Beneath the Blooms: Creepy Garden Critters with Todd Murray – Episode 007

First up in this episode is the November gardening calendar. It’s time to make sure everything is ready for winter.

Next, join me in a fascinating conversation with Todd Murray, entomologist and the Director of WSU Puyallup Research and Extension Center. We delve into the world of “creepy garden critters” and explore their roles in your garden – some bring tremendous value, while others, like rats, may not be the most welcome guests.

Ever wondered about the secrets these critters hold and how they impact your garden’s ecosystem? We’ll uncover surprising insights, and share practical tips to help you better understand and manage the creatures in your garden.

Tune in for an enlightening discussion that promises to transform your perspective on these critters and enhance your gardening experience.

Todd also explains, from his perspective, the value an endowed faculty chair/professor will bring to the WSU Extension Master Gardener Program.

Check out these other episodes

00:00

[Erin Landon]

Welcome to the Evergreen Thumb. I’m your host, Erin Landon, a Washington State University Extension Master Gardener since 2015, and a certified permaculture designer and modern homesteader. I’m here to share up-to-date research-based horticulture and environmental stewardship knowledge to help you grow and manage your garden and to share what the WSU Extension Master Gardener program is all about.

00:23

WSU Extension Master Gardener volunteers are university-trained community educators who have been cultivating plants, people, and communities since 1973. Are you ready to grow? Let’s dig into today’s episode.

00:45

Welcome to the Evergreen Thumb, episode 7. With me today is Todd Murray. Todd is here to talk today about what I’m going to refer to as creepy critters, for lack of a more encompassing term. We’re going to talk about some of the creatures that tend to be, well, what people think of as creepy. Bats, spiders, things like that, and their role in the garden.

01:11

Before Todd joins us, it’s time to review what to do in the garden in November. As far as planning goes, you want to assess your outdoor spaces for areas that seem to be lacking trees or shrubs and start researching appropriate choices for that spot so that you can buy and plant the appropriate tree or shrub in the spring. It’s time to force spring bulbs for indoor blooms in December, if that’s something you choose to do.

01:41

For maintenance, it’s a good time to service your equipment, lawnmowers, weed eaters, things like that. Clean them up, make sure they, you know, if they need any maintenance like air filters or spark plugs, you can replace or check those and prepare them for winter storage. Personally, I like to add non-ethanol gas to our gas-powered tools.

02:08

We have a lot better success rate with them just starting up without a lot of work come spring. Also you also want to check the potatoes that you have in storage and make sure to remove any that are going bad, and It’s actually even a good idea to check any storage food that you have squash Apples anything you’re storing from the garden, and make sure to pull out anything that goes is going bad carrots and onions and garlic as well because if you have one that’s going bad or

02:36

starting to sprout or something like that, it can affect the rest of your storage. If you haven’t already, you can mulch rhubarb and asparagus. Can also make sure that you have drained and insulated your sprinkler systems or irrigation systems if you haven’t done that already. Leave ornamental grasses in the winter to provide texture in the landscape. A lot of those ornamental grasses also provide seeds for birds during the winter.

03:05

You wanna wait until early spring to cut them back. Keep an eye out for drainage issues in heavy fall rains. It’s a good time to make notes and photograph and keep track of those areas that do drain poorly so that they can be addressed in spring. It’s a good time to prune your roses, primarily the tea roses and hybrid roses to prevent winter damage.

03:33

If you want more information on how to prepare your garden for winter, Bonnie Orr was with us in episode five and she goes over this in depth and talks about the differences in preparing for Western or Eastern Washington and how tall to cut your roses and how deep to plant your fall, your spring bulbs and things like that. And I will link to that in the show notes. It’s a good time to check firewood for insect infestations. If you have infestations, burn the affected wood first, but don’t store it inside.

04:02

Treat peaches four weeks after leaf fall for leaf curl or shot hole diseases. Monitor landscape plants for problems, but don’t treat unless you can verify there is a problem. November is a great time to repot amaryllis from last year. Water it and keep it in a warm, bright area, and fertilize lightly when it begins to show growth. And it’s also time to reduce fertilizer applications in house plants or indoor gardening spaces and reduce that watering as well.

04:30

All right, that covers the November gardening calendar. Let’s switch over to our discussion with Todd. Todd, welcome to the show.

[Todd Murray] Thank you so much for having me and I have to warn you that I get pretty excited talking about creepy critters and Master Gardeners. So if I start going on and on and on, you’re going to have to figure out how to get me back on track.

