FINDING RESOURCES THROUGH EXTENSION

I will be the first to admit, there is a lot I don't know about horticulture.  The field is so vast and there are there is just too much to know.  That is why I often find myself online searching up different topics.  This is where the problems begin.  There is a lot of noise on the internet.  Along with reputable and accurate information there are people trying to sell you stuff, opinions and biased recommendations and on  and on.  So how do you cut out the noise?

My go to solution for that is good old extension services.  For those that are not familiar, land grant universities have a 3 part mission.  Education, Research and Extension.  The extension service unfortunately has seen a lot of cut backs but they are still there doing what they can to provide the public with reliable researched based information on all sorts of topics, including horticulture.

So, here is how this works.  When putting in your search term, add the word "extension" to the search.  This will filter out a lot of nonsense and provide you with a lot more reliable information.  

Here is an example:

• Mushroom Compost
• 10,300,000 results
• 1 extension site
• Wikipedia,
• 8 sales sites
• 9 gardening site
• Sponsored product
• Mushroom Compost Extension
• 1,740,000 results
• 16 extension sites
• 4 garden related sites. 

So in this example, by adding "extension" to my search I cleaned up the results dramatically and put useful and reliable information on page one.

The content will be relative to the state publishing, but for the most part that information is transferable to anywhere in the country.  Certainly if you are looking for info on hardy trees for North Dakota, results from Florida will probably not be a useful.  Also keep in mind that soils will differ from region to region and some recommendations that may be useful in one part of the country may not transfer to yours.

A couple of sites I also turn to is e-gro, which focuses on floriculture production and the garden professors blog.  Their content is geared towards home gardening

http://www.e-gro.org/

http://gardenprofessors.com/

Remember that the trade groups both natinoal and local are there to help the industry and are a wealth of knowledge.  Be sure to participate and learn.  I myself regularly attend and present at the educational functionals they put on.

Lastly there are quite a number of trade publications that you should be staying current with.  Sometimes it feels like too many, but there are national and regional trade magazines that are full of useful articles and most have weekly newsletters coming to your inbox.  

This is by no means exhaustive and most of these publishing compaines have multiple trade publications for different industries like landscapeing, nursery production, greenhouse, cannabis, fruit growing etc.

Grower talks and many weekly newsletters from Ball Publishing

https://www.ballpublishing.com/

Greenhouse product news, I am partial to this one because I was in the 2018 class of 40 under 40

https://gpnmag.com/

Greenhouse managment

https://www.greenhousemag.com/

Greenhouse Grower

https://www.meistermedia.com/