BCMGA Membership Meetings

Membership meetings are open to members of BCMGA, Master Gardeners, and trainees, as well as the public. These meetings are great opportunities to get acquainted with the Benton County Master Gardener community and learn something new at the same time. Meetings occur in January, February, March, April, May, and October. Each meeting includes a presentation that counts toward continuing education recertification hours. 

 

Meetings may be attended via Zoom, but we encourage you to attend in person and enjoy social time before and after the meeting. Coffee and tea are provided, and you are welcome to bring a treat to share. We have a raffle for those who attend in person. You receive 1 raffle ticket for attending, 2 tickets for wearing your badge, and 3 tickets if you wear your badge and bring a treat.

 

Meetings are in the Sunset Room in the Sunset Building at 4077 SW Research Way, Corvallis, OR 97333. Doors open at 6:30pm and the program starts at 7:00pm. Use the entrance on the east side of the building because all other doors to the building are locked at night.

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Can't attend the meeting? Find recordings of the speaker presentations at the BCMGA YouTube channel. Recordings are generally posted within one week of the meeting date.

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2025 Meeting Dates

​Monday, January 13, 2025​

Monday, February 17, 2025

Monday, March 17, 2025​

Monday, April 21, 2025

Monday, May 19, 2025

Monday, October 20, 2025​

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February 17, 2025 – Membership Meeting

Speaker:  Jim Myers, Professor of Vegetable Breeding and Genetics, Department of Horticulture, OSU

 

Topic:  Popping Beans, Heatless Habaneros and the Tomato Blues: Breeding Vegetables for Sustainable Production at OSU

 

 Presentation: The OSU Vegetable Breeding program has a long history of developing vegetable cultivars adapted to production in the Pacific Northwest. Myers will discuss this legacy, what is currently happening in the vegetable breeding program and what the future of vegetable breeding at OSU look like. He will describe some of his recent and upcoming releases such as low heat habanero peppers, popping beans, Indigo tomatoes, Tromboncino summer squash and more. He will also describe his efforts in breeding for organic systems.

 

Bio: Dr. James R. Myers holds the Baggett-Frazier Endowed Chair of Vegetable Breeding and Genetics in the Department of Horticulture at Oregon State University. Before coming to Oregon in 1996, he spent 10 years at the University of Idaho Kimberly Research Station where he released 13 dry bean varieties. At OSU, he works on a number of crops including snap bean, edible podded pea, broccoli, tomato, pepper, winter and summer squash. His main interest has been to improve vegetable and field crop varieties for disease resistance, human nutrition and organic production systems. He has been involved in bean improvement programs in Eastern and Southern Africa where his bean seed weevil resistant dry bean lines are currently being deployed. He was director of the Northern Organic Vegetable Improvement Collaborative, a multistate project funded for 12 years to breed and trial vegetable varieties adapted to organic systems. At OSU he has released several vegetable varieties including ‘Legend’ tomato with Dr. Jim Baggett, and five “Indigo” tomato cultivars. Other releases include ‘Cascadia’ broccoli, ‘OSU5630’ green bean, ‘Patron’ Peruano dry bean and ‘Sweet Gem’ snap pea. His work with Indigo tomatoes has been disseminated around the world and germplasm from his program has been used to create more than 50 Indigo type tomato varieties. His latest releases are ‘Mild Thing’ and ‘Notta Hotta’ mild habanero peppers and two popping bean varieties (as yet unnamed). Tromboncino summer squash, snap peas and beans and more tomatoes are next in the pipeline for release.