05:00

[Erin]

Well, let’s start off then. Why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about yourself and your connection to the Master Gardener program?

[Todd]

Well, I am a big fan of the Master Gardener program and let me explain that a little bit. My history with the program really realized almost, it’s gone almost 20 plus years ago and.

05:29

It was the Master Gardener program that helped me really understand what an Institute like WSU does and its role in the community. And I graduated from Washington State University with a master’s degree in entomology and knew that I wanted to work in an industry to help people manage and understand kind of the world around them and bugs are everywhere. And so it seemed like a good place to start.

05:57

And early on in my career, I met the master gardeners up in Whatcom County. There, Whatcom County was experiencing a really unusual problem with a new invasive species that’s been here for quite some time and the public generated habits around dealing with this problem. And it’s called the European Cranefly.

06:22

It decimated lawns when it first came to Washington state. And so people got in the habit of, of treating their lawns with pesticides. In Bellingham, the drinking water comes from Lake Wacom and there’s lawns surrounding Lake Wacom and they started picking up pesticides showing up in the drinking water, you know, the water source for the city. And so we trained the Master Ggardeners how to survey lawns for

06:50

crane flies and deployed them throughout that neighborhood and challenged the neighborhood that if you think you have a crane fly problem, contact the master gardener and they’ll come test your lawn and teach you how you can test your own lawn. And a few years of doing that, master gardeners never found any crane fly problems and were able to convince many of those homeowners that normally would apply a pesticide to not use pesticides that would then maybe run off into the drinking water.

07:19

And so that was a really powerful example for me of how important a group like the master gardeners are for community. And I was so jazzed by it that I was like, I want to work for WSU and have been working for WSU ever since and just celebrated my 25th year with the organization. Wow. That’s great.

[Erin]

That’s a great example of, you know, how making the public aware of IPM or what we now think of as IPM and, you know, the possible implications in our drinking water.

07:49

Talking about creepy critters. All right, so how about we start with how can gardeners distinguish between harmful and beneficial critters in their gardens?

[Todd]

That’s a great question. And that’s where understanding our role in our yards becomes really important because because it’s hard to distinguish good and bad sometimes. You know, sometimes ladybugs are

08:17

really good because they eat aphids and then they become really bad when they start overwintering in your house by the thousands. Or your wigs are really good because they’re generalist predators in your garden but then when things get kind of dry they start taking big bites out of your dahlia and other flowers and causing damage. And so I always like trying to understand who I’m

08:46

without attributing the good and bad to it because there’s always a role that all these organisms play in our yard. And I’m not saying that pests deserve to be in your yard or anything like that. You wanna get rid of your pests. But I think it’s really important to understand your relationship with that organism and then what you’re trying to accomplish. Because as a master gardener, we’ve found that master gardeners are really key in…

09:16

in helping people with one of the most critical steps of integrated pest management, and that’s managing their own expectations of their yard. So some people have a idea of a yard that should be a certain way, and often that’s not what our yard provides us. So it helps kind of develop a tolerance to some pests that might not be causing all that much damage to your plants, you just might not like them.

09:46

That basic understanding of understanding the pests, I think, are really important. But a great general rule of thumb is that if it moves fast, it’s probably beneficial to some degree or benign. And that’s just a common attribute of a lot of the beneficial organisms out there is that they’re fast movers. Of course, there’s always exceptions to the rule. But if you flip over a rock and you see a beetle scurry away really fast.

10:15

Chances are that’s a ground beetle or a staphylinid beetle, which are beneficial.

[Erin]

That’s good to know. But the ones that move faster, the ones that are more likely to startle you and make you think twice. If we’re going to talk about creepy critters, maybe we could start talking to some spiders. I think most people generally know spiders are beneficial in most ways in the garden. And I’ll never forget the first time I saw.

10:43

I think it’s just called a common garden spider. It’s black with yellow, bright yellow, and it was really big, bigger than I’m used to. And I’m like, okay, I have to find out what that is because it kind of creeped me out. So I guess what I’m asking, as far as, so spiders as an example, you know, what are some of the benefits, or what are some of the beneficial aspects that they offer to your garden health?

