Cancelled and Replaced By 3048109145: Specialty Crop: The Vegetable Academy: A Short Course to Advance Vegetable Production in Kentucky

Extension educational opportunities occur through publications, field days, and face to face meetings conducted at County Extension offices. While the traditional 1-2 hour county meetings are helpful for many growers, the time constraints often do not allow for in depth coverage of topics. Extension professionals are now finding, particularly with experienced growers, that more comprehensive learning opportunities are warranted. A group of growers that is well suited to advanced training are those supplying auctions. Many of the growers selling at auctions have between 5-10 years of experience and want added depth in educational programs in order to take their farming to the "next level". (Timely) During the winter of 2011 the PIs of this project conducted many county level meetings and received requests in some locations to develop an advanced vegetable production class. Several of those locations coincided with produce auctions. Therefore we feel the time is right to develop such a program. (Importance) Conducting such a program will allow extension professionals to provide enhanced educational opportunities to a fast growing segment of the Kentucky produce industry. The goal will be to provide a combination of lecture and experientially based learning opportunities. A given grower group will have the option of working with the coordinator to choose approximately 6-7 topics of importance to cover. Each topic will be given 2-3 hours of lecture and hands- on learning for the participants. For example, if a group chose disease management of vegetables, a lecture would be accompanied by a hands-on identification session where live diseased samples would be available for participants to examine. This type of learning experience would result in better growers supplying higher quality products to market.