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Discussing Gardening Resources on CRIS Radio

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CRIS Radio: Focal Point 6/1/2026

Heather Zidack from the UConn Home & Garden Education Center talks to host, Stephen Thal, about the cool spring we've had and the number of gardening resources out there for people to explore!

Transcript

00:00:00 Stephen Thal 

Hi, welcome to another segment on Focal Point. This is Steven Thal and we've been hosting many programs lately and we're hoping that you're enjoying them. 

Some of them have been updates on other programs like today is going to be the gardening program of course. 

00:00:19 Stephen Thal 

Every year it's different because a lot is based on the weather and some of the new fertilizers they've developed and some of the new resources. 

00:00:29 Stephen Thal 

For example, you may not be aware of some apps that are available that may help you with your gardening. 

00:00:36 Stephen Thal 

So without further introductions, we're going to ask Heather Zidack from the UConn Plant and Science Center in Storrs, Connecticut to help us put all these facts together. 

00:00:48 Stephen Thal 

And we'd like to thank her for coming on because they're in the process of moving. So that's adding a little more stress, but she always enjoys our programs. 

Heather, what's up? 

00:01:02 Heather Zidack 

Hey, Steven. Thanks for having me today. 

00:01:04 Heather Zidack 

Like you said, we're in the middle of that move, but it's pretty exciting. 

So my office, the UConn Home Garden Education Office in the Plant Science Department has moved to a new place on the Storrs campus. We are directly across from the Dairy Bar. If you're familiar with the UConn Dairy Bar and you ever get to make a trip out here, we are right across the parking lot from them. 

00:01:29 Heather Zidack 

And it's my office, which offers the home gardening advice as well as our soil lab and our plant diagnostic lab. 

00:01:36 Heather Zidack 

So it's really cool to have all of us in the same hallway so that we can work a little bit better to get more plant and gardening information out to the public. 

So it's an exciting time, but I'm happy to be here today to go through some of these plant resources with you as well. 

00:01:53 Stephen Thal 

Okay, so how do you want to start? Is the weather the culprit in all of this or? 

00:01:59 Heather Zidack 

Yeah, it's been a very cold, very cool spring. And so we're seeing a lot of stuff is kind of slow to wake up this year. There are plants that are not leafing out as well as we're used to. 

00:02:17 Heather Zidack 

We've been getting pictures from clients asking us, Is it still alive? What do I do with it? And our biggest thing right now is telling everybody to just wait a couple more weeks. 

00:02:26 Heather Zidack 

We're hoping that the weather is going to warm up a little bit, become a little more consistent so that we can start really getting out there into the garden and so there are plants that are going to start looking like we're used to. 

00:02:39 Heather Zidack 

Different parts of the state are also experiencing very different things. 

So I had a client talk to me about this the other day where their trees are fully leafed out and everything looks great. But as they were driving through the state, they noticed some places where it looks like it's not as fully flushed out yet. 

00:02:55 Heather Zidack 

So a lot of it has to do with the cool. But we also had a drought last fall or at least dry conditions that also contributed to some of it. 

00:03:03 Heather Zidack 

So our biggest thing is just telling people to wait right now and watch things grow. We're hoping that things will be lush and green really soon. 

00:03:13 Stephen Thal 

Okay. So I should mention, perhaps might be early, but people should be aware that there may be resources in their own area that could help them with getting ready for their spring and summer gardening experiences. 

00:03:32 Heather Zidack 

Yeah, absolutely. 

00:03:34 Heather Zidack 

So a couple resources that are available through UConn. There is our office here, as I mentioned, the Home Garden Education Office, and we answer questions via e-mail, telephone, and walk-in visits. If you have plants that are looking, you know, a little unhealthy or you have some garden insects that's eating your tomatoes, for example, and need help identifying it, we can certainly help with that through those three venues. 

00:04:03 Heather Zidack 

There's also regional extension offices, and every county in the state has one. They are staffed by the Master Gardener Program, which is a volunteer-based program. 

Our Master Gardeners do one semester course, 60 hours of volunteer time, and they are very knowledgeable. So they're throughout the state. The Master Gardener coordinators are available to help with some of these things as well. 

00:04:30 Heather Zidack 

If you do have concerns with plant diseases, we have the plant diagnostic lab here in Storrs where samples can be sent in at any time. And our lab with their brand new facility, they're very excited to be looking at setting up some new tests this year as well to expand their services. 

00:04:48 Heather Zidack 

And finally, the soil lab is also here in Storrs. We're all in the same building now.  So they help with like soil nutrition and stuff like that. 

00:04:55 Heather Zidack 

So there's a lot of local places that you can get really good information. 

The extension program is pretty wide across Connecticut, and we're here to help gardeners make the right decisions and identify any issues that are coming up in their garden. 

00:05:10 Stephen Thal 

Now, if they have certain bugs or something, shouldn't they save little containers so they can catch these little varmints and send them off to you? 

00:05:20 Heather Zidack 

We recommend, yes. If there are any pests in the garden, we can take a look at them. 

We recommend that you put them into a little container and put some rubbing alcohol into the container to kill the insect before we take a look at it. But we definitely can. 

00:05:35 Heather Zidack 

Our specialty is in the garden specifically. So if it's in the home or insects that are affecting your pets or things like that, we don't have that expertise, but we can help with anything that is in the garden, yes. 

00:05:51 Stephen Thal 

Okay, so we're ready to go. So what do we need to prepare for a good garden this year? 

00:05:57 Heather Zidack 

So one of the things I wanted to talk about is how everyone gets their information when they're getting ready to start the garden. 

There's a lot of information out there right now, and we have access to so many different resources that it's really important as gardeners to kind of be a little bit, you know, scrutinize your information a little bit, make sure that it's the right source, make sure it's accurate, and things like that. 

00:06:24 Heather Zidack 

There's a couple of different things that are becoming more and more popular as sources for gardening information that I wanted to talk with you about today. We can go through them and talk about things that you should look out for, things that they're good for. 

00:06:43 Heather Zidack 

The first one I want to bring up - It's been around for a long time, but finding your garden information on the Internet is really, really a good source. 

There's a lot of good information out there, but it's really important to be cautious of what you're reading. So if you're especially on social media, you can see a lot of misinformation. You can see a lot of trends and opinions on places like that. 

00:07:10 Heather Zidack 

If you're looking for really accurate gardening information, you want to look at extension websites for extension programs like UConn Extension or any .edu or .gov site. Every state has their own extension program. So those are really good resources that we partner with for research and things like that so that the information is shared and verified across these different programs. 

00:07:38 Heather Zidack 

You want to learn the credentials of who's presenting the information to you. Are they like a horticulturalist or are they looking for just clicks to get your engagement on the internet, right? So are you talking to a, you know, a professor or faculty? You know, someone from the USDA, someone from extension, things like that. 

These people are professionals who are educated in the field, whereas sometimes there's information coming from people who don't necessarily have the background or the research to back up the claims. 

00:08:11 Heather Zidack 

So really important to check your sources, look for those EDUs, those .govs, those extension pages, look at who's giving you the information and then go ahead and verify, find another source on the internet that has that information. 

