeted pesticides 
• Wagon Tours of the Trials

To learn more, and get a full schedule of events, go here.  Directions to the site in Lancaster, about an hour and an half from us in Chambersburg can be found here.

Pictures from previous years here, here, and here.