Early on during the COVID-19 situation, many grocery stores exhibited some food shortages in many of the aisles. This in turn, led to panic-buying which only exasperated the situation. These food shortages had a lot to do with the resurgence in the popularity of home vegetable gardening.

As a result of this, the Gallatin County Extension Service has been inundated with requests for information on home vegetable gardening. In response to these requests, the ANR Agent assembled packets of information available for “touchless” pickup from the office or for home delivery. These packets contained a copy of ID-128 Home Vegetable Gardening in Kentucky, a soil test sample bag with instructions, and recipe cards.

To date, nearly 100 of these packets have been picked up by, or delivered to county residents. In addition, the ANR Agent has made nearly five times as many home garden related visitations in 2020. During the visitations, it was discovered that many of the gardeners were first-timers, and thus were making many of the “new gardener” mistakes. But being able to visit one-on-one with these folks better allowed the ANR Agent to make recommendations against future problems, and suggest corrections for current ones.

It was also discovered that some of these new gardeners were also first-time users of the Gallatin County Extension Service. Hopefully, the personal attention these folks were given during this time will make them life-long users and supporters of Cooperative Extension.