Fruit trees. The instructor just read from her transparencies and answered every question with "I don't know anything about that."

Vegetable Gardening - I love veggie gardening, but the instructor was terrible. She rushed through the session and was ill-prepared.

Gawd, I had NO IDEA (but I guess I SHOULD have known) that the turfgrass section was the LEAST favorite part of the course for just about everyone, lol.

Hmmmmmmmmmm, gotta think on this... our landscaping class was done by a local MG who does it as a hobby and is pretty good, so NOT boring, thankfully... I think probably our very first class, which I saw as a waste of time... they spent the whole three hours going over basic rules and regs (which are necessary), and then "telling war stories," with one of the local leaders who writes a gardening column in the local daily paper reading one of his columns to the class -- all about how HE grew from a boy to an elder man who loves to garden... and then we watched this animated Canadian film (I think), called "The Man who Planted Trees," all about how some man in Europe wandered through this wasted area and planted trees as a young man and many years later, as an old man, came back through and it was full of forests and meadows and grass and streams and happy homes with smiling children...

Kind of a "slow start," in my opinion. Most of the remaining classes were taught by one or more of the area master gardeners who specialize in a particular area, and even if I didn't enjoy one as much as another, they were all so earnest and giving their time for free, I don't think I'd pick one out as "bad."

The Turfgrass class was the one class per year taught at a different location (the auditorium at the cancer center at the local hospital), and they built it with these little tiny seats that left bruises for days on my huge frame, so that made it even worse... it also was one of the few -- if not the only -- class that was taught, at least in part, by a lawn service guy who would be happy to help you sod your lawn, ahem.

Most of my "sod" is slowly, but surely, heading to "Jurassic Park" :), being replaced by beds, wooded groundcover areas, water gardens and other groundcovers that don't require constant maintenance at the expense of our environment, our free time and what little energy and flexibility I have in my huge, lethargic arthritic frame :)

Happy Non-Turfing! :)
Jeff

Hey, wait a minute! Turf is the reason I went to the classes! I wanted a nitrogen hogging, so green it glows lawn-just like I had in Chicago. I am happy now, but my son has to cut the lawn every fourty five minutes!!! Sissy

LMAO, Sissy!

Thanks for so fully exemplifying my point! :)

I'm with you, Jeff. The class on Master Gardening was terrible! It was given by a fellow MG who was a terrible speaker, and just basically went over what was already in our notebooks. He didn't know anything beyond that, and actually gave us some misinformation. He also had some terrible slides of some MG projects. Not sure how you can take terrible slides of gorgeous plants, but he managed!

Everything LoooooLz

My husband and I expected that the turfgrass class would be the worst, but we were pleasantly surprised with it. I think the actual worst class was the weed identification. He spent the whole time talking about how to get rid of native plants and flowers in your lawn. I know that's subjective, because I would rather have plants and wildflowers than a lawn, and I understand that people who like lawn don't want to have other stuff growing in it. There were several other people in the class who weren't crazy about him, either. He also said that technically, ALL herbicides are "organic" because they are made from carbon compounds, when we inquired as to organic methods used in getting rid of weeds.

The other class I wasn't crazy about should have been my favorite, because it was about herbs. But the lady didn't know anything. I have been growing herbs for only four years, and I knew more than she did. To give her some credit, she had moved to Texas from Denver, where she ran some kind of garden therapy program, and knew how to grow herbs in Denver. Growing things here is a whole other thing, and she was new here, so I understand that she didn't know yet the growing conditions of our area. But when somebody said that cumin and coriander were the same thing, she didn't even have an answer for that. I had to tell the person that cilantro and coriander are the same thing, but that cumin was something else entirely. Seems like she should have known that. I found myself answering alot of questions for her, and I don't consider myself very experienced with herbs.

Luckily, the rest of the classes and instructors were WONDERFUL!

The class on communications and having to stand up a talk in front of groups of people. I'm better now but I can still remember the sweaty palms. Billie

Our agent did our turfgrass section and he's a tree/shrub/turf maniac....a terrific teacher and excited about what he was teaching. However...turfgrass doesn't get me going.

Pam

I think it was a draw between Chemical application and fruit & Nut trees, or maybe rodent obliteration. There are some great classes, with excellent instructors, and then there are the others.

I think they always offer that great landscape class that turns out to be the 4 hours of total misery. LOL Maybe what they should do is issue quad sheets and a list of problems in a typical yard. Discussion of various problems, and a hands-on attempt to solve those problems. That would have been fun for us.

Janie

Soil and insects. Soil because it just didn't interest me. And my husband taught that segment-he had lots of neat and fun things to do but I don't enjoy that part of it.
I hate insects and that speaks unto itself.