11:11

[Todd]

Spiders are a great reason that I always check in with myself on why I live in the Pacific Northwest. It’s a place of paradise. We don’t have a lot of dangerous things that live here. And so even even like mosquitoes aren’t that bad here. So as a general statement, it is rare that any gardener will encounter a dangerous spider in their yard. You know, we do have…

11:41

black widows that occur on the east side. Sometimes we get them on the west side, but it’s very rare. But we don’t have poisonous spiders in the state. So we get a reputation of brown recluse spiders, but those don’t occur here and likely won’t anytime soon. And we also have found out that hobo spiders are not causing the black nasty lesions that they…

12:10

Previously got blamed for, so so the first thing is to know that chances are if you’re experiencing a spider in your yard It’s not going to hurt you So that automatically throws it into the beneficial place because spiders are exclusively predacious and that’s all they’re doing is running around trying to

12:34

cram whatever they can in their mouths in your yard. And so they’ll take care of a lot of your insect pests and other arthropod pests that you have in your yard.

[Erin]

All right. So how about bats? Oh, bats are good. Bats, so what are some of the beneficial aspects of bats in your yard or in your garden?

[Todd]

The beneficial aspect of bats is

13:02

When you have bat activity in your yard, if you’re lucky enough to, not only is it very entertaining to go watch them at dusk, but they are so good at vacuuming up flying insects, especially during those dusk hours, and can make a pretty good impact on some pest species like moths that might lay eggs on your cabbage or brassicas. And so those dusk flying moths, they’re great at

13:32

at catching a bunch of those in the air and eating them. So they’re almost like aerial vacuum cleaners if you have them active in your yard and great at bringing down some of those flying insect pests.

[Erin]

Snakes. That was the next one I wanted to talk about. So snakes.

[Todd]

Snakes are another good reason to, yeah, that why the Pacific Northwest is such a great place to live.

13:59

We do have rattlesnakes on the East side, and those folks that do garden on the East side are likely aware of how to work around rattlesnakes and recognize them when you see them. But other than that though, we don’t have a lot of venomous snakes that you need to worry about in your yards in Washington State. Snakes are great predators of, especially when they’re young, of other types of…

14:29

of things that could be pests, sometimes even insects. They’re good at feeding on insects when they’re young. But as they mature, they’re great at feeding on some of the more mammal problems that you might experience like mice, maybe even rats. We do have some larger snakes in the area that might be able to take a rat. But they’re harmless. Again, if you’re in a place with rattlesnakes, you’re probably well aware of how to recognize and avoid those, but.

14:58

but we don’t have any really other poisonous snakes here. And like spiders, all the snakes are predacious to some degree. And so they’re out there feeding on other animals and often sometimes pests.

[Erin]

So what are some of the less common, I mean, most people are familiar with their garter snake. It’s a very benign snake, but are there many other varieties that maybe we see less often in our gardens that we could be aware of?

[Todd]

15:27

That’s a great question. Garter snakes, and I think there are a few different species of them that generally look the same, especially in Western Washington, are most common in people’s yards. There is a boa that lives here, and I’ve seen a boa in my garden, and they are fascinating. They’re beautiful snakes. Again, they aren’t poisonous and

15:54

generally beneficial and this was when I lived in the Columbia River Gorge. We would get boas in our garden and they were a treat to run across. They were small but they’re a boa constrictor and have that similar behavior in biology and so forth. So we do get some unusual snakes in the area, but garter snakes are what most people are going to run across.

16:17

If you live by water bodies, we have some other snakes that are specific to living on riparian areas and water edges that can sometimes look like, you know, rattlesnake-type snake, but they aren’t venomous and nor do they have rattles. And so those will often be encountered by people that live around kind of freshwater bodies.

[Erin]

We’re taking a quick break to tell you all about the WSU Extension Master Gardener Program’s Endowed Chair Campaign.

16:46

WSU Extension Master Gardeners use knowledge to empower healthy and resilient communities. But what if we could do more? The WSU Extension Master Gardener program is raising $1.5 million to hire a horticulture professor fully dedicated to the program and to the volunteers who give their time and talents. This professor, or endowed faculty chair, will teach new and existing WSU Extension Master Gardeners cutting-edge horticulture and environmental stewardship in perpetuity.

17:15

They will create tools to support volunteer outreach, such as publications and fact sheets. They’ll represent the program locally, statewide, nationally, and internationally, and partner and collaborate with like-minded organizations to leverage program strengths. And finally, they will conduct meaningful research and develop robust curricula that will build upon our program and find solutions to address difficult challenges like pollinator decline, increasing number of wildfires, food security, and climate change.

17:44

Learn how your gift will support a greener, healthier Washington when you give to the WSU Extension Master Gardener Endowed Chair Fund at mastergardener.wsu.edu/how-to-donate. Links will be in the show notes for this episode.

So are there any precautions that gardeners should take to protect themselves from bites or stings when encountering certain critters?

