This month was a festive month on the Extension Master Gardener blog.
Getting Caught Up in the Season
Winter Imagination Collage
Our EMG Bloggers enthusiastically explored the winter and holiday spirit through many blog posts. Here is what we covered this month.
- Ask the Agent/Master Gardener: Holiday Plant Myth Buster Edition. If you missed it, take a look again, as this myth busting post was our top-viewed and shared post for the month of December.
- Practical and Fun Garden Gifts – Our readers have appreciated Carla Albright’s clever and practical tips in past blog posts, but this time I couldn’t decide if I appreciated the tips about choosing gloves, a small-blade shovel, or how to choose (or not choose) garden art the most. Which of the six ideas did you find the most helpful?
Favorite Plants and Scenes:
- Conifers, Which is Your Favorite? We tried a new crowd sourcing experiment this month. After Foy shared some interesting conifers (my favorite was ‘Pusch’ spruce), she added a ‘Linky Lists’ link to the bottom of her post so readers could submit a link with a thumbnail image to a webpage on their favorite conifer(s). The ‘Linky List’ was available to contribute to for about a week, so if you were busy celebrating the holidays you might have missed it. I gave it a test and linked to my photos of dwarf evergreens from the U of MN Landscape Arboretum. One other person contributed a favorite conifer, ‘Whipcord’. You can check the images and links out at the bottom of the post, and look for future blog posts using the ‘Linky List’ tool.
- Christmas in Dixie, Winter Imagination, Regional Holiday Wreaths, and Christmas Cheer allowed us to pause and appreciate this month’s beauty as seen through the lens of Extension Master Gardeners in Alabama, Washington, and North Carolina.
 Christmas Cheer Rhododendron |
 Wordless Wednesday Regional Wreaths |
Online Learning and Resources
In the past few months, we’ve tried to maintain a list of online learning opportunities that Extension Master Gardeners or other avid gardeners might like to take or view. This month’s list includes links to blogs and webinars.
- Garden Professors Blog Invitation: Spreading the Word About Research-based Gardening Information. This month, “Garden Professor” Jeff Gillman specifically invited Extension Master Gardeners to view and discuss horticulture topics of interest through the Garden Professors blog and Facebook page. This invitation also goes out to agents, educators, gardeners, and green industry members, as well, since multiple perspectives and questions stimulate more dialogue and opportunities to learn.
- U.S. Department of Agriculture People’s Garden Fall 2012 Webinar Series Recordings. As mentioned in last month’s update, you can now view speakers talking about hot topics and titles such as seed saving, engaging volunteers in the garden, going native, composting and compost use, and best practices in starting and sustaining a school garden.
- How Much Does a Vegetable Garden Cost/Save? From Gail Langellotto’s (State Coordinator of the OSU Extension Master Gardener program) blog, this post was widely shared on our Facebook page. As becomes apparent when reading the post, different gardens have different costs associated with them. Sylvia, from New Mexico, drove this point home on our Facebook page, as she stated: “My highest cost, is water, water, water, I try to offset it by collecting rain water, when we get rain.”
Next Month?
Stay tuned for more January posts.….And please let us know (either in the comments section or by email: emg@extension.org) if you or your EMG program have a story, learning experience, or opportunity to share with other Extension Master Gardeners, or simply join us at:
Extension Master Gardener Blog: http://blogs.extension.org/mastergardener/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/extensionmastergardener
Twitter: https://twitter.com/eXEMG
-Karen Jeannette
eXtension Consumer Horticulture Coordinator
-Editorial Reviewer
Linda Brandon, Extension Master Gardener Volunteer Coordinator
NC Cooperative Extension/Guilford County Center