New series of ISU webinars on gardening underway

AMES — The Iowa State University Extension gardening webinar series is back underway this month. Program Coordinator, Alicia Herzog, says the series is based on input from participants.

“We look at the feedback that was given to us last year from people that came to the same gardening webinar series. And we said, okay, we talked about all these topics this year — what do you want to learn more about next year,” Herzog says. She says they will focus on three different topics in the next three months.

“Our first month is going to be all about edibles. So microgreens herbs, edible landscaping, growing in the cold, because a lot of people don’t know you can put up cold frames and do other special techniques to be able to continue growing food outside, even in the winter months here in Iowa,” Herzog says.

The topic will switch to pruning in February. “That’s one of our most popular topics that we get questions about when we’re thinking about just consumers looking for horticulture information. So we’ll be talking about different types of pruning all month long,” she says. “And then in March, we’ll talk about water usage. So we’ll talk about gravel gardens for when you don’t have very much water coming in. And we’ll talk about rain gardens that can capture water when we have those huge water producing events here in Iowa.”

Herzog says you need to register for the webinars so you can get a zoom link. “You can go to our website, which is extension.iastate.edu/Master Gardener. And we have a winter webinar or home gardening webinar tab on that page where you can see the information about all the different webinars. But the easiest place to follow us on social media, we do have a very strong Facebook presence,” she says.

he says you look up the Iowa Master Gardeners on Facebook, and all of the webinars are listed there as events and they have the link to the zoom and you can register there as well. The January webinars are held on Tuesdays.