So maybe you can find it from more than one source and it is accurate, but just be a little bit cautious with what you're looking at to make sure that it's what you are actually looking for and giving you the right information for your area. 

00:08:40 Stephen Thal 

Okay, so now what happens if you don't have a computer? Where can you get the information? 

00:08:46 Heather Zidack 

So a lot of times people can go to libraries to get a lot of that information as well. There are some really good books out there. 

It's a really good thing to bring up that we don't want to forget that gardening books still have a lot of good information. A lot of the times, although we are doing a lot of research and learning a lot of new things, some of the tried and true methods are still going to be the same. 

00:09:11 Heather Zidack 

There's still a lot of factual information in some older texts that we still do today. For example, we still prune trees the same way that we have for many, many years. We still plant our seeds in the same way that we have for many, many years. So going to some of those texts can be a really helpful option as well. 

00:09:33 Heather Zidack 

And libraries will offer you that access to the Internet, access to those those texts. 

00:09:39 Heather Zidack 

The other thing, you can always call us if you have any questions. There's plenty of resources out there for people to get the right information they need. 

00:09:48 Stephen Thal 

Okay. What is your phone number? 

00:09:50 Heather Zidack 

Our phone number is going to be 860-486-6271. Again, that's 860-486-6271 for the UConn Home Garden Education Office. 

00:10:06 Stephen Thal 

Okay, is there anything that's an accessible format that can help people do this? Are they still in the process of putting it together? 

00:10:17 Heather Zidack 

They're still in the process of putting a lot of it together. A lot of UConn's materials, especially in our website, have been updated to be ADA compliant with screen readers and materials like that. So most UConn web pages will have that accessibility available to them. 

Also calling or you can come in anytime we can, you know, print off material for you as well. 

00:10:43 Stephen Thal 

Okay, great. Okay, so now where do we go? 

00:10:47 Heather Zidack 

So a couple more resources that we have. 

One of the things that I did want to mention is the idea of AI, because this is becoming a huge thing. You're hearing about it everywhere. And there is a lot of AI-generated gardening info out there. 

00:11:03 Heather Zidack 

What AI will do to find that information very similar to an advanced Google search, right They will look through whatever information is available. 

So they'll look at commercial stuff, they'll look at personal stuff, they'll look at scientific data, they'll ball it all together and give you an answer. So sometimes it doesn't know what you're exactly looking for. 

It's a good starting point, but you need a little bit more to guide it. 

00:11:27 Heather Zidack 

So if you are going to use AI, even like AI Gemini, Google searches, things like that. Always tell it what information you're looking for and where you're trying to find it from. 

So for an example, I'm looking for how to take care of my lilies from extension sources only. That way it tells it to look through extension EDUs to get all of the information. 

Tell it I'm looking for information on native plants from my local extension. It'll tell you native plants in the area. 

00:12:05 Heather Zidack 

So if you can guide AI in the right direction, it can be a really useful tool. But again, you need to verify that information just like you were looking on the internet. 

00:12:15 Heather Zidack 

Something else that has kind of come up is the idea of AI generated plants. 

We've seen this happen a few times in our daily questions and answers with the public, but sometimes there's pictures out there now of these AI-generated plants that look beautiful and they don't exist. It can lead to heartbreak when you're trying to shop. 

00:12:39 Heather Zidack 

Any signs that it could be artificial would include if there's any missing or extra plant parts, if the flowers are kind of mismatched, if the colors are super brilliant or there's not a lot of uniformity. 

00:12:51 Heather Zidack 

In general, if it's too good to be true, it might be, so you want to take a look to see if you can find more information about it somewhere else. It's really important when you're shopping for your plants. 

00:13:03 Heather Zidack 

There is a Connecticut native and sustainable landscaping guide that exists that you can look up online. And that guide tells you a lot of native plants in Connecticut that are going to be helpful for you to plant. 

00:13:20 Heather Zidack 

There are resources at your local garden centers that can help you find native plants or even exotic ornamental plants, but what fits your garden and your space best. So keep that in mind when using AI. 

00:13:37 Heather Zidack 

The other thing that I wanted to mention, and we talked about this a little bit before I jumped on, was plant apps. Now you've had a little experience with those, right? 

00:13:48 Heather Zidack 

Those can be really good for starting points, especially with plant ID. They're starting to get a little bit smarter. They are being AI infused or however you want to call it. And using these plants can usually get you right in the right direction. 

00:14:06 Heather Zidack 

They often, you'll take a picture and it'll give you a list of what the plant could be. And you can narrow it down from there based on your location, based on other identified structures that maybe you can't see in the image. 

00:14:19 Heather Zidack 

For example, if a stem is like a little bit fuzzy instead of just, you know, sleek and time of year. So those can be really important tangible identifying factors. Other things like smell or overall size, texture, things like that can really help you determine if your app is giving you the right information and help you calibrate it because apps often can miss context clues that pictures might not provide. 

00:14:47 Heather Zidack 

So, for example, if you take a picture of a plant and there's no size reference on it, the app may determine that it's bigger or smaller than what it really is. There is a plant out there called giant hogweed, which there's a lot of anxiety about. And it can get up to like six to eight feet tall. It flowers later in the fall or later in the summer, sorry.  

And a plant app could pick it up. But there are a handful of lookalikes that bloom at different times of year. They bloom at different sizes. And they are just not the same. 

And then a photo may not give you that information. 

00:15:32 Heather Zidack 

So with plant apps, you always want to use them as a starting app or a starting point and work from there. 

So it'll give you a list of things that it could be and then you want to verify that it's blooming at the right time of year, it's the right size, it's in the right location to make sure that it is what you're actually being told. 

00:15:53 Heather Zidack 

They unfortunately are not nearly as developed for plant health diagnostics. So they can There are ones that claim to give you an idea of what's wrong with the plant or what it needs, if it needs nutrition, if it needs water, things like that. 

Be really cautious with these. There's just too much nuance at this point. 

00:16:13 Heather Zidack 

So just like when you get sick, not every symptom can be seen and further assessment is needed, especially with plant health. And there's a lot of lookalikes out there. 

00:16:23 Heather Zidack 

So leaf spots can be caused from bacteria, fungi, environmental conditions, all sorts of things that you need to narrow down with additional information. 

So those are better given to a plant pathologist or a plant diagnostic lab, whereas using the apps for identification is really the best use of them right now, keeping in mind that you do those few things to narrow it down. 

00:16:49 Heather Zidack 

The other really good thing the apps are kind of making their way towards is there are some that can help you with your landscaping. 

So with those, you can take a picture of your landscape and they can insert little plants to make it so that you can see what it could look like. That's another really good use of plant apps just to get that information. 

So once you get the information you need, you can start building your garden or managing your garden in a better way. 

00:17:24 Stephen Thal 

Okay. We're interviewing Heather from the UConn Plant and Science Center, but she's trying to give us a lot of good resource information as well as information for planning. 

It's not just throw a few plants in and you're off and running, I think. You have to understand the habitat of your own environment you're working in. 

00:17:50 Stephen Thal 

And she's describing some of these now in order to help. And of course, as we go on throughout the year, different things will come up depending upon the weather changes and depending upon the soil changes too. Correct. 

