Re: Master Gardeners

**"* B* <l*@msn.com>**

Hello everyone and Happy New Year!

I'm usually a "lurker" and can no longer stay outside this conversation about Master Gardeners.
However, I can only speak for Connecticut. Much of what has been said is accurate regarding enthusiasm, and level of expertise being spotty across the state.  However, I must take issue with the recent comment about always dispensing remedies that are chemical in nature.  

In Connecticut, we have been barred for at least the past 3 years from recommending ANY chemical remedies.  Furthermore, we're not permitted to recommend any brand name products.  I think the University of Connecticut (UConn) lawyers got way too deep into the act (at least for me!).  Our recommendations are generic when we do talk to clients about treatments and then we send them off to garden centers to (ugh!) to buy the products.  We try to steer them to the places we know carry the low toxics and suggest they look for low toxic treatments, e.g. iron phosphate for slugs vs. metaldehyde but that's about as far as we can get.  And again, the better MGs are the ones that do that, not the less informed/enthusiastic of the bunch.

All of our fact sheets were revised several years ago to exclude the chemical recommendations and all are available on line through the UConn website which will repeat so if you click on this, please cut and paste after "html" (Doreen and I can't figure out why this happens)
http://www.ladybug.uconn.edu/factsheets/index.html<http://www.ladybug.uconn.edu/factsheets/index.html>

Lorraine 

Lorraine Ballato 
Brookfield CT Zone 5B
Cold and snowy, but not like Alaska!!!
----- Original Message ----- 
  From: margaret lauterbach<m*@earthlink.net> 
  To: Garden Writers -- GWL -- The Garden Writers Forum<g*@lists.ibiblio.org> 
  Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 8:50 AM
  Subject: Re: [GWL] Master Gardeners

  ...Extension agents have mellowed to the 
  point that one must always give out the synthetic chemical 
  information first, then if pressed by a taxpayer who wants an organic 
  solution, a MG may say "well, such-and-such is used by some people, 
  but hasn't definitely been proven successful."  >
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