Diseases and insects. Ugh!
Our classes were taught by the same instructor throughout and although she tried to keep these subjects interesting there were times I just wanted to put my head down for a nap!

I wasn't crazy about either the turf grass class or the fire ant class. - Probably because I don't really like either grass or fire ants. But since both are a fact of life here in the Houston burbs, it is probably a good thing I learned a few things about them.

Actually our turf grass class was pretty amusing. The guy from A&M who taught it started out by saying "If you can't mow it, I don't gorw it." so he didn't take himself too seriously.

The bug guy OTOH........

I'm not wild about lawns but the guy who talked about them was pretty interesting. Actually, all of the speakers were remarkably interesting. It's cool to see what other content is offered around the country. A class in communications sounds cool, and not something we had.

GardenFaerie, we didn't have the communications class, either. That WOULD have been helpful, indeed! I was thinking that when I read Billie Ann's post. It is very interesting to see the differences. We had a class on xeriscape, because, duh, we live in a dry part of Texas. Did anybody in any other state have a xeriscape class? Also interesting that you had a fire ant class, Hotroses. We didn't have one, but I don't think they are as big a problem here.

The bug guy covered fire ants in our classes here & that was a very useful part of the otherwise deadly bug class. Count yourself lucky if you don't have to deal with them in W. TX, but then you've got those tarantulas to keep you busy.

Well, so far, most topics and most speakers have been pretty interesting (we have two speakers/topics each class). The first guy today was great, discussing wildlife damage and control. The second one, though was on pollinators, and what would have been an interesting 15 minutes worth of information was dragged out to an hour and forty-five minutes, mainly looking at his flower photos (which he conveniently had for sale).

We saw bee-on-a-rose, bee-on-a-gallardia, wasp-on-a-locust and on and on and on. I concentrated on not snoring.

Loved all of the classes but we had the hardest mg test ever and it took one guy a year to complete it. Now he's on the advisory board. Go figure. I think the instructor really had it in for us because a few of us ladies sat in the back row, ate donuts, and cracked jokes. He hates me anyway cause when he asked if a fig was a fruit or a vegy, I said it's a laxative. He handed out prizes for correct or smart alec answers and I got fat free fig newtons - he made sure I knew they were fat free and told me I needed them. Ha ha. One girl cried when she thought we had to finish the test that day and slammed a book down on the hands on id part of the test. Too funny. We made jokes about Hairy Bindweed being Jackie's ex boyfriend and stuff. Also we laughed when the instructor wore a pink tie dye shirt. He has some gawwd awful plaid pants too that we seized the opportunity on laughing at. It was all great fun and we learned soooo much every week. We still can't look at each other and say Agrilus Plennipenis without laughing (that's the Emerald Ash Borer). Great fun, great opportunity to learn, and to teach others!

I thought the bug class would be the worst because I can't stand bugs and I was pregnate at the time and the slides made me more than a little sick to my stomache. HOWEVER the speaker was so funny that it was actually one of the better classes and I did learn about them weither I wanted to or not!

Goes to show that its not only the subject matter but also the speaker that makes the difference.

The one class that I took the class for the flower lecture - was so disappointing because it was all over the place with very little focus.

Overall the whole program was very good and I enjoyed it a lot!

"Goes to show that its not only the subject matter but also the speaker that makes the difference."

It would have been interesting if the question had been worded: "What subject did you find boring even though the teacher was very good and entertaining"?

Joe

I hate to admit it but I truely learned something in the turf grass class.:) I am working toward less turf in my yard each year but it was a good class. The class i dislike the most was one on compost. The reason I dislike it was becouse the guy teaching it owned a BIG company and the class cosisted of BUY MY COMPOST. Really they need to weed out people who are teaching just for a free sales pitch. I have attened a lot of other classes this year and I found at least one more that was like that. At least now I know that them are the classes I dislike!!!

I actually enjoyed our turf class, our grass guru is an awesome instructor. The topic itself is so-so.
Our landscaping class was taught by a woman who didn't really want us to learn anything about landscaping and possibly cut into her business. Having business folks "teach" classes too often backfires.
Worst class? Veggies-dull topic and an incredibly boring speaker. The guy knows his stuff, just can't convey it in an interesting way. I spent most of the class doodling on the handouts and playing tic-tac-toe with my neighbor. My other neighbor had lost the battle and fallen asleep. She wasn't snoring and we figured she needed the rest so we let her snooze.

My only complaint about any of my class subjects was I wanted a whole LOT more information, especially in the science portions. I wanted to know the whole life cycle of different insects and fungal pathogens. I wanted to know everything about soil chemistry ever known. I wanted to know exactly how photosynthesis happened. I wanted to know how to breed turfgrass varieties. You get the idea :-)

I can't hold that against the MG program, because I ALWAYS want to know MORE about nearly everything I encounter.