00:18:09 Heather Zidack 

Yes, so that's a huge thing that we're starting to see and we see first thing in the spring is that temperatures are really important and plants are very sensitive to temperatures both in the air and in the soil, like you mentioned. 

That can be an indicator of when we start putting plants out into the garden. 

00:18:31 Heather Zidack 

When plants are, we see like the soil temperature rise, that's slower to rise than the air temperature. So in early spring, when we start seeing soil temperatures around 50 degrees or so is when we start getting excited and doing things in the garden. 

That's usually when the forsythias bloom. That's a good indicator. 

And at that point we can start planting like our cold crops, our brassicas, our cool season herbs, root vegetables, things like that. They like the soil temperature at like 50, 60 degrees. 

So a lot of gardens by now already have those planted and they're doing pretty well. 

00:19:10 Heather Zidack 

Whereas you have, once we get 50 to 60 degree air temperatures at night, you start being able to bring out more of your warmer season stuff, so your annuals, your hanging baskets, your vegetables that are like peppers and tomatoes, the warm season stuff. 

All of that can start going out when we start seeing nighttime air temperatures at between 50 and 60 degrees. 

00:19:37 Heather Zidack 

The one thing that I tend to caution people about is that once we're at that temperature, it's It's not quite over yet, right? We all know New England spring, there's going to be a random frost somewhere in the equation. 

So you have to be able to cover your plants if they're planted. If we're getting a frost, a lot of plants are susceptible to damage when it's too, too cold. 

00:20:01 Heather Zidack 

So you can cover things with like You know, if you're in a pinch, use a bed sheet or a towel. You can use, you know, just breathable materials. 

You never want to use tarps or plastic. 

And if you do have the opportunity, you want to use some stakes to kind of tent it up so that there's some airflow and some warm air there keeping the plants safe. 

So that's a really good caution. 

00:20:27 Heather Zidack 

If you're out and you're shopping for garden stuff now, you're looking at perennials and shrubs, most of them should be able to go outside the day you purchase them, especially if you're in a garden center where they're storing all of their plants outside. 

Odds are that they've been hardened off and ready for the season to come. 

00:20:44 Heather Zidack 

If you're buying something that is in a greenhouse, it may not be ready and it may need to be transitioned. Best thing to do is to ask your garden center professional for clarification. 

Is this okay to go outside? Has it been growing in a greenhouse all this time? 

Those kinds of things will help you determine whether you can put it outside yet or not. 

00:21:04 Heather Zidack 

Your houseplants definitely may benefit from doing field trips in and outside for a couple of weeks before you get them fully outside. 

00:21:13 Heather Zidack 

One of the things that's really important is if they got full sun in your house, you don't want to put them out in the direct sunlight right away. 

Your window panes tend to filter a lot of light, especially the newer window panes have the UV blocking technology and stuff and they're not getting a full spectrum of light in the same way. 

So you want to put your house plants in a place that has bright indirect light first and give them a couple of weeks to transition before you put them right out in the full sun. 

Plants can actually get sunburned just like we can. So you want to make sure. 

00:21:49 Heather Zidack 

The other thing too, you know, looking at your hanging baskets and things like that, they may also benefit from those little field trips in and outside. They're really easy to move if you've got a frost coming. So that's really good to keep in mind. 

00:22:06 Heather Zidack 

So that's some shopping tips right now of like what can go outside and what can maybe hang back for a little while longer. 

00:22:15 Stephen Thal 

That's great. A lot of good information. 

And of course, plants and gardening, that's a huge field. Even if you're going to be doing smaller things inside. 

00:22:28 Stephen Thal 

Do they ever do herbs as houseplants or they have to be outside? 

00:22:35 Heather Zidack 

Herbs are great for indoors as well as outdoors. They don't get too big. They don't necessarily require as much sun as some plants. 

00:22:48 Heather Zidack 

In general, when we're looking at plants, the more showy their flowers, the more light they tend to need. 

Now there's exceptions to every rule, but a lot of plants, especially our herbs, our vegetables, the more that they produce fruit and flower, the more sunlight they need. 

00:23:07 Heather Zidack 

The great thing with things like herbs like basil and parsley, they do produce flowers, but that's not ever what we're looking for from them. 

So by keeping them on a windowsill, they will get enough sunlight to produce the leaves. That's what we're looking for for culinary purposes. And so those can be a really good thing. 

00:23:26 Heather Zidack 

They can also be great if you're just getting into gardening. They seed really quickly, they don't take up a lot of space, and it's a really good chance to learn on something that's kind of easy. 

00:23:39 Stephen Thal 

That's good. Any other interesting things we need to look at for this year? 

00:23:45 Heather Zidack 

Yeah. Well, for this spring, looking ahead, couple of cautions that I have for people is to avoid pruning anything that blooms in the spring just yet. 

We do have phone calls occasionally at this time of year where people are asking if they can prune their lilacs, their hydrangeas, their azaleas, rhododendrons, things like that. 

And right now we recommend that you wait. 

00:24:13 Heather Zidack 

If you prune too early on a lot of these plants, you could lose their flowers for the season. They actually do set their buds in the fall. So those flower buds are already there and if you cut them back, you could be removing flowers. 

So even those hydrangea sticks look really ugly, give them a little more time. They could have flower buds on them and you wouldn't want to miss them this year. 

00:24:38 Heather Zidack 

Another thing is that it's a great time to divide and transplant your fall and summer blooming perennials. 

Leave your spring blooming stuff because it's in the middle of having its show for the season, but you can move some of those other things still in May. 

00:24:57 Heather Zidack 

Another tip that I give a lot of people is as you're planting, especially vegetable gardens, if you have issues with insects and pests, put netting as you're planting to help. It takes another thing off the list. You don't have to go back and do it later. 

00:25:14 Heather Zidack 

If you do your netting, when you do your planting, it'll help keep those pests away for longer. but depending on what you're planting, you may need to remove those so that pollinators can get in. So always make sure that that's in line and then 

00:25:30 Heather Zidack 

The biggest reminder is to remember to water because as we've seen with different springs, sometimes we get trained if we have a really rainy spring to not get in the habit of watering. 

So even if you don't have to water because there's rain, it's really good to check the soil and make sure that you do or do not need to water. 

00:25:51 Heather Zidack 

So what you can do to do that is you wanna dig up a little bit, take a little handful of soil, squeeze it in your hand. 

If you open your hand and that soil holds shape, then it's probably good on water for a little while longer. 

If you open your hand and it turns to dust or falls apart, is really crumbly, that may need water to supplement. 

And if you squeeze your hand and you have water running out of your hand, you're definitely overwatered and you need to wait until your next watering. 

00:26:20 Heather Zidack 

This can be effective for your house plants as well as your plants in the ground because you can kind of get a gauge of what the soil feels like to help you decide if you need water. 

00:26:31 Stephen Thal 

Boy, a lot of information coming up, especially when people have big gardens they have to manage. What kind of protective gear should people be wearing as they're gardening? Many people forget that's part of the whole process. 

00:26:45 Heather Zidack 

Yeah, it's really important to make sure that you're protecting yourself when you're outside. 

