As the growing season takes hold across the region, gardeners are filling raised beds, planting vegetables and hoping this year’s crops will thrive. But along with tomatoes and basil come plenty of questions.
Why won’t a plant grow? What’s eating the leaves? Is that weed ever going away?
In Wayne County, residents don’t have to figure it out alone.
Every Thursday morning, volunteers with the Penn State Extension Master Gardener program staff a free Garden Hotline, helping local gardeners troubleshoot everything from struggling vegetables to mystery insects.
“The garden hotline is a free service our volunteers offer,” said Ashley Sexton, Wayne County Master Gardener Coordinator. “If you want to come by and ask questions, you want to bring a plant sample to be identified or maybe if it didn’t work out like your basil, you could bring it by. We might be able to do an autopsy and tell you what happened.”
The service is available in person at the extension office from 9 a.m. to noon Thursdays, and residents can also call or email questions year-round.
The hotline receives inquiries from gardeners of all experience levels.
“We have a couple folks this last week,” Sexton said. “I had one that actually wanted us to identify a weed for her. She’d been struggling with it in her garden for years and just couldn’t figure out why the taproot was so long, but we identified it as pokeweed and helped her come up with a management plan that worked for her.”
Not every question involves plants.
“I also had someone last fall bring me a jar of ants, which was fun to identify,” Sexton said.
The insects turned out to be common house ants, but the call reflects the variety of issues gardeners encounter and the role the hotline plays in helping residents find answers based on research rather than guesswork.
The hotline is staffed by volunteers trained through Penn State Extension’s Master Gardener program, which focuses on sharing research-based horticultural knowledge throughout the community.
For gardeners just getting started, Sexton says many concerns are common this time of year.
“It’s been pretty dry and hot lately, so you definitely want to water your new transplants or your seeds pretty often,” she said.
She recommends watering in the morning and avoiding evening watering, which can increase the risk of mold, fungus and other plant diseases.
For novice gardeners, the hotline also offers something less tangible than technical advice: reassurance.
“Give yourself a lot of grace,” Sexton said. “Our growing seasons here are very, very recently. So, if it’s too hot, if it’s too wet, definitely know that it’s not you, it’s our weather.”
Gardening, she says, is often a process of trial and error.
“When I kill a plant, I just say that that was science,” Sexton said. “I am in my scientific method here and I am just learning what didn’t work for my site or that plant.”
Questions about insects are also common. While some bugs can damage plants, Sexton notes that many are essential to a healthy garden.
“Not all pests are bad,” she said, pointing to pollinators such as honeybees that help produce fruits and vegetables.
For gardeners looking for immediate help outside hotline hours, Penn State Extension also offers online resources, including an artificial intelligence tool called AskTILVA that can help identify plants and insects.
The Penn State Extension Master Gardener Garden Hotline can be reached at 570-616-0877 or by email at waynemg@psu.edu.
Image: Abicolored striped sweat bee on Echinacea purpurea. (Mandy L. Smith/Penn State)