New gardeners can learn from masters

By Adrian Higgins

Washington Post

As a horticultural extension agent, Bobby Wilson is often approached by beginning vegetable gardeners who want to know whether they should water daily.

“You don’t need to water every day,” he said.

“I tell them to water Monday, Wednesday and Friday.”

What he’s really telling them is that they should soak the soil and water again only when the top three inches have dried out, determined by using that most accurate of probes, your finger.

“That’s the proper way to do it, but people need a number,” said Wilson, who works in Atlanta and is also president of the American Community Gardening Association.

Like a lot of us in the gardening world, Wilson has been astonished by the sudden interest in vegetable gardening

Seed producers have reported sales increases in the range of 30 percent over the past year, itself a banner year. In an April survey by the Pew Research Center, 21 percent of those polled said they were planning to grow vegetables this year because of the recession.

Where does a new gardener find guidance? The optimum scenario would be to find a plot in an established community garden surrounded by old hands who could offer practical advice. But established community gardens are tough to get into these days, with long waiting lists.

Fortunately, there is an infrastructure to help. Most jurisdictions have extension agents such as Wilson who work with a cadre of trained volunteers called Master Gardeners.

Mario Fonseca, state Master Gardener coordinator and extension horticulturist, said each county in Georgia has an urban gardening program.

“The idea is to grow not only vegetables, but flowers and other plants in housing or public facilities, backyards and churches,” he said.

Individuals or organizations can reach out to their extension offices — there is one per county except in DeKalb and Fulton counties, which each have three — for information on everything from diet and nutrition to growing vegetables and herbs in containers.

“Here [gardens] haven’t been a big movement in the community yet even though they have been increasing every year,” Fonseca said.

Reaching new vegetable gardeners has become a priority in the extension agent community, said Rick Gibson, an extension agent in Casa Grande, Ariz.

“It’s perplexing also,” he said, “because at a time when the needs are growing, we are in the midst of budget cuts that are limiting in many states the resources to develop programs to disseminate that information.”

The other, longer-term issue is that “there are a lot of people out there who don’t know who we are,” Gibson said.

To learn more

To find an extension agent in your county, call 1-800-275-8421 or visit UGA Cooperative Extension .

AJC staff writer Nedra Rhone contributed to this article.