18:12

[Todd]

I would say just it’s a good practice as a gardener, even though we don’t have many poisonous insects or animals in our area, is it’s always good to shake out your shoes, shake out your gardening gloves before you, you know, stick your foot or hand in there, because often, you know, if there is a spider in there, it doesn’t have a choice, but to sink its fangs into you if it can, while you’re…

18:41

stepping on it or sticking your hand in its face. So it’s always good to shake those out. And we do have scorpions that live in the state, especially on the East side. That’s why it is good practice if you store your crocs or whatever outside is to shake them out first. But we also do have a scorpion that can show up pretty, some cases pretty frequently on the West side too. And it’s pretty large scorpion.

19:06

in some of the wooded areas. Again, down in the Columbia River gorge, we’d see that scorpion quite a bit. And I’ve found some in my own boots before. And so it’s just a good reminder to shake out your boots before you put them on.

[Erin]

Wow, I had no idea we had scorpions. I think of that as a desert, you know, like Southwest desert. So the bigger ones are not the ones you have to worry about, right?

[Todd]

Well, I mean, they’ll pack a wallop like a Yellow jacket.

19:34

So it’ll still hurt, but they aren’t, they aren’t deadly. Like some of the scorpions you get in some of the tropical areas. But we’ve, we’ve found scorpions up in Linden, which is up in Whatcom County, getting down to the Columbia River Gorge. We’ve found them quite, quite easily down there too.

[Erin]

One critter that most people probably have and don’t like, um, that I didn’t really mention earlier, but, uh, rats in the garden.

20:03

What kind of harm can a rat do and do they have any benefits?

[Todd]

In western Washington and in some locations in eastern Washington, we do have rat problems. And gardeners can help reduce the magnitude of those problems by just maintaining a tidy yard in the sense of picking up fallen fruit, making sure ripening fruit is picked, and

20:33

Don’t let fruit get amassed and spoiled. It’s also really important to rat proof your compost piles and try and keep rats from going there as a regular place where they know that they can get some food in. So general sanitation is really good. Bird feeders are also a great thing to make sure you clean up after. Don’t let excessive bird seed accumulate underneath. That’s a great.

21:01

way to attract rats. But rats are definitely an animal that’s worthwhile paying attention to in your yard and garden to make sure that you’re not contributing to the overall problem. But some of our urban areas, they are definitely a force and it’s good to determine as as much as possible.

[Erin]

Are there any ongoing conservation or research efforts related to some of these critters like spiders or bats or that you know of?

21:30

[Todd]

There is, you know, in, in, in the entomology world, probably the most beneficial insects that we spend most of our time studying and, and understanding are, is this group that’s kind of more of a functional group called parasitoids. And parasitoids are most commonly wasps of a some sort.

22:00

but we do have fly species that are considered as parasitoids. And parasitoids truly have a gruesome lifestyle. They’re a cross between a predator and a parasite. And what they’re really good at is specializing on a host group. So an aphid parasitoid will only feed on certain kinds of aphids. And so they have to specialize on that group. So they’re very specific.

22:28

And because of that, they can impact those populations and population sizes. And they’re gruesome in the sense that a free living wasp will fly around once they find a host that might be suitable. Often that wasp will use a modified stinger called an ovipositor and probe that poor insect to see if it’s suitable host for its babies or not. If it is.

22:55

She’ll insert that ovipositor, drop an egg or maybe a bunch of eggs inside that host. Those eggs will hatch. And as those eggs hatch, they’ll develop into a grub, sometimes really unusual alien looking thing that floats around that insect’s body and robs nutrients from that insect. Once that grub is developed enough,

23:21

and it’s ready to start to increase its life cycle and complete its life cycle, it will then start feeding on more important organs within the host or on the host and eventually kill that host. And then pupate and emerge as an adult parasitoid to go do the whole cycle over again. And so as a gardener, it’s really important to start recognizing when you have parasitoids active in your yard because those are things that you want to keep around.

23:51

And a great example is if you’ve ever looked on your rose bush and you saw kind of these inflated, big, crusty aphids, then if you look closer, you might see a perfect hole chewed through it. And those are a good sign of mummified aphids that have been parasitized. And so that’s a good sign that you have parasitoids act.

24:16

[Erin]

Wow. So how likely are we to find parasitoids in our gardens? I mean, is it pretty routine and it’s just a matter of being able to identify it?

