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Winter Wisdom Brought to you in cooperation with the Kansas State University Johnson County Research and Extension Master Gardeners. Each week we feature interesting topics for winter reading. |
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Week of 2/10/03 The reopening of the Johnson County K-State Research and Extension’s telephone Hotline takes place on Monday, March 3, 2003 at 9am. Extension Master Gardener (EMG) volunteers staff the Hotline on weekdays from 9am to 4pm from the first of March through October 31. Each fall K-State Research and Extension through the Johnson County EMG organization, trains a class of 30 carefully selected applicants who are Johnson County residents, as EMGs. Upon completion of the 10 week training cycle, those volunteers who are interested in working on the Hotline are given another two hours of specific Hotline training. They then work three shifts on the Hotline with an experienced EMG mentor before they are added to the Hotline schedule. The extensive training and preparation of these volunteers underscore the importance that K-State Extension and the EMG organization attach to their contacts with the public and to the quality of the research-based information they are called upon to provide. During the 2002 season, Hotline EMG volunteers contributed 4,307 hours of service handling telephoned inquiries. As significant as this contribution is, it is only part of the total information distributed. The telephone Hotline is now complemented by online access to gardening and horticultural articles and information provided by the K-State Research and Extension web site, www.oznet.ksu.edu/johnson. This venue extends the outreach of our service, and makes the information available outside our normal business hours. Many K-State publications are also available through this site. Use of the internet web site, of the Hotline, and of other popular venues, like this article appearing in Savvygardener.com, are further evidence of the contribution that EMGs’ “unpaid staff” make regularly to the gardening public. We look at the work of our volunteers as representing responsibility to our sponsoring organization, K-State Research and Extension, and to the public, by making optimum use of funds available to us. It is largely due to the efforts of EMG volunteers that we are able to invest time and resources in additional services to area residents without incurring additional costs. Some idea of the scope of public acceptance of the web site usage is seen in the 2002 recorded total of 14,569 page views of the Horticultural Home Page, Hort. Informational articles, EMG Home Page, and EMG Frequently Asked Questions entries. Of special interest to a vast number of web site visitors is the wealth of information on all aspects of Butterflies and Moths researched and presented by EMG volunteers. Access statistics for 2002 indicate that a phenomenal total in excess of 78,750 page views was recorded for these web site resources, four times the total who accessed the information in 2001. These same statistics also show that these inquiries come from across the United States and around the world. We should like to take this opportunity to thank you for your past patronage of the Hotline, the internet web site, and Savvygardener.com articles under the titles of “What’s Hot on the Hotline?”, and “Winter Wisdom for Gardeners”. Incidentally, you will witness the wonderful metamorphosis of this article’s title that coincides with the reopening of the Hotline in March! Articles submitted by Bill Latimer, Johnson County Extension
Horticulture Assistant and Dennis Patton, Johnson County Extension Horticulture Agent. * Winter Wisdom is an information service of the Kansas State Johnson County Research and Extension Master Gardeners. Research-based responses are provided by Extension Master Gardener volunteers weekdays from March 1 through October 31, from 9:00 am to 4:30pm . To telephone, call (913) 764-6306 or visit the Extension Office at 13480 South Arapaho Drive, Olathe, Kansas. Visit their website at www.oznet.ksu.edu/Johnson
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