The Plate It Up! Kentucky Proud Program (PIUKP) is a partnership between the University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service, the Kentucky Department of Agriculture and the University of Kentucky School of Human Environmental Sciences. The goal of this program is to provide recipes using Kentucky Proud products. 

While the Plate it up! Kentucky Proud committee is primarily composed of Family and Consumer Science Agents, the Madison County Cooperative Extension Agent for Horticulture serves as a gardening advisor to the group. The Horticulture Agent provides gardening information to be shared on the group’s Facebook page starting in mid March until October. The posts are called “Gardener’s Insider Guide”. The goal of these posts is to encourage Kentucky residents to grow a garden in order to increase access to vegetables and improve their diets. 

According to Mindy McCulley, an Extension Specialist who works with the program, “The biweekly posts “Gardener’s Insider Guide”, from the Plate it up! Kentucky Proud  Horticulture Agent committee member, has given the Plate it up! Kentucky Proud Facebook page the opportunity to reach a broader audience than we were reaching before her regular posts.  In addition, the new users generated from the "Gardener’s Insider Guide" posts are sticking around and consuming our other information, such as recipe posts and video posts.”

A few of the most popular topics posted were when to start a garden, planting asparagus and where to find gardening resources. Posts included a photo to help explain the concept.

Below are two examples of posts:

• Mid March is a great time to plant asparagus. A properly maintained asparagus patch can last over 15 years! You will be more successful planting asparagus crowns (plants that are mostly roots) than seeds.
• Problems pop up in gardens even if you do everything right! The University of Kentucky Plant Pathology Department has created several publications on how to sustainably manage diseases in the garden.  
  • Tomato and Pepper: http://plantpathology.ca.uky.edu/files/ppfs-vg-21.pdf
  • Cucumber and Squash: http://plantpathology.ca.uky.edu/files/ppfs-vg-19.pdf
  • Leafy Crops: http://plantpathology.ca.uky.edu/files/ppfs-vg-20.pdf
  • Cool Season Crops: http://plantpathology.ca.uky.edu/files/ppfs-vg-23.pdf
  • Beans and Peas: http://plantpathology.ca.uky.edu/files/ppfs-vg-22.pdf

The seventeen horticulture “Gardener’s Insider Guide” Facebook posts throughout the growing season of 2019 reached 23,141 people. Additionally, an agriculture/horticulture based radio show in Southern Kentucky has regularly referenced information from the PIUKP posts on their show.