[Todd]

Yes, yes. Parasitoids are extremely common. Most of them are very small. Each stage of an insect’s life cycle will have parasitoids that specialize on those stages. So we have parasitoids, they only look like little yellow jackets, but they’re teeny, teeny tiny.

24:45

that feed on insect eggs. We have some that are specialized on insect larvae or nymphs. And then we have some that even will go after the pupae. And so you’re guaranteed right this very moment, that whether you’re, it’s middle of summer, middle of winter, you got parasitoids somewhere in your yard. And they’re there all the time. They’re the more significant biological, natural control force of other insects out there.

25:15

And when we see insect outbreaks, often that outbreak subsides once those parasitoids come back and in decent enough numbers and they’ll regulate that insects population. Is there a way to encourage parasitoids in the garden? That’s a great question. There are. Parasitoids are very small and predators for this case also.

25:46

If you can provide flowers of diversity of sizes and blooming times and nectar production, pollen production, all of the parasitoids and most of the predators too will utilize pollen and nectaries in their adult stage at some point. So it’s really good to have diversity of

26:12

blooming flowers throughout the season if you can, and all different shapes and sizes of flowers to attract that diversity. If you have problems with aphids, I’m a huge fan of planting nasturtiums in my yard. Nasturtiums attract bean aphids, like I haven’t seen a nasturtium without bean aphids before, but they can tolerate bean aphids really well. And if you get aphids in your yard, you know you’re gonna have parasitoids in your yard.

26:41

And if you have parasitoids in your yard, that will help also manage other types of aphids that’ll come into your yard. And so they’re, they’re a nice repository for, for at least aphid parasitoids.

[Erin]

Okay. So how about beetles? Can we talk about some of the beneficial beetles and are there many that are harmful or in Washington?

27:08

[Todd]

Beetles are a humongous group and so we have a lot of beetles that can be seen as pests in our yard and we also have a lot of beetles that are beneficial. The most commonly beneficial beetle that most people are familiar with are ladybird beetles and those are excellent predators to have active in your yard. One of the oohs and aahs of a ladybug is that a single individual can eat up to 5,000 insect

27:37

prey items in their lifetime and that’s a lot of bugs that they can eat. So if you get a few ladybird beetle larvae on your roses, that will probably clean up your aphid problem on your roses. And so those are great ones to have around. Carabid beetles, or also known as ground beetles, along with staphylinid beetles, are very good ground-dwelling predators that will be scurrying around your soil line.

28:06

Gobbling up any insect items that they might run across. Some of them even specialize on slugs and snails. So it’s great to have those in your yard and help keep some of the slugs and snails at bay. And there’s ways that you can attract beetles into your yard and provide those habitats. And what they like are just like anything else, they like food, water, and shelter, and anything that you can.

28:34

provide in a non-disruptive landscape that won’t, you’re not gonna till the soil much or anything. Keep a little beetle bank handy in your yard and they’ll colonize that and move out from there.

Some of the practices though are really important. And when I think of my time at the Master Gardeners, we used to stress pesticide use and mixing the right amount of pesticides for your yard before you used it. And if you over,

29:03

mixed pesticides, we used to recommend you go ahead and spray out the rest of your hand sprayer or whatever onto the soil line, you know, like underneath your roadies. And essentially that was a recommendation that was the opinion on the product used was probably killing a lot of ground beetles. And so we were able to then go back and look at our education and then come up with better ways to teach gardeners how to mix the exact.

29:33

appropriate amount of product so you don’t have that problem of having excess and having to dispose of that and and that was a much better way just overall to teach Master Gardeners and and also reduced the the unintended consequences of using pesticides in our yard.

[Erin]

So are there any other Critters that are typically not liked by gardener. I mean, you know just because they think they’re

30:01

creepy or gross that we should touch on?

[Todd]

It depends on what gardener you’re talking to. Like gardeners are the whole range of attitudes towards creepy crawlies in their yard. So some gardeners think that anything that’s an insect is a creepy crawly. And that’s what I love about the Master Gardener program is because the program helps gardeners understand what they’re seeing in their yard. And I have found

30:31

the best way to overcome someone’s fear of a creepy crawly is to teach them about it and understand what that creepy crawly is really doing. And then they identify it with a little bit different attitude and may even land on the side of not thinking that they’re creepy crawlies anymore, that they’re this important bug that comes to visit my yard pretty regularly.

[Erin]

30:59

Yeah, I’ve gotten better over the years, but I do still find every once in a while I’m like, Oh, I don’t want that in my garden. It does. No, that’s fine. Even though it’s probably just fine. It’s all right.