One of the big things that I recommend is make sure you're wearing long pants and long sleeves, just like a lighter material if you can. By doing that, you're going to keep anything from brushing against your skin that might cause an irritation. 

00:27:05 Heather Zidack 

So some people are very sensitive to different plants and it may be that they need a little bit more protection. 

00:27:13 Heather Zidack 

So especially if you're handling a plant that you don't know what it is, long pants, long sleeves, gloves, and closed-toed shoes are a must. 

So those big thickets that you're trying to weed out for the season, make sure that you're fully covered and that your skin is covered because you don't know what's in there necessarily. 

And if you've ever gotten poison ivy, you know that you don't want to get that if you're in a dense kind of thicket area. 

00:27:40 Heather Zidack 

Other important thing, it's really important to wear a hat when you're out in the sun. 

Sunscreen as well to make sure that you are protected from the UV as well as sunglasses can be really important. 

00:27:53 Heather Zidack 

We've seen people though will garden in flip flops and shorts and they can do that too. 

But if you are working in, like I said, especially in an area of your property where you don't know what's growing there, the more covered you can be, the better. 

00:28:09 Stephen Thal 

And also to stay hydrated. 

00:28:11 Heather Zidack 

Yes, super important, especially when we get into those hot days. 

When I worked at the garden center, I used to tell people to water the plants and water yourself. 

00:28:23 Stephen Thal 

Why don't you repeat the numbers one more time? People can call for help. Now, is there a charge for this? 

00:28:30 Heather Zidack 

No, this is a free service. So emails and phone calls to our office are free. 

00:28:37 Heather Zidack 

Our plant diagnostic lab and soil lab have their own payment structures and things, which you'd have to contact them for more information. 

But you can always call us first and we can point you in the right direction if you have any questions. 

00:28:51 Heather Zidack 

So it's just one number to write down for now, and that would be 860-486-6271. Again, that's 860-486-6271. 

00:29:05 Stephen Thal 

Okay, well, we want to wish you success in your move as well as enjoying a new place that makes you give you a breath of fresh air. 

00:29:16 Stephen Thal 

Thank your entire staff for helping with the move as well as others, and thank you for coming on and sharing a few moments of helping us to prepare and plan for this coming spring year, and we hope to get you back in, I guess, the fall. 

00:29:35 Heather Zidack 

Sure thing. Thanks for having me. 

00:29:37 Stephen Thal 

Yep. Take good care. 

00:29:38 Stephen Thal 

This is Steven Thalwith another segment on Focal Point. Thank you for allowing us into your homes. 

00:29:44 Stephen Thal 

We want to thank Heather and her staff for all they do to get this information together and collect it so that we all can benefit from many aspects of their situation. 

00:29:57 Stephen Thal 

Now, phone numbers have been given and we hope you're able to follow up and learn like all of us do. 

00:30:05 Stephen Thal 

In closing, we want to remind everybody to please wear a hat and sunglasses to protect yourself. 

As Heather said, in the garden and everything, you got to wear long pants and long sleeve shirts and do the work mostly in the morning, right? It's the coolest. 

00:30:23 Stephen Thal 

We like to also remind you about emergency planning, especially in your home. or when you're volunteer working, learn about what the emergency plans are and get everybody involved in your family and also practice them. That's the key thing. 

If you need additional resources, contact your local fire and/or police department and they can guide you as to where you can get the best help. 

00:30:52 Stephen Thal 

Again, have a safe summer and be safe, especially against the sun and other things in the garden that may be of hazard. 

Thank you all for listening and have a great great summer. 

 

These are damaging plants to avoid in CT gardens. They can kill native plant species and take over.

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These are damaging plants to avoid in CT gardens. They can kill native plant species and take over.

The Hartford Courant – Dr. Lauren Kurtz discusses how native plants attract birds and pollinators, while invasive species harm ecosystems and what residents can do in their own gardens.

We Asked Gardening Pros If You Should Rake Leaves From Garden Beds—And They All Agreed

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We Asked Gardening Pros If You Should Rake Leaves From Garden Beds—And They All Agreed

The Spruce – Heather Zidack and other professionals give their insight on raking leaves from your garden beds.

Fall Gardening and Preparing for Winter on CRIS Radio

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CRIS Radio: Focal Point 10/13/2025

Heather Zidack from the UConn Home & Garden Education Center talks to host, Stephen Thal, about the summer weather patterns, and how they have impacted our fall garden chores!

Transcript

00:00:01 Stephen Thal 

Hi, welcome to another segment on Focal Point. This is Stephen Thal, your host. And boy, we got another exciting program for our listeners. Today we're going to be talking about plants and gardens and how to take care of them, especially with the challenging weather- humid, hot. Oh, the plants must be having a tough time and garden things. What's happening? 

00:00:27 Stephen Thal 

Well, here to help us work this all out is Heather Zidack, and she's from the UConn Plant and Garden Education Center. Welcome, Heather. 

00:00:40 Heather Zidack 

Hi, Stephen. Thanks for having me. 

00:00:42 Stephen Thal 

Oh, it's always a pleasure. So what did the weather do to the plants this year? 

00:00:49 Heather Zidack 

So, this year was a wild year for our plants. It was a wild year for us too. Some of the weather that we noticed was quite crazy. But in particular, we had a very hot, very humid summer that led us to see a lot of fungal diseases. We got a lot of phone calls, a lot of emails, a lot of samples into our diagnostic lab that had a lot of diseases in the garden. So that was something that we saw. We actually have also been getting reports right now. People are asking us why are their lilacs blooming? And it's because of the stress that we've had this season. 

00:01:28 Heather Zidack 

So with that heat, that humidity, we've also had some really dry stretches that have kept us kind of right on the border of a drought. We're not quite there yet, but we are in abnormally dry conditions. So when plants are stressed, sometimes they do some really strange things and so people have been seeing their lilacs blooming in the fall when that's normally a spring blooming plant. It's not something that's normal, but it's definitely it's an environmental thing and it's not going to be like detrimental to the lilacs if you are seeing that. So it's it's worth noting, but it's not necessarily need for alarm. 

00:02:06 Heather Zidack 

We had earlier in the summer, we had the wildfires and smoke from that may have affected some of your plants. Because believe it or not, the air quality can affect your plants in the garden. And so that could have led to some ozone damage, which we see is like curling in the leaves. It can look like distortion in the leaves. So some weird things with that. 

00:02:29 Heather Zidack 

And then the other thing is that we saw temperatures whenever we went over 85 degrees, usually our common vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, things like that will actually kind of put a pause on. And so, they will not ripen or they may not fruit as heavily. So, we got some calls in saying, “Hey, why have my tomatoes been green for so long?” And it was probably because of the weather. 

00:02:56 Heather Zidack 

So a lot of things happening, the swings in moisture, so we'd have some really warm days, some really dry weather, and then we'd get kind of a deluge of rain. That kind of also stressed the plants out as well. 

00:03:12 Heather Zidack 

So we are advising right now to water your plants, especially your evergreens going into the fall. If we're not seeing an inch of rain forecasted, you want to make sure you're out there watering during any of your new plantings, any of your evergreens, anything like that. 

