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Plant of the Month Extension Cord Podcast: Serving up bite-sized information from garden to table

Audio Recording

Cynthia Nazario-Leary
Environmental Horticulture Agent
UF/IFAS Extension Alachua County
Newberry

Team Members: Nazario-Leary, C*1, Korus, K*2, Maddox, M*3
  1. Environmental Horticulture Agent, UF/IFAS Extension Alachua County, Newberry, Florida, 32669
  2. Agriculture and Natural Resources Agent, UF/IFAS Extension Alachua County, Newberry, Florida, 32669
  3. Family and Consumer Sciences Agent, UF/IFAS Extension Alachua County, Newberry, Florida, 32669

Abstract

To provide residents with easy-to-understand information on how and when to grow edible plants, a collaborative effort between Alachua County and UF/IFAS Extension, created the Plant of the Month (POTM) program. Each month, information on how to plant, care for, harvest, and prepare a selected edible plant is curated by the Environmental Horticulture Extension agent, Master Gardener volunteers, and the Family & Consumer Sciences agent. Plants are selected based on their ability to grow successfully in the area and their popularity with home gardeners. Plants are matched to a month based on when the plant should be planted or harvested. POTM information is shared on a website and complimented with a monthly podcast. Podcasts are a great opportunity to extend the educational outreach of the POTM program while building a connection with public audiences. All podcast episodes and content are produced, recorded, and edited in-house by UF/IFAS Extension Alachua County agents in a dedicated podcast studio. The podcast is distributed and stored on Spotify® for Podcasters (formerly Anchor) and can be listened to on various podcast platforms, e.g., Apple, Google, and Spotify. The POTM podcast began airing in January 2022 and currently has 15 episodes with a total of 1,048 plays. Our podcasts have a friendly, conversational tone providing information and fun facts about the plant and how to grow, care, harvest, store, and prepare it. Average length of POTM episodes are 30 minutes. Ninety-five percent of our listens are from within the United States, but the podcast has been downloaded in 24 other countries. The audience is comprised mostly of 45-59-year-olds (62%), followed by 35-44-year-olds (26%) with male and female listeners make up 59.6% and 40.4% of the audience, respectively. The episode segment for this submission is Passion Fruit, the February Plant of the Month. It first aired on February 1, 2023, and currently has 76 plays.

Audio File (MP3 format)