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What questions are people asking about horticulture?
Hello! Thanks for your question about what questions people are asking about horticulture! The short version is that all sorts of questions are asked constantly about the various aspects of gardening, but they all boil down to variations on a theme. How do I do this? And What is this thing? Below you will find a deep dive of my findings.
I loved researching this, as I'm a farmer and avid gardener.
METHODOLOGY
To find out what horticulture questions are being asked, I searched out gardening forums, like Reddit/Gardening, and compilations of most frequently asked questions from various sources, including HowStuffWorks, to get a larger sampling of questions. Because your focus is on teaching traditional skills to a new generation, I focused on questions from beginners rather than advanced horticulturalists.
I broke the horticulture questions down into several basic categories: Beginners, Planning, Plant Needs, Identification, Prevention & Treatment, and Container Gardening.
BEGINNERS
Beginners:
-What is a good beginner's guide? People are often referred to the plethora of how-to videos on YouTube, are told to just start small and learn by doing, or are sent to Google Search.
-What do various terms mean, such as "partial shade" or the numbers on bags of fertilizer?
PLANNING
-How do I plan a garden to best use the available space, soil, climate, and maintenance time? (facing plantings towards certain directions, particularly when planted around a structure, can greatly increase effectiveness. Phone compass comes in handy here.)
-What point in the year should I do certain things? (ex.: start seedlings indoors, mulch, prune, till, etc.)
-What plants will work best in my hardiness zone? In my soil type? In my climate? What plant is best for this growing situation? (GPS pinpointing of planting/hardiness zones is helpful.)
-What plants provide benefits when planted close to one another, and what plants have detrimental effects on others?
-How do I design a garden to decrease maintenance time and effort?
-How can I get my children involved in gardening?
PLANT NEEDS
-What are the sun/shade, soil, and moisture requirements for each plant?
-Should I start this plant indoors first? Should I direct seed outdoors? When?
-How do I prepare my plants for winter? Do I need to dig them up and overwinter them indoors?
-Should I deadhead this plant?
-When should I trim/prune/cutback this plant?
IDENTIFICATION
(Photo identification apps are extremely helpful with these.)
-What is this plant/weed/flower/tree?
-What is this bug on my plant?
-Problem diagnosis i.e. Why is my plant yellow? Why is my plant not producing flowers? Why does my plant have these black spots on it?
PREVENTION AND TREATMENT
-How do I keep pests out of my garden?
-How do I fertilize to best prep my soil?
-How do I avoid these recurring problems? (i.e. any of the possible plant problems like yellowing, wilting, lack of fruit or flowers, etc.)
CONTAINER GARDENING
-What plants are suitable for growing in containers?
-What kind of container should I buy?
-Should I fertilize? How often?
-When should I repot a plant?
-Do I need to bring this plant indoors during the winter?
Because of your focus on integrating technology with teaching traditional skills, I searched out what Gardening apps were most popular, to give us an additional measurement of what knowledge people were seeking out the most. Utilizing different search words focused on gardening, the most downloaded gardening apps were either gardening calendars with alarms for specific tasks (like watering or fertilizing) or were larger-range apps that included garden design help, plant selection guides, and plant care guides. The more popular ones included multimedia integration, with how-to videos, weather alerts, and gardening calendars.
CONCLUSION
To wrap it up, all the most frequently asked horticulture questions revolve around learning basic gardening skills, and recognizing and dealing with various gardening challenges.
Thank you so much for using Wonder! Please let us know if there is anything else we can help you with!