Do you want to learn more about gardening? Do you have a passion for sharing gardening information and making your community a more beautiful place? Join us for the upcoming Extension Master Gardener (EMG) Training this fall.
The University of Missouri Extension in Cole County is organizing an Extension Master Gardener Training in collaboration with Central Missouri Master Gardeners in the fall of 2024.
The mission of the Missouri Master Gardener Extension program is “helping others learn to grow.” The Master Gardener program provides in-depth horticulture training to individuals throughout Missouri who then volunteer their time applying what they have learned to help others in their communities to learn about gardening and environmental education.
The Master Gardener program throughout Missouri promotes and raises public awareness of the University of Missouri Extension as source of unbiased, research-based gardening information.
To become trained as a Master Gardener, an individual must attend a 30-hour classroom core course training. Then the Master Gardener trainee is required to give 30 hours of volunteer service back to their community in approved University of Missouri Extension activities.
The Extension Master Gardener Training will help you to gain new horticulture knowledge and become a community resource for science-based information. The training educates about gardening benefits and provide opportunity to meet fellow gardeners.
This training is in hybrid module. The training has 11 sessions of lectures through Zoom. The lectures will be held from 9-11 a.m. Thursdays from Aug. 22-Oct. 31. The participants can join the Zoom lectures from their home, or they can come to Cole County Extension Center in Jefferson City to join the lectures.
Following are the dates and lecture topics in the training:
Aug. 22: Plants and their envirement.
Aug. 29: Plant health and diseases.
Sept. 5: Herbaceous Ornamentals (annuals and perennials).
Sept. 12: Landscape Design.
Sept. 19: Introduction to Soils.
Sept. 26: Home Lawn Care.
Oct. 3: Home Fruit Production.
Oct. 10: Vegetable Gardening.
Oct. 17: Woody Ornamentals, Pruning Ornamental Trees and Shrubs.
Oct. 24: Plant Propogation.
Oct. 31: Insects, IPM, and Environmental Stewardship.
There will be six in-person field sessions in the training. During field sessions, participants will visit various flower gardens, vegetable gardens, fruit orchards and greenhouses and do a landscape tour in Cole and Boone counties. The first field session will be held from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Aug. 15 at the Cole County Extension Center, 2436 Tanner Bridge Road, for an orientation session.
The cost to participate in the training is $200, which includes the EMG Core Manual. The deadline to register is July 31.
Interested participants can register online at https://extension.missouri.edu/events/extension-master-gardener-training-mid-missouri-fall-2024.
Dhruba Dhakal, PhD is a University of Missouri Extension Horticulturist, serving to Missourians about a decade in Central Missouri. Dhakal can be contacted at [email protected] with gardening questions.