00:03:31 Heather Zidack 

The drought that we had last fall, so fall of 2024, actually caused a lot of losses in the garden for evergreens, rhododendrons, things like that in 2025 when we were coming into the spring and plants were starting to wake up. So, watering now is going to save you a headache in the spring for sure and if you've had anything like if you have had experience with like fungal disease in your garden this year we're recommending cut all of that tissue back let those leaves drop rake them up and dispose of them don't come compost it because you don't want to put it back into your garden so a lot of different weather patterns have caused the gardeners to have a little extra work this fall I think. 

00:04:14 Stephen Thal 

Okay so where do we go from here with the weather are we going to be bringing some plants into the house? And and we'll also be checking on the plants that have been in the house that may need some help for the fall. 

00:04:32 Heather Zidack 

Yeah, so it's definitely that time of year we recommend bringing in your plants when nighttime temperatures are 50 degrees or lower. And so, we've kind of been doing okay with that weather-wise but we are starting to get into that time where it's consistent and we're seeing that below 50 degrees. 

So, a lot of things if you keep, you know, palms outside or if you keep any citrus trees or anything outside, they need to be in if they're not already. So, some species can be a little more sensitive, so they may have needed to come in already, like even before that 50 degree mark, but that's our rule of thumb. 

00:05:13 Heather Zidack 

When you start to bring them inside, definitely look them over really well, feel them over really well, make sure that the leaves are smooth, everything is healthy, you're not feeling any kind of like insects or any sticky leaves or anything like that. If you are, it is time to kind of have a little bit of a closer look, have checked out for bugs, make sure that you're not bringing anything into your house that you don't want staying there for the winter with your plants. You know, check the undersides of the leaves, check through the soil a little bit, and identify and treat any of those issues before they come into the house. 

00:05:51 Heather Zidack 

So, we do help homeowners if you have pictures, you can send us pictures and we can take a look to see if any of those plant related insects are anything that you need to do anything about before it comes inside. 

00:06:07 Heather Zidack 

You want to give your plants a chance to transition from inside to outside. So if 50 degree nights is what they're-the goal is and we've been letting the weather come down to that 50 degrees and then you're bringing it into your 68 degree house, that's an 18 degree temperature difference. So they may show signs of stress. 

00:06:29 Heather Zidack 

They may kind of not be used to the amount of moisture in the air in your home as compared to what was outside, especially as it starts to get a little colder and we start kicking on the furnace and the air is drier inside the home. 

00:06:43 Heather Zidack 

So keep an eye on your plants, monitor them. Those stress responses may happen, but don't-go ahead and-don't overreact to it. So if you see them drying out, if you see them wilting a little bit, don't change your practices too much. Continue to water as you've always watered. Continue to take all the care that you always have to make sure that they're not drying out, but you're not over watering either. 

00:07:12 Heather Zidack 

We see a lot of people that will over love their plants and over water them. So you end up kind of seeing things come inside, the wilt, we’ll panic and then we'll put a ton of water on it, which then sends it to swing the other way into that over watering and root rot and things like that. 

00:07:30 Heather Zidack 

So just keep doing what you're doing, but keep an eye on what's happening to make sure that you can respond if there is an issue. 

00:07:39 Stephen Thal 

Okay. And that also goes for the local gardeners too. They probably experience a lot of people requesting help during the summer and now how to make best use of their garden. 

00:07:54 Heather Zidack 

Yeah, yeah. And we're going to start seeing now with, you know, again, weather related, we're going to start seeing frosts. Some parts of the state may have seen them already. 

If you have anything like mums or pumpkins outside, those are things that you may want to protect from those frosts. 

What happens is that when the dew falls at night and it crystallizes into frost on your plant material, it can actually damage the tissue and that causes your pumpkins to rot faster. It causes a lot of tender flower petals to not look so good. 

00:08:31 Heather Zidack 

So, what we recommend is to either bring them inside if you just have one mum on the front step, that's easy to bring in and just leave in the kitchen overnight. 

00:08:40 Heather Zidack 

But if you have a larger grouping of plants or if you have some, you know, some cole crop vegetables or something like that that you may want to protect, you can use something as simple as a bed sheet or a towel even. 

Never use a plastic tarp or anything to cover plants because that will just exacerbate the cold against the plant tissue, but definitely do find a way to cover them if frost is coming or bring them inside. 

00:09:12 Stephen Thal 

What kind of covers can you use? 

00:09:14 Heather Zidack 

So, anything that is fabric based is going to work really well. They do sell specific like frost covers, but you don't have to go that far. 

If you have an old sheet, if you have towels, a pillowcase even, kind of depends on your plant size, but a lot of those just to keep that frost from falling onto and making contact with the plant tissue. 

00:09:37 Stephen Thal 

Okay so now we got to get in and roll up our sleeves and begin the work to preparing the plants as Heather has been saying earlier because of the weather and now she's trying to talk a little bit more specifically about plants that come in the house to make sure they don't have some sort of a disease, which will impact the plants that are in the house as well. 

Now, is this the time too, because of the changing of the sunsets and amount of light coming in, you have to move your plants inside the house to different positions in the house. 

00:10:21 Heather Zidack 

So not necessarily different positions. Plants that we have indoors go through yearly cycles just like the ones outdoors. And so some of them may be able to tolerate that change in light as they adjust because it happens slowly. Always check your plant label to make sure if it needs like a full sun or indirect sun. 

You know, we've talked about before those differences are kind of like if you think about a cat in the living room, right? So, if it needs bright indirect light, maybe the cat is somewhere that the light is not shining through the window but it's right next door versus if it needs bright direct light, the cat is sitting right in the window and if it needs shade, it's over by the couch and you don't see it necessarily. 

So, if you always kind of think about in that way, you can remember where your plants need to be in terms of their labeling, which is important to follow. 

00:11:14 Heather Zidack 

But they do adapt a little bit over time when they're indoors, which is why we need to help them adapt when they go outside. 

So if you keep them in a place that is draft free, bright enough for whatever their requirement is, and away from any of the heat sources, so away from any radiators, vents, anything like that that can dry them out, keep them away from like being too close to wood stoves obviously, and that will help them to not be too dry so they don't lose water as quickly. But the other thing too is that like I said, they go through those yearly cycles, so they will go dormant just like the outdoor plants. 

00:11:58 Heather Zidack 

Cooler temperatures, changes in light, changes in water can trigger dormancy, but it is species dependent and so with our houseplants because we keep them in a steady environment as possible, some years they'll go into dormancy, some years they won't. 

And so it's just kind of knowing what plant you have and whether to expect that or not. That can be really helpful. The other quick tip with houseplants that I like to remind everybody is that we allow the soil to dry in between waterings. 

00:12:32 Heather Zidack 

So don't keep your soil wet when your plants are indoors. Let it dry out as much as you can in between to help prevent fungus gnats. Those are those little black flies that seem to get everywhere. 

Again, follow what your plant needs for watering, but if you can stretch it and let it dry out a little bit, you're going to help reduce that issue. 

