bulka wrote:
> I was excited to sign up for the class, even though I couldn't really
> afford the 6hr commitment once a week, or the $250.
>
> Ended up dropping out - just didn't show up to drop off the take-home
> final.
>
> It was a very poorly run class - sixty people watching PowerPoints for
> four hours every Monday evening for three months. No interaction. A
> lot of interest in pesticides and lawn care and ornamental shrubs. In
> the one class that dealt with vegetable gardening the instructer
> focused on her work with commercial growers. Interesting - I would
> have watched this on PBS, but it ain't helping my tomatoes. Community
> gardening was never mentioned.
>
> The volunteer work choices - mostly planting flowers around government
> builings, or working the phone hot line for suburbanites with yellow
> patches on their lawns - those of us most untrained giving advice to
> the public as Master Gardener Trainees under the aegis of university
> extension service. Complete BS.
>
> The nice, semi-retired ladies running the classes seem to mean well.
> The thick loose-leaf textbook (repetitive and self-condtradicory as it
> is sometimes) may be good for a reference, if I ever get back into the
> garden.
>
> Having seen it from the inside, the title Certified Master Gardener
> means less than nothing to me.
>
> B

Sounds like you had a terrible experience, and a boring one, too. Can
you take a class in a different county? Maybe it would not be as
boring. This will not help you with your tomatoes right now, though.


Our class started in January, it was on Tuesdays & Thursdays and we had
to do 40 hours of volunteer service (this was 10 yrs ago, it has since
been raised to 60 hours). We volunteered at the plant sale in the
spring and at the "Friendship Garden", this is where elderly people
would grow vegetables in raised beds. There was a small building on the
property and the elderly men would be sitting around a table drinking
beer and eating donuts. That was different. lol


Becca