When your specialty is zoology but you’re working with home and garden specialists at WSU’s Extension program, you need to be prepared for just about any kind of question.
“Insect identification, animal identification and plant pathology,” said Dave Pehling, who will celebrate his 40th year with the program in April.
And with that, he’s just getting started.
“Some things are definitely seasonal,” he said. “Moles, which are a hot item right now. We’re right in the middle of breeding season.”
The bad news he has to deliver? “There’s really nothing effective we can recommend, since trapping was outlawed in 2000.”
He, fellow coworkers, and a cadre of more than 300 volunteer master gardeners and interns help answer questions from the public on a hotline at the extension office in Everett’s McCollum Park, as well as community drop-in clinics.
They’re quizzed on a shopping list of gardening topics: Pesticide use and safety; landscape plants and ornamentals; vegetable gardening; landscaping trees; fruit trees; lawn care; composting and soil management; bees and pollinators; native plants; water conservation; rain gardens and natural yard care; water quality and weed management.
The onset of busy season for the gardening experts will soon begin.
Bumblebees will be making their annual spring appearance. When the queen bee comes out, she looks for nesting areas. Sometimes the bees take up residence in someone’s birdhouse. While some call with concern about the “squatters,” the colonies “only last through summer time, then die,” Pehling said.
It’s also the time of year when people call in with questions about when to mow their lawns and how to identify the weeds that sprout up.
“Once it warms up, we’ll have a bazillion slug calls,” he said. Although there were sharp frosts early this year, slugs are pretty tough, he said. “I suspect they’ll come out of it OK.”
Over the next month, people will start to think about — and ask questions about — what to plant and what to fertilize with, Pehling said.
Master gardeners will begin their annual series of community drop-in clinics next month, offered at farmers markets, grocery and hardware stores, and local fairs.
People can either bring troubled plants to the sessions for personal inspections and advice, or bring along a photo of the problem.
What can’t be positively identified may be sent to the laboratory at WSU Puyallup Research and Extension Center, although there is a charge for the service.
Among the newer plant pests being seen in the area is the azalea lace bug, which causes leaves to turn white.
Another pest headed this way is the lily leaf beetle, which will eat lilies to the ground, Pehling said. “It’s a bright red beetle. You can’t mistake it for anything else.”
Staff and volunteers do their best to help everyone who contacts them, but unless you’ve been in the plant and pest diagnosis business for years, you can still miss stuff, he said.
If someone brings in insects for identification, “that’s a bright spot in my day,” Pehling said.
If someone brings in something that totally stumps him, he takes it as a challenge.
“That’s why I’ve continued to be here for 40 years, I guess,” Pehling said.
Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.
Hotline stumpers
Here is a look at some of the issues WSU Extension employees and master gardeners are asked about through their hotline and diagnostic clinics.
Unusual problems: Rat in toilet; animal bones under shed (opossums, rats, raccoons and house cats sometimes die under houses); scat identification; dog vomit slime mold; clear slime mold.
Often asked to help identify: bed bugs, weevils, crane fly larva, leaf miners, carpet beetles, drugstore beetles.
Common plant problems: Overwintering, powdery mildew and wire worms in veggies and fruits, spotted wing drosophila, red thread/lawns, composting, pruning, arbor vitae, conifer die back due to drought or root rot, pear trellis rust (particularly bad last year).
Where to get help
More info on nuisance wildlife, and care of lawns, vegetable gardens, raised beds, hobby greenhouses and related topics is available at gardening.wsu.edu.
Master Gardener hotline and diagnostic clinics
Call 425-357-6010 to talk to a master gardener or visit the Master Gardener Walk-In Diagnostic Clinic at 600 128th St. SE, Everett. It is open weekdays 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. April through September and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday, October through March.
Learn more at cahnrs.wsu.edu/blog/2016/02/master-gardeners-can-help-solve-plant-problems.
Master gardeners begin their annual series of community drop-in clinics next month, offered at farmers markets and grocery and hardware stores. The schedule is posted at www.snomgclinics.org/special-clinics.html.
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