00:12:54 Stephen Thal 

Oh, that's great. Is this also a time to take a look at repotting any of the soils or any of the plants that we're bringing in or the house plants that have already been there. 

00:13:07 Heather Zidack 

You certainly can. 

00:13:09 Heather Zidack 

People like to repot either in the fall or in the spring. Usually when you repot in the fall, it can be good if you've had them outside and you're worried about any critters that may come in with them in the soil. It's a good time to do it. 

You can do it in the spring if they've put on a lot of growth over the winter while they've been indoors.  

So it all matters on checking the plant in the pot to see if there's any presence of any kind of insect or anything. 

00:13:40 Heather Zidack 

You're definitely going to want to change out your soil. But also if the plant is, those roots are a little too tight in the pot, it starts to get root-bound, that's more your sign of whether to do it or not. It doesn't have to be on a time frame per se. 

00:13:56 Stephen Thal 

Okay, this is Stephen Thal with another segment on Focal Point, and we're interviewing Heather Zidack from the University of Connecticut Plant and Garden Center up in Storrs, Connecticut. 

00:14:08 Stephen Thal 

And she'll give us some phone numbers that we can call regarding if you need some help with your plants or the garden that you've been doing. 

Heather, you got some phone numbers we can use? 

00:14:24 Heather Zidack 

Absolutely. 

So, if you have questions about anything in the garden, anything plant related, your house plants, anything that you have that you you keep for plant material, we can help at the Home Garden Education Center. 

That number is 877-486-6271. Again, that's 877-486-6271 or you can always e-mail us at ladybug@uconn.edu. Again, that's ladybug@uconn.edu. 

00:15:03 Heather Zidack 

We look at pictures to help with diagnosis, so sometimes a picture says a thousand words. Also, I can give you the phone number too. It's a great time of year to be doing soil testing. 

So, the Soil Nutrient Analysis Lab, their number is 860-486-4274. Again, that's 860-486-4274. 

00:15:26 Heather Zidack 

So, between the services in the Home Garden Education Center, we work with our plant diagnostic lab and then the soil lab. We have pretty much everything that the home gardener or plant enthusiast needs to make sure that they're keeping their plants healthy. 

00:15:45 Stephen Thal 

That's good. 

00:15:45 Stephen Thal 

What about fertilizers? 

When does that come into play? 

00:15:50 Heather Zidack 

Yeah, that's a good question. So at this point, we should not be fertilizing anything. There are some exceptions for like lawn care and things like that, but my colleague is much more versed in that. 

00:16:05 Heather Zidack 

In general, it is too cold to fertilize anything right now because what's going to happen is if you were to put down any plant food,you would be pushing growth and any growth that's new on plants is very tender and very small and very susceptible to damage. 

So, it'll push out new growth and then it would freeze and cause damage and not do so well for your plant. So, we don't recommend fertilizing at this point in the year. 

The next time that you would be able to or you should would be for the springtime, once the soil temperatures start to climb up again and it starts to warm up. 

00:16:46 Heather Zidack 

If you have houseplants, you can fertilize. 

00:16:50 Heather Zidack 

However, some of them only need it once a year. It really depends on the species of houseplant you have. 

And so again, like I talked about over loving our plants with watering, sometimes we can over love our plants with fertilizer and, you know, overfeed them. And so sometimes we don't want to do that. So it's something to be aware of. 

Usually, as long as the plant is in active growth, you're able to fertilize. And so since we're kind of in that time of year where things are winding down and going to bed for the season, we just don't do it. But it all depends on what you're growing and what you have to keep an eye on. 

00:17:30 Stephen Thal 

Okay, what are some of the other things that we need to take care of in the fall? 

We did mention, we talked a little bit about fertilizer. 

We talked about bringing plants into the house. Making sure they're not bringing some critters in. 

00:17:43 Stephen Thal 

What about the compost pile? Is that something that we do all year round or just certain times of the year? 

00:17:50 Heather Zidack 

Yeah, composting is year round. So you want to make sure that you're continuously turning your compost pile. There's a couple different kinds. 

So there's hot composting where you keep your compost pile at 140 degrees by turning it throughout the year. 

There's also cold composting, which is what I'm a little better at, where you kind of throw it together, turn it when you can, but it takes longer and it may not necessarily take out all of the pathogens and weed seeds in the same way that hot composting will. So you have to be really careful with your compost at that point. 

00:18:25 Heather Zidack 

Which is a good thing to keep in mind because right now, we advise people who are doing their garden cleanup for the season. 

There's a lot of controversy between that going for do I clean up in the fall or do I clean up in the spring? And so, what I tell people with that is to maintain what I call goal-oriented gardening. So, if your garden is all about pollinators and wildlife support and native plants and all of that. Definitely clean up in the spring. Don't cut back your perennials right now. You can leave your leaves a little bit. That leaves habitat options like hollow stems, leaf litter, and all of that for overwintering insects. And it leaves seed heads for birds to feed on as well as for winter interest. 

00:19:16 Heather Zidack 

However, if you have had a lot of disease this year and we talked about like with all the weather conditions, we saw fungal disease, people had, you know, if you had insects in your garden this year or things like that that you needed to manage, then one of the best things that you can do is clean up your garden in the fall. 

00:19:37 Heather Zidack 

And it goes against that instinct to leave the leaves and leave that pollinator habitat, however, it does help us to reduce our need for chemicals and other products in the spring and the following season because you're taking out anything that's potentially infected and just disposing of it right now instead of letting it overwinter and come back in the next season. So, if you've had disease in the garden and your goal is to have to try to not have that happen again next year. 

You want to clean up all your leaf litter, you want to pull up all your sick plants, dispose of everything in the garbage, don't compost it. You know that you are removing some of those habitat opportunities for the pollinators, but you're keeping your plants healthy for them to come back to and find next season. So it's kind of a toss up between the two. 

00:20:31 Heather Zidack 

And so I always encourage gardeners to really look at their own personal goals in their garden and see what they're willing to work with. If they really want that pollinator habitat to clean up in the spring, go for it. If they want to manage the disease, then fall may be the better time. And the other thing to keep in mind that I encourage people is to think about their own time. 

00:20:56 Heather Zidack 

So your time is valuable when it comes to garden cleanup. And make sure you're doing what you have time for when you have the time. So I've explained this and I've talked to other gardeners about this and I am a big football fan and so on Sundays, I am watching football instead of being out in my garden, believe it or not.  

And so sometimes for me, cleaning in the spring allows me to have that extra hobby and so it's kind of looking at my time and my priorities and really making sure that my garden is fitting that. 

00:21:31 Heather Zidack 

Because at the end of the day, we all do gardening as something we enjoy, and we want to make sure that we continue to get out there to enjoy it. 

00:21:40 Stephen Thal 

Okay, are there any other major things that we need to cover at this point, Heather? 

00:21:46 Heather Zidack 

One of the things that I definitely encourage people, like right now, if you're out in the garden, make sure that you're digging up any of your bulbs. It's the bulb time of year. 

So when I say dig up bulbs, I mean all of your elephant ears, your canna lilies, your gladiolus, any of those annual bulbs should be dug up, put into paper bags for storage. If you're growing them in containers, you can just cut them back and put the container in the garage or the basement to make sure that it will stay cool, but it won't freeze. 

