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Home Vegetable Gardening Webinar Series

Horticulture & Turfgrass

Kate Kammler
Field Specialist in Horticulture
UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI EXTENSION
SAINTE GENEVIEVE

Abstract

Many families in Missouri were affected by the global pandemic.  This led to concerns about food safety and availability, therefore increasing interest in growing vegetables at home. A team of horticulture specialists organized a free, 8-session Home Vegetable Gardening webinar series in 2020. The series included comprehensive coverage of basic information from garden planning to growing to managing pests to preserving vegetables at home with over 500 registrants.  In 2021 and 2022, we repeated the series, adjusting the class topics each year and charging $50 for the series with 101 total participants.  One-hour presentations were followed by a half hour for questions. We also did a 3-session fall gardening series in 2021 with 39 participants, charging $30.  Social media advertisement was successful is securing registrants. Sessions were recorded and made available for participants if they could not attend the live session along with links to additional resources. Over 400 garden questions were answered over the 3 years we have offered the series.  Session evaluations helped us collect feedback from the participants, evaluate the quality of the classes, identify needs, and observe expectations and perceptions of the participants.  Evaluation results showed that the majority of participants were going to take the information they learned from the series and apply it to their current gardens or garden for the first time.  We averaged a 35% evaluation response rate and conducted a long-term impact survey for the 2020 series in the fall of 2021, with addition long-term evaluations planned for the 2021 and 2022 series.

Authors: Debi Kelly, Donna Aufdenberg, Juan Cabrera-Garcia, Kate Kammler
  1. Debi Kelly Field Specialist in Horticulture, University of Missouri Extension, Missouri, 63050
  2. Donna Aufdenberg Field Specialist in Horticulture, University of Missouri Extension, Missouri, 63755
  3. Juan Cabrera-Garcia Horticulture State Specialist, University of Missouri Extension, Missouri, 65201
  4. Kate Kammler Field Specialist in Horticulture, University of Missouri Extension, Missouri, 63670-9250