Author: Kimberly Leonberger
Major Program: Home & Consumer Horticulture
When landscape or garden plants begin to show symptoms of a problem, or commercial crops start to decline, homeowners and growers want to know quickly what is causing the problem and what to do about it. Often the first step toward answering these questions may be contacting the local County Extension office. When Extension agents are not able to quickly diagnose the problem, they may submit a plant sample to one of the University of Kentucky Plant Disease Diagnostic Laboratories. A survey
Author: Heather Graham
Home grown vegetables is one of the the many things to look forward during the summer months. In Eastern Kentucky, there is heritage and tradition surrounding the family garden- what is grown, how it's grown, etc. It is common for people to save their seeds, especially of the heirloom varieties, from one year to the next. This helps to keep the tradition of the family garden alive, and can also help to reduce the input costs of the garden (not having to purchase seeds). Heriloom varities can
Author: Carol Hinton
Breckinridge County is 44% cropland, producing forage, soybeans, corn, and wheat. However, Breckinridge farmers are following the national trend by adding vegetable production for personal and commercial use. The variety of quality fresh produce is limited in the county. Racial and ethnic residents have relied on family and friends to grow vegetables that are not available in local stores. We are continuing our work with the Breckinridge County Detention Center. We ended 2017 very good. We
SituationBreckinridge County is 44% cropland, producing forage, soybeans, corn, and wheat. However, Breckinridge farmers are following the national trend by adding vegetable production for personal and commercial use. The variety of quality fresh produce is limited in the county. Racial and ethnic residents have relied on family and friends to grow vegetables that are not available in local stores. Educational Response and Target AudienceWhen a regular cattle and forage client called
Author: Christan Miracle
Working together with Lebanon Elementary Schools 5th grade class we had a successful classroom garden. I was approached at the end of the school year last year by a teacher with the need of some help with her classroom garden. She just wanted some grow lights to use for the garden but then we developed a plan to grow a few different types of vegetables and herbs in the classroom for her students to watch and learn from. Her main problem with the garden when I started helping was that the plants
Author: Kara Back-Campbell
One of the challenges of the Master Gardeners' program is finding volunteer opportunities to fulfill the required hours needed to be certified, or continue to be certified. This however, has not been the case with the Taylor County Master Gardeners. Long before the Master Gardeners' program began, Clay Hill Memorial Forest reached out to the extension office for help with their educational facility, which is owned by Campbellsville University. They were desiring to have a pollinator gard
Author: Lori Bowling
Every May the Horticulture program and the Master Gardeners in Boyd County host a Garden Shed Herb Day that is aimed at educating participants on the many uses of herbs as well as how to raise them and incorporate them into everyday landscaping. This year the focus was on the benefits herbs play in the landscape as plants but also as natural deterrents for wild life that destroy our landscaping. They learned what plants to use and where to place them to be the most effective. There w
The Boyd County Extension Agent for Horticulture partnered with the NEP Specialist in Boyd County on a program to teach headstart and first graders about how to raise their own vegetables. This was a lesson that followed the 6 week program they had with Organ Annie about how healthy eating affects our major organs. Leaf lettuce was the crop chosen for this lesson so that the kids would see a pretty quick result from planting seeds. The horticulture agent went into each classroo
Author: Kelly Jackson
The Christian County 2020 Vision Plan, prepared by the local Chamber of Commerce, is a plan to guide improvements in the community and bring together multiple community partners in a unified approach to achieve progress. One goal of the vision plan seeks economic growth through more retail opportunities. Another goal is to enhance recreational opportunities that bear a low user cost to the average citizen. Utilizing Master Gardener volunteers, the Cooperative Extension Service in Christian Count
Author: Chadwick Conway
Many families today enjoy fresh local food, but don’t have the time, space, and resources to grow a traditional garden. The Knott County Agriculture Agent has been working with several different community groups and centers on how to construct raised bed gardens over the past several years. Also many homes and community centers have poor topsoil due fill around their building or homes and many are built on reclaimed mine sight which have very limited topsoil. This spring
Author: Roger Mollette
The Martin County Extension Service works with The Grow Appalachia organization and together they address food insecurity for families focused on organic gardening practices.The Grow Appalachia program has successfully created opportunities for fresh produce to be grown and used/preserved by families in the program. This program allowed the Extension Service to assist twenty-three families to produce and preserve food produced from their gardens. Many of these families could not have
The Martin County Extension Service is well aware of the importance of educating the youth of Martin County on all the different aspects of agriculture. For the seventh consecutive year we have provided plant science activities at every elementary school during Earth Week. This year we added the Middle school to the programming efforts. We also added partners to the program to make it more expansive. We were joined by Martin County Farm Bureau and the Soil Conservation District This year 1,100 y
Author: Michele Stanton
One of the challenges in teaching horticulture is that there are so many bad examples of plant care practices in the landscape. People want to take good care of their yards and gardens, but as they copy what they see around them they may end of doing more harm than good—and not realize it. This is not restricted to my county, or Kentucky, or the Midwest. Everywhere I go, I can take pictures of glaring plant mistreatment. A common example is the mounding of mulch around
Author: Bethany Wilson
Pulaski County is a growing community. It is projected that by 2020 Pulaski County’s population will be 71,036 or 11% more than our current population. Many of these incoming residents will benefit from home horticulture programming Gardener’s Toolbox classes were held focusing on various home gardening topics. Eleven Gardener’s Toolbox classes were scheduled and an additional 14 home horticulture classes and events were conduc
Author: Erika Wood
Each year, several counties across the state participate in the bedding plant trials. These trials consist of new varieties of flowering annuals that have just been released onto the horticulture market. The purpose of the trials is to see how well these new varieties of plants perform in a garden or landscape setting. For the trial garden, there are usually 20 different varieties of annual bedding plants with ten plants per variety for a total of 200 plants. The Hopkins County
Author: Nicole Rhein
"Small" efforts for answering questions, making farm visits and providing hands on one on one trainings often go unnoticed and unrecognized but sometimes these efforts make a long lasting impression on clientele. Please enjoy this quote from a thank you letter sent to Nikki Bell, Marshall County's ANR Agent. "Ms. Nicole, Thank you for the outstanding leadership and "hands on" involvement in every aspect of the year long agricultural education, training, and successfu
Author: Amy Aldenderfer
In a response to an overwhelming number of applicants for the Hardin County Extension Master Gardener program and the number of applicants that did not want to complete the volunteer portion of the program, the horticulture agent developed the "Science of Gardening" program. This program offers all the science-y goodness of the Extension Master Gardener program without the volunteer hours requirement (and the title of Master Gardener). Session topics included: Botany, Soils
Author: Deborah Stumbo
Success Story – D1 Backyard Fruit Production SeriesPike CountyEastern Kentucky has the highest food insecurity in the United States. In Pike County, 11,750 individuals (18.7% of county population) are not sure where their next meal will come from. 71% of the population of Pike County qualify for SNAP, WIC, Free School Meals, CSFP & TEFAP. There is a steady increase in interest from clientele wanting to know how they can become more self-sufficient by growing their own food.