On the other side of that, you want to start planting your spring blooming bulbs right now, you want to plant your garlic in late October, early November, you want to remove your vegetable plants that have those signs of disease, and don't compost again like I had mentioned. 

00:22:39 Heather Zidack 

The other thing that you want to do is you want to try to cover your soil in any of your garden beds. So a lot of the perennial garden beds that you have and a lot of your foundation plantings and things like that may already have mulch around them, so it might not be as important. 

But for your vegetable gardens and things that you're turning over every year, it's important to make sure that that soil is covered for the winter. Some gardeners were able to put in some cover crops by now and have something to hold the soil, like plant material-wise, that they'll be able to turn in. However, at this point in the season, we recommend just using something like straw, leaf mulch. You can chop up your leaves and put them out onto the garden as long as they were disease free. 

00:23:29 Heather Zidack 

And what that does is when you break up your leaves and you chop them up first, it allows them to break down faster so that there's less cleanup for you in the spring instead of having like if you've ever seen outside the dense thick leaf patches that we tend to have in the spring where leaves have collected. You want to make sure that they're chopped up, they're fine and that they're able to be turned into the soil at the end of the season. 

When you do, if you do have anything that you're turning in, so if you're going to do the leaves this fall and turn things in in the spring, it needs to be about three weeks before you're planting in the springtime. So, keep that in mind. 

00:24:11 Heather Zidack 

Make sure that you are cutting back any of your perennials, if fall cleanup is your goal, this is the time to do it. You want to cut back and leave one third of the perennials above the ground. 

So, say you have a six inch perennial, you want to cut it back to a two inch stub and that's where you'll leave it for the fall if you decide to clean up now. 

00:24:35 Heather Zidack 

If conditions continue to stay dry like they have been, keep watering all of your trees, your shrubs, your perennials, especially your new plantings until the ground freezes. So we've still got a little bit of time that we should be watering with supplemental water. 

We recommend one inch of water a week, which actually ends up being about, I think it's like 0.62 gallons per square foot. So that can help you kind of figure out how much water you need in a week for your plants. 

00:25:07 Heather Zidack 

And you want to wait till all your shrubs are dormant so their leaves have dropped before pruning in the fall. Do not prune any of your spring blooming shrubs. 

So, you don't want to prune your hydrangeas. You don't want to prune your forsythia, your lilacs, anything like that because things likely already set their buds for next year already. So, if you prune them now, you could lose your flowers. 

00:25:34 Heather Zidack 

The other thing that we recommend is, like I said, you don't want to fertilize anymore at this point. You know, consider getting your soil tested now so that you can have those results in the spring and be able to hit the ground running. 

00:25:48 Heather Zidack 

And again, like I said, our office is open year-round to help support with any of these home garden houseplant questions that you may have. 

00:25:59 Stephen Thal 

And also you have a number of local gardeners, don't you, or grangers? 

00:26:05 Heather Zidack 

We do. We have county offices that will help with garden questions as well through our master gardener colleagues will help with identification and things like that. If it's disease questions, definitely send it to the Home Garden Education Center. 

00:26:23 Heather Zidack 

But the master gardeners at the county offices are also very well equipped to help with cultural questions, how to take care of plants, how to identify them, and some of these fall and spring cleanup tips as well. 

00:26:36 Stephen Thal 

Do you have many fruit plants that need to be taken care of, or are they all pretty much gone? 

00:26:43 Heather Zidack 

They're pretty well done the only one to keep in mind is your fall blooming raspberries or your fall fruiting raspberries those you want to prune after fruiting is complete otherwise you're going to be all set um mostly in the winter when things are totally dormant so we're looking at like March would be the time to start pruning your fruit trees. 

00:27:04 Stephen Thal 

Oh okay one other thing I forgot to ask you you also have to take clean your tools that you use the garden with. 

00:27:12 Heather Zidack 

Absolutely. That's a great winter chore. Clean your tools, especially if you're between pruning diseased plants. 

The other thing is in the winter, it's great to not only clean your tools, but if you need to sharpen your tools or it's a good time also to make sure that you repaint all the handles so you can find them again when you have them in the garden. 

00:27:34 Stephen Thal 

Hey, Heather's going to give us the phone number one more time in case you missed it the first time. 

00:27:40 Heather Zidack 

Yes. So if you have any plant or garden questions, you can always call our office at 877-486-6271. Again, that's 877-486-6271. 

00:27:55 Stephen Thal 

That'll be great. 

Well, thank you again for coming again to help our gardeners or people that have interested in starting gardens or plants or whatever. Great information. 

Give my best to your whole team and I know when it comes around Christmas there's a lot of plants there that have to be protected once the season goes by. 

00:28:20 Heather Zidack 

Yes, yeah there's a lot of holiday plants that we could certainly talk about. 

00:28:26 Stephen Thal 

Okay well thank you again and wishing you and the whole team at UConn Plant and Garden Center continued success. 

00:28:33 Heather Zidack 

Thank you so much. 

00:28:35 Stephen Thal 

Stephen Thal with another segment on Focal Point. 

I want to thank all of you for listening. 

And a couple of things we want to remind you of is first, make sure that you wear a hat and dark glasses to protect your eyes against the sun all year around, particularly during the winter, particularly if we get snow, be a lot of glare. 

00:28:59 Stephen Thal 

The other item I wanted to mention is to make sure that you have an emergency plan and practice it. If you need any help with it, call your local fire department or police department and they can direct you to the proper resources to help you build one of these plans because someday that life may be somebody in your family that you save. 

00:29:23 Stephen Thal 

And also when you travel, make sure you know what the emergency rules are so that should you get into a situation, you know what to do. 

00:29:33 Stephen Thal 

So once again, thank you all for listening. 

Stay safe and stay healthy. 

 

Gardening with the Weather on CRIS Radio

Posted on by

CRIS Radio: Focal Point 6/16/2025

Heather Zidack from the UConn Home & Garden Education Center talks to host, Stephen Thal, about our strange spring weather, gardening outdoors and more!

Transcript

00:00:01 Stephen Thal 

Hi, welcome to another segment on Focal point. This is Stephen Thal and I'll be your host for today's informative program. 

Our guest today uh is known to us. She's been on several times in the past year to help us understand more about living plants, whether you have them inside your house, or you put them outside or you're doing gardening and she's also part of the UConn plant science program and they offer many, many services which she'll be explaining sometime during her presentation today. 

However, to kick this off. We have to be more cognitive of the weather, the types of weather we're having. Examples include drought, some places there's too much rain, so here to help us straighten it out and get some good plant life going. Is Heather Zidack back from the UConn Plant Science Center. Welcome, Heather. 

00:01:00 Heather Zidack 

Hi, Steven, thank you for having me. 

00:01:03 Stephen Thal 

So let's take a look at the weather pattern. Weather patterns have been infected- impacting plants. 

00:01:11 Heather Zidack 

Yes, it has been a very notable spring this year with the amount of rainfall that we've had. But before I talk about the rainfall, I want to just go back a little bit because we've actually seen effects from last fall in our garden. So what happened at the end of last summer, early fall and into the winter, if you remember, we were actually in a drought through most of the state. 

