This fully online, asynchronous course is the first part of a series of Garden and Landscape Courses offered by The North Carolina State UniversityDepartment of Horticultural Science.

This is NOT an Extension Master Gardener℠ certification course. If you are interested in becoming a Master Gardener volunteer, please contact the Extension Master Gardener Coordinator in your county for information on training requirements and volunteer opportunities.

Each course in the series includes:

• Hands-on activities,
• Recorded presentations by experts around the state
• Videos
• Slide presentations
• Embedded interactive questions

You can complete the courses at your own pace during the six-week term. You will have access to the interactive version of the Extension Gardener Handbook forever!

Topics

• Soils: soil remediation, how to sample and test soil, how to adjust soil pH and nutrients, fertilizers, soil biology
• Composting: slow and fast composting, vermicompost, common composting problems and how to troubleshoot them, compost tea
• Botany: plant anatomy and physiology, how plants are classified, characteristics for plant identification, and terms for accurately describing plant parts.
• Plant Propagation: sexual and asexual propagation of plants, various techniques for breaking seed dormancy and growing plants from seed, how to grow plants from cuttings, how to propagate plants through budding and grafting, and micropropagation
• You can download a one-page summary of this course.

Fees

• Regular Tuition: $149 per course
• Discounts:
  • Complete Series: Register for all five courses for one price of $499 (that’s a savings of $246 off the regular tuition). No additional discounts apply. Follow this link to Reporter to enroll in the complete series.
  • Early Bird discount of $10 off the regular price (applied automatically when you register 4 or more weeks before the course start date).
  • Extension Master Gardener℠ volunteer discount of $30 off the regular price:  Contact your volunteer coordinator/agent for the discount code. If they do not have the code, ask them to send a request via email to eg-online-classes@ncsu.edu from their work email account.
  • Extension staff discount of $99 off the regular price: Request the discount code via email to eg-online-classes@ncsu.edu from your work email account.

Registration

The next class term is September 15 to October 31, 2026. Click on this link to Reporter to enroll in this class. Register before August 15, 2026, to get the early-bird discount.

Sign up here to be notified when this and other online classes are offered by Extension Gardener.