Category: Horticulture

Horticulture agents that work with commercial fruit and vegetable producers throughout SC have been busy at work over the last few months creating and delivering production workshops and creating an online presence. SCGrower.com is a weekly blog in which agents post crops, pests, and weather updates. Agents decided that this was a great place to begin building an online presence to direct traffic. Kerrie Roach has been diligently creating marketing materials for the team. On the site, agents decided that an Upcoming Events tab needed to be created by which all meetings would be marketed and branded in the same manner. Consistent marketing and branding allow the team to keep a unified look and feel to their programs throughout the state.

In a typical year, many in-person meetings are held at the regional level for growers. This year, agents decided to have a series of statewide virtual programs focused on a specific crop or family of crops for each event. The meetings are marketed as ‘Food Crop Production Meetings’. Doing this allowed for a more in-depth dive into topics and crop issues. To date, agents have hosted virtual trainings on Strawberry Production, Organic and Small Farm Production, Tomato and Pepper Production, and Cucurbit Production. Because of the online format, the agents have been able to reach producers and audiences that had not previously been involved with Extension Programming. As of February, 381 growers have participated in these meetings. With five more production meetings scheduled in the next month that number will continue to grow.

Agents have also begun having one production meeting per month that explores a timely topic. These meetings are marketed as ‘CU’ltivating SC Growers and are shorter in length than the 2-3 hour production meetings. In January, 54 growers learned about Organic Fertility with Dr. Brian Ward before they started preparing their fields. In February, Strawberry Tissue Sampling and Fertility will be discussed before growers begin fertilizing for the spring season. Having regular meetings during the production season will give growers a chance to manage crops and pests and make better management decisions in-season.

Our newest virtual endeavor is weekly chats with the agents marketed as ‘SC Growers Exchange’. Each Tuesday at 11:30 A.M., all agents working with food crops jump on a Zoom call and invite growers to ask questions during these 30-minute sessions. Agents and growers share information, resources, and what they saw in the field that previous week. The team hopes to turn these recordings into weekly podcasts for their next endeavor.

Not having in-person meetings has been hard for the horticulture team as we know it has been for other teams, but the current COVID situation has allowed time and energy to be devoted to creating an online presence. The team has worked extremely hard and came together to create an outstanding offering to the growers we serve.

Submitted by: Zack Snipes, Area Horticulture Agent

HGIC has another record-breaking month. October 2020 shows that the traffic to HGIC is not slowing down anytime soon.

• Total phone calls answered 928 (answered 665 calls in Oct 2019)
• Total emails answered 851 (answered 350 emails in Oct 2019)

Website Pageviews 529,531 (pageviews 238,882 in 2019)

Top 10 Topics for Calls and Emails:

• Lawn Problems
• Landscape Problems
• Soil test
• Trees
• Misc.
• Plant ID and Weed ID
• Small Fruit, Tree Fruit & Nut Crops
• Turfgrass
• Shrubs and Vines
• Wildlife

Top 10 Pageviews on Website:

• Bermudagrass Yearly Maintenance Program
• Tomato Diseases & Disorders
• Zoysiagrass Maintenance
• St Augustinegrass Maintenance
• HGIC Home Page
• Houseplant Insects & Related Pests
• Changing pH of Soil
• Centipedegrass Yearly Maintenance Calendar
• Identifying Copperhead Snakes
• Overseeding with Ryegrass

Submitted by: Millie Davenport, Director of HGIC and Cory Tanner, Horticulture Program Team Director

Master Gardener Mondays: A Virtual Learning Series for SC Master Gardeners

Situation: South Carolina Master Gardeners play a vital role in assisting Extension Agents with meeting the public’s demand for reliable horticulture/gardening information. Master Gardeners must complete ten hours of continuing education annually to stay current with the latest gardening topics and research. As a result of precautions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, traditional in-person continuing opportunities were non-existent.

Response: In response to the lack of continuing education opportunities, the South Carolina Master Gardener Program created a virtual series. Coined “Master Gardener Mondays,” the series provided weekly one-hour presentations delivered by Extension staff utilizing Zoom. A total of 1,135 Master Gardeners participated in the twelve sessions, which took place from August through October. Participants received a follow-up email after each session that contained the session’s recording, evaluation, and additional resources.

Impact: 578 of the 1,135 participants completed the evaluations with an average weekly response rate of 53%. 97% of survey respondents indicated gaining knowledge. 88% indicated plans to take action as a result of participating in Master Gardener Mondays. Implementing practices is evidence of behavior change, but even more powerful is sharing that information with others. 79% of survey respondents indicated feeling more comfortable with assisting others concerning a particular topic. This quote from a participant in the “How To Diagnose Turf” session exemplifies how a Master Gardener can apply the information learned in a way that will assist those seeking assistance from Clemson Extension, “I’m impressed with how much information I gained from this webinar. I have a concrete list of techniques I can use to potentially diagnose turf problems.”

Submitted by: Terasa Lott, State Coordinator SC Master Gardener Program and Cory Tanner, Horticulture Program Team Director

Like many aspects of Extension, the School Gardening for South Carolina Educators program has remained busy despite the challenges of COVID-19. This year alone the program has brought in:

In 2019-220 the program:

• enrolled 20 new schools
• maintained the 40 existing and active schools already served by the program
• trained more than 175 teachers throughout the state

Along with these successes, all participants completed the program evaluation and rated the program with a high level of satisfaction.  The South Carolina Department of Education School Garden and Education Instruction initiative is a partnership between Clemson Cooperative Extension School and Community Gardening and the South Carolina Department of Education South Carolina Farm to School program.

