LEXINGTON, Ky. – The same expertise about gardening used exclusively by University of Kentucky extension agents can now be accessed by the general public.

The newly revised Kentucky Extension Master Gardener (KEMG) Program training manual is now fully available online for the first time. It’s a publication of the University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service at the UK Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment in Lexington.

Rick Durham, KEMG coordinator and extension professor of horticulture, said the training manual was not very accessible to the public in the past because it was only available in print.

Use and availability were also restricted to county extension agents for training people wanting to become master gardeners.

Durham said the idea of going online with the training manual was to support the extension office mission of helping to educate the general public.

Someone who simply likes to garden with no desire to achieve master gardener status, for example, can access it from their computer or device at no cost.

“It’s available to anyone,” he said.

Durham said he would also like extension agents to use the revised manual in their other horticulture training activities outside the master gardener program. The newly released online version features improved graphics and a lot of the same information, presented in an easier to understand and accessible format.

Durham said the previous content in print for about the past three decades consisted of numerous stand-alone publications originating from different parts of the country.

He said the new version, based on material in the print manual, was rewritten by horticulture professionals at the university, who reflect some of their expertise in the language contained in the 325 pages of material.

Durham said the information in the online manual is also easier to locate since thumbing physically through pages is no longer required. “Now we have all of the chapters linked together in one document,” he said.

Durham said the revised material also contains information specific to growing and maintaining the health of plants more native to the state.

What works best in one region might not work well in another part of the country because of differences in soil and climate.

“We created a comprehensive resource tailored to the gardening needs, interests and environmental conditions of Kentucky,” he said.

There’s still a print version of the revised manual for use strictly by extension agents who prefer it over the online format.

The KEMG manual includes topics covering annual and perennial flowers, basic botany, insects, landscape design, organic and vegetable gardening, plant identification, propagation and disease, law, pest and weed management along with yard and water quality.

The training manual can be accessed at http://www2.ca.uky.edu/agcomm/pubs/ID/ID1/ID1.pdf.

The Extension Master Gardeners Program began a half century ago at Washington State University to meet an increase in requests for information from home gardeners. The program is now offered in every state.

Individuals completing the UK master gardeners program agree to contribute a minimum number of volunteer hours annually to providing reliable, research-based information to people interested in home gardening and other things such as landscaping.

According to university officials, there were more than 1,110 active master gardeners in the state providing nearly 35,000 volunteer service hours.