How to find answers to your gardening questions

By Bonnie Kirn Donahue
Extension Master Gardener

University of Vermont

It’s June! As we finish up planting our vegetable and flower gardens, it’s a good time to start thinking about how you will address your inevitable garden problems and questions that pop up each year like weeds.

Fortunately, Vermont has incredible resources right at your fingertips.

One excellent place to start when you’re stumped is the free University of Vermont (UVM) Extension Master Gardener Hotline. Volunteers are available to take phone calls on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9 a.m. to noon at (802) 656-5421. Or you can submit your question online at www.uvm.edu/extension/mastergardener/helpline.

I called the hotline for the first time when I found flea beetles on my turnips, wondering if I should to do something about them. Their advice was simple and practical. Look at the extent of the damage on my plants and use that to determine the scale of my intervention.

In my case, my plants were large and healthy, and the damage (tiny holes in the leaves) was minor, so I didn’t need to do anything in the short term. In the long term, I looked to online Cooperative Extension resources to understand the life cycle of flea beetles to help anticipate their tendencies in future seasons.

To find answers to my garden questions online, I strategically use the search bar in my internet browser to get the most relevant and scientific results.

For example, last year I planted strawberry plants. Strawberry plants do their best fruit production in the second year, so I needed to know how to care for them during the first year to ensure a great strawberry harvest. I typed “strawberry extension Vermont” into the search bar.

This strategic combination of words quickly narrowed down the search results to research-based resources published by the UVM Extension. I quickly found that I needed to pinch all of the flowers off the strawberry plants during their first year.

The idea behind structuring a search like this is to find resources about the specific topic (strawberries), but filter the results to find local (Vermont) resources and resources that are research-based and developed by an extension office.

It is best to start by reviewing resources published in your own state, but if you need more information, looking at Cooperative Extension websites in states with similar climates can help, too. What I love about Cooperative Extension offices is that they present scientifically tested information in an easy-to-read format, explain difficult scientific concepts in a simple way, emphasize practical and sustainable methods and are free to access with a computer or mobile device.

Depending on the topic you are researching, U.S. government resources also can be very useful, such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture or U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Including these in your search may yield some fruitful recommendations and best practices.

In addition, you can ask the experts at your local garden center or nursery for answers to your gardening questions including recommendations for plants and pest and disease control. Or check out the “Gardening Resources” section on the UVM Extension Master Gardener website (www.uvm.edu/extension/mastergardener) or the eXtension website (impact.extension.org/search) that searches hundreds of Cooperative Extension websites.

So the next time you find yourself standing in the middle of your garden with a question, try looking into some of the free, local, extension resources in your area.

Bonnie Kirn Donahue is a UVM Extension master gardener and landscape designer from centralVermont.