Well, not to completely. Well, yeah, to completely switch gears here. A master gardener endowed professor chair that we were trying to raise money for. And as I learned, you are do hold an endowed professorship in integrated pest management, correct?

31:28

Did I get that right?

[Todd]

Yes, that is.

[Erin]

Okay. So I thought it would be good to get your perspective on what an endowed chair position would have to offer the Master Gardener program.

[Todd]

An endowed chair position for the Master Gardener program shows the commitment that WSU has to that program along with the value that

31:57

the overall society has for the Master Gardener program. So it’s a really neat joint relationship that solidifies what the program does and looks like in the future. Right now WSU has no obligation to staff a Master Gardener program. And we have very few faculty that are assigned to the program because of so many competing needs in the state.

32:26

An endowed position will lock in a faculty position to always be dedicated to the Master Gardener program, which I believe the program deserves. And it’s a challenge for WSU when there are so many competing needs in the state and so many areas of the state that we’re not serving, based on those needs, that it’s hard for an institute like WSU

32:55

to always come up with the resources to support the Master Gardener program, even though it wants to. So an endowed position really locks the Institute into an agreement that it will support the Master Gardener program with a faculty position and with a staff position, making this one a really unique endowment request. And for the amount of money needed to reach the goal to solidify the agreement,

33:25

in the broad terms is a drop in the bucket. WSU will spend much more money than the endowment cost on that faculty person and the program with that small donation gift. And so it’s a formal way to really lock both the industry and the value of the Master Gardener program.

33:53

to exist for as long as the Institute exists.

[Erin]

Great. Yeah, I think a lot of people kind of have trouble wrapping their brains around what an endowed position has to offer just because it’s a new concept to Master Gardeners, even though it’s been a practice of WSU for quite some time.

[Todd]

The other aspect of an endowment is, is there is a level of accountability.

34:22

of the position. And so while Master Gardeners don’t decide whether a faculty gets tenure or not, they do help inform whether that person holding the endowment is meeting their needs. And that type of feedback from the constituent group is really important. So for my position, I regularly meet with

34:50

with my stakeholders and get that feedback and make sure I’m orienting my programming to help meet their needs. So the conduit of the endowment just further gives the community of Master Gardeners a voice into how the program’s going.

[Erin]

All right, so is there anything else that you would like to add about creepy critters or the endowment before we wrap up?

35:20

[Todd]

I don’t really have anything specific to add about creepy critters or the endowment, but I can’t express more how important the Master Gardener program is to people like me who’ve dedicated their careers to an institute like WSU because of volunteers like those listening right now. And it’s, it’s…

35:47

sure has given me a lot of personal meaning in my career and life on what I want to contribute and help out with. The Master Gardener program is truly inspirational in a way that I’ve never seen other programs function at an institute like Washington State University. So much so it’s spread to all the other states and even a few other countries.

36:16

So I just appreciate everybody listening and the value that they’ve added to the program just by their time and interest and their enthusiasm for gardening and getting people outside and learning about their yards. It’s a really amazing program. You guys make such a huge difference in everybody’s life.

[Erin]

Thank you very much. And we appreciate you being here and sharing creepy critters and maybe making them a little less creepy.

36:47

[Todd]

Thanks for having me.

[Erin]

Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Evergreen Thumb, brought to you by the WSU Extension Master Gardener Program volunteers and sponsored by the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State. We hope that today’s discussion has inspired and equipped you with valuable insights to nurture your garden. The Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State is a nonprofit organization whose primary purpose is to provide unifying support and advocacy

37:15

for WSU Extension Master Gardener programs throughout Washington State. To support the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State, visit www.mastergardenerfoundation.org/donate/.

Whether you’re an experienced Master Gardener or just starting out, the WSU Extension Master Gardener program is here to support you every step of the way. WSU Extension Master Gardeners empower and sustain diverse communities with relevant, unbiased, research-based horticulture education.

37:44

Reach out to your local WSU Extension office to connect with Master Gardeners and tap into a wealth of resources that can help you achieve gardening success. To learn more about the program or how to become a Master Gardener, visit mastergardener.wsu.edu/get-involved. If you enjoyed today’s episode and want to stay connected with us, be sure to subscribe to future episodes filled with expert tips, fascinating stories, and practical advice.

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Don’t forget to leave a review and share it with fellow gardeners to spread the joy of gardening. Questions or comments to be addressed in future episodes can be sent to hello@theevergreenthumb.org. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by guests of this podcast are their own and do not imply endorsement by Washington State University or the Master Gardener Foundation of Washington State.