Discussion in the thread about suggestions for books, topics like phenology, people asking for advice and so on has got me to wondering. Part of what I’m wondering about is a question I asked somewhere, sometime but never really got an answer to, and that is who is the target audience? Farmers, big and small? Back yard gardeners? Seed savers? People with a house plant? People who have never had plant or planted a seed?
I think there is a mix of the above and even with those who may have actually planted a seed before there is a lot of inexperience and a bit of the blind leading the blind. There may be, contrary to what I used to think, people who don’t know much of anything at all. I don’t write this with any intent of being critical or derogatory, but accepting what I believe to be factual.
Now there are uncountable numbers of bloggers, youtubers and garden writers some of whom offer good information and some of whom don’t. So, how is the person who knows basically nothing but wants too, going to sort their way through it all?
It reminds me a little of when I went back to college in the late 1990s to learn about computers. I didn’t know anything; I mean nothing at all. What the hell, is clicking? Is it going to explode if I click left when I should have clicked right? O’ and by the way, how do you turn it on?
Some years later when I found myself as part time faculty at that same college, I got called to the department head’s office one day to explain why my students consistently scored higher on tests and did better in the next level classes. I had observed other instructors, some of whom I had studied under a few years earlier and I knew the answer right off.
It was because those instructors, with higher level degrees and much more experience commonly were more concerned with demonstrating their superior knowledge than they were about teaching and failed completely to grasp the fact it the student already had the knowledge they wouldn’t have been taking the class. Basically, I had not forgotten being afraid the mouse might explode if I touched it wrong, and they had.
Now I don’t remember a time of being afraid a seed might explode because I’ve been planting them since before I could read, and I could read before I started school. Still, I have retained the ability to understand that a student comes to a class to learn what they don’t already know. They aren’t dumb or lazy, they just don’t know.
So, in the set “target audience” how many are in the subset, “know pretty much nothing”? Is there a need for a Beginners Guide, emphasis on Beginners?
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But that’ll come with experience, as you figure out what you, personally, value most in your crops.