Submitted by: Amy Dabbs, Statewide School and Community Gardening Coordinator

HGIC has another record-breaking summer with website hits and calls more than doubling compared to last year. The HGIC team fielded over 1,100 phone calls and has answered almost that many emails. The website continues to get lots of traffic with more than 628,000 views for an over 70% increase, with over 33,000 views on tomato fact sheets and information alone. Bermudagrass was the second-highest topic for website visits, and not surprisingly, Planting a Garden more than tripled its views from the previous summer.

Submitted by: Millie Davenport, Director HGIC

In April 2019, the Food Crop Horticulture Program Team created a blog for fruit and vegetable news, titled “The South Carolina Grower” (scgrower.com). The idea was to create a platform for sharing field updates, pest alerts, upcoming events, and new production information with produce growers and other interested parties. The ultimate goal for the blog was to facilitate better communication between the food crop agents and keep growers up to date with what is going on around South Carolina.

The most notable feature of the blog is the weekly field update. Horticulture agents send weekly field observations and photos from their respective areas to be included in the updates, which are compiled and posted each Monday morning. These updates provide a summary of what is being planted and picked, the pests or diseases that are active, and the weather conditions from around the state. Participation from the whole team has been instrumental in making the weekly field updates a success.

Other features of the blog include research updates and Clemson Extension publication highlights, a schedule of upcoming produce-related events, information about each horticulture agent, and links to important resources.

The audience and site traffic have grown steadily since the launch. Currently, there are 190 subscribers and the blog has received over 9,600 views, including viewers from 68 countries. The weekly field updates have been a hit as growers and agribusiness professionals routinely comment on how they look forward to reading them each week. Growers also stated they enjoy reading about what other farmers are experiencing nearby, as well as in other areas.

The blog has also been successful in accomplishing the goal of improving communication among Horticulture Program Team members. Agents have gained more awareness of what is happening in other areas of the state and are more familiar with what fellow agents are working on. This has been particularly valuable during the COVID-19 restrictions since growers, agents, specialists, and industry leaders have fewer opportunities to interact in person.

Submitted by: Cory Tanner, Horticulture Program Team Leader & Justin Ballew, Commercial Horticulture Agent

Water Resources and Horticulture Team Up to Promote Environmentally Friendly Landscaping 

With the cancellation of all in-person classes during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was critical for Clemson Extension to find alternative methods in order to fulfill its mission. While Extension has had an online presence with online courses, websites, and social media, little has been done in terms of real-time online programming.

Kim Morganello, Carolina Clear Program Coordinator, and Terasa Lott, State Coordinator for the South Carolina Master Gardener Program, teamed up to develop a three-part webinar series in April 2020, focusing on Carolina Yards. Carolina Yards is an environmentally friendly landscaping program designed to assist and guide South Carolina homeowners in making changes in the environmental quality of their yards, neighborhoods, and surrounding waterways. This program was ideal for online programming at this time for several reasons:

• Interest in gardening surged as many citizens spent more time at home.
• With its broad concept of gardening in a way that protects natural resources, the program lends itself to collaborative programming efforts.

Each webinar was one hour in length and included time for Q&A. The series was offered free of charge but registration was required. Individual webinar topics included:

• April 15: Introduction to Carolina
• April 22: Right Plant, Right Place
• April 29: Managing Water in Your Own Backyard

The capacity for each webinar was originally set at fifty participants. After reaching that in just one day, capacity was increased with a total of 103 registrants. Actual participation in each webinar was forty to fifty. Of those, twenty-eight individuals from thirteen counties provided feedback through a Qualtrics evaluation. Over Ninty percent of respondents indicated they were inspired to change the way they manage their lawn/garden/landscape. More than sixty percent of respondents said they planned to certify their yard or their yard was already certified as a Carolina Yard. Over seventy-five percent of respondents said they plan to install a rain garden or rainwater harvesting system or already had systems installed.

Offering the series was a learning experience for the co-hosts in terms of utilizing Zoom technology and presenting it to a virtual audience. Evaluation data indicates it was a learning experience for participants; as well as demonstrated by this comment: “This was a well-organized and informative program. The length of each session was perfect. The presenters worked well together. Thank you!”

Submitted by: Terasa Lott, State Coordinator, SC Master Gardener Program

Horticulture Team Agents Amy Dabbs and Megan Shearer hosted a webinar on May 14th on How to Grow an Herb Garden for South Carolina educators as part of the Clemson Extension Horticulture Team’s School & Community Gardening program. They had 175 participants register and 140 actually attend the event. Prior to the workshop, registrants received an email with links and handouts including a book of herb recipes prepared by Megan Shearer, Program Assistant, that can be made at home or in a classroom setting. Also included were factsheets from the HGIC on growing herbs, and other links and handouts referenced in the webinar. The webinar included growing an herb garden in raised beds, in containers, and incorporating herbs into the landscape. They discussed many popular culinary herbs and ways to use them and they demonstrated how to dry herbs in a dehydrator to make DIY herb seasoning blends. Some online information can be reached by visiting the Clemson Extension School & Community Garden Program Recent Post’s Page where you can find some details on how to grow some of the herbs they discussed if you missed the webinar.

Their next webinar will be June 25th, “Food Preservation for Educators”, sponsored by South Carolina Farm to School. Rebecca Baxley will provide content and instruction. Registration will open soon and is open to all.

Submitted by: Cory Tanner, Horticulture Program Team Director & Amy Dabbs, Horticulture Team Agent