And that lasted through March of this year. And so because a lot of plants went into the winter under drought conditions, we actually saw a combination of the lack of water with the heavy winds from this winter and it caused a lot of moisture to be pulled out of those plants. 

We saw a lot of winter kill, so broadleaf evergreens, rhododendrons, mountain laurels, all sorts of shrubs like that, anything needled evergreens as well. A lot of arborvitaes Japanese Hollies, things like that. We saw the-uh They turned brown and then they ended up just kind of dying back. Luckily with a little bit of care, homeowners have been able to bring some of them back and at this point in the season, we're starting to look more towards disease causes, but this was seen all over the state, so we had this drought in the fall. 

And then here we are in March and April, seeing the effects of it. So everything that happens is cyclical and we see it happen in the next growing season. And then here we are now with significant rainfall. I think it's rained-What every weekend for quite some time now. 

00:02:52 Heather Zidack 

And that rainfall in May was enough to pull us out of a moderate drought across the state, except for like one small area in Fairfield County who is abnormally dry, which is the lowest rating that you can have in drought conditions. So that's really good. 

The expectation for the next month or so is average. So you want to start to monitor your gardens and make sure that if we're getting an inch to two inches of water a week, we have enough water for our plants, for the most part. If we're seeing less than that, we've got to get out and start checking the soil and get into the habit of  watering so that when we get into the next fall that we have coming, we don't get used to not watering and then seeing plants decline from that. Because I think that was something we saw last year as well as we had a very wet spring and when we got to the fall. 

00:03:47 Heather Zidack 

Not only did we have a drought from the environment, but a lot of us didn't get trained, we'll say, to go out into our gardens every day or two to check to make sure the water was there, because we just relied on it coming from the sky. So that's been a really huge impact that we've seen over the the last season in our gardens and we're just getting started with growing.  

00:04:10 Stephen Thal 

Wow, what are some plants that are directly impacted by this? 

00:04:15 Heather Zidack 

So some of the things that we've seen, like I said, the evergreens were a really big deal. 

A lot of stuff that's more shallow rooted is going to see more effect one way or another. It's going to have more signs of stress, but the bigger thing that we're seeing right now out in the garden-Once we've gotten passed into this spring and seen some of the shrub damage is looking at our annuals and what's happened with our annuals is we've looked at the temperatures and we've had some significant cold in comparison to previous springs. So when you have cold weather like we've had what we recommend. Is if it's 50° or more. 

It's good to put your annuals, your house plants, your tomatoes, your Peppers, all of that outside. We've had a few weeks. I think it was the week before Memorial Day this year where those temperatures dip below 50 and so we actually saw a lot of people were covering their plants, bringing them inside, making those adjustments. 

00:05:19 Heather Zidack 

In order to protect their crops, because if they were left outside, although they would survive, they wouldn't necessarily die off. Turn brown and fall over and have to restart. You may notice things like the flowers dropped or they slowed down how they were growing, especially anything in the eggplant, pepper, tomato family once the temperatures get to like 60°, they pause development, so once it gets lower than that they start to get a little bit stressed. On the other side of it, our cole crops and our Greens have loved this weather. I just was out my garden this past weekend and I picked a giant basket of lettuce and spinach and all of that because these cool nights and warm days are really encouraging growth of those crops without sending them into flowering. So it's just something that kind of keep an eye on. 

00:06:11 Stephen Thal

And uh, what about? Uh, you were talking about leafy lettuce. Uh, how do you take care of those? They're a little tender, aren't they?

00:06:20 Heather Zidack 

They actually are pretty tough. What's really interesting is that once we usually get into this point in June, July and start getting into the heat of summer, they actually start to get a little bit more difficult to grow because they don't like the heat of the summer. 

00:06:36 Heather Zidack 

They'll start putting out flowers. They'll start wilting, using a little more water. 

So we tend to not see them grow as well in the home garden in the high heat of the summer. You can protect them from that with any shade cloth or putting them in a shadier area because they're not producing anything like fruit or flower. They don't need to have as much of the sunlight as some of your other plants do that also applies to some of your your herbs like your basils and things like that, so they can go in a shadier spot if you have- 

00:07:09 Heather Zidack 

You know a spot in your garden that maybe is a little too shady for your tomatoes, but it might do OK for your leafy greens, your herbs and things like that. With the weather that we've been seeing too, it's really important to make sure that you're spacing your plants really well this year. You don't want to make them too close to each other, because crowding can often help when it comes to diseases and pests. They love tight, crowded areas, so if you space out your plants really well this year-You're going to help reduce that pressure when we start seeing the hotter temperatures, some of this humidity that we get in the summer and things like that. 

00:07:51 Stephen Thal 

Now when you're asking when you're working in the garden. Should you be wearing gloves to protect some of the insect bites you get, or some damaging to your hands? 

00:08:04 Heather Zidack 

Absolutely. I wear gloves when I'm in the garden all the time. I do it for a couple of reasons. I have, you know,  I like to protect my my manicure, right? So I keep my gloves on. But it also is really good. Like you said, if you have got insects in the garden, but like I've seen this Spring because of all the rain that we've had, my garden is actually close to a wetland and we've had a lot of mosquitoes. So I found myself actually going out with not just gloves but long sleeves, long pants and close toed shoes and a hat, just to make sure that I'm protecting myself as best I can from the insects. 

00:08:46 Heather Zidack 

It's a good thing to do, just to have that extra layer of protection when you're pulling weeds. You never know when you're going to have something that you know might just interact with your skin or something like that. So definitely I wear gloves all the time in the garden and I do recommend it for everybody that's out there. 

00:09:05 Stephen Thal

And what about? Uh, you had mentioned to me about you shouldn't walk on wet soil. What does that do?

00:09:15 Heather Zidack 

Yes, so especially this spring with all the rain that we've had and everything, gardens are starting to get a little bit flooded a little bit waterlogged. So the first thing that we recommend is don't walk on the soil when it's wet if you can, especially when it's been really saturated after some of the rain that we've had these past few weeks. 

00:09:35 Heather Zidack 

What that does is that compacts the soil and it squishes it down and closes a lot of those air pockets that are there between the soil particles. So that makes it harder down the road for water to penetrate and get into the soil and to the roots of your plant. So if you do have either saturated soils or this is good if you're just checking your water needs in the garden, it's a really good thing to get tactile with it and use your hands so. 

00:10:04 Heather Zidack 

You want to dig down a little bit. You want to grab a little handful, squeeze it in your hand if it. If it's really dusty, really dry. We all know what that feels like. And so that's when your plants are usually gonna need water. If when you squeeze your hand, you've got water running out of your hand, it's gone the other way. And it's definitely saturated. You don't want to walk on it. You don't want to add any water you wanna try to keep your plants where they are so they can dry out a little bit. 

00:10:33 Heather Zidack 

If it's somewhere in between and it holds a form, but it doesn't have any water coming out of it. That's like that sweet spot where you're like, OK, I have enough water for now. I can come back tomorrow and check. So that's really the best way is to to look and use your hands as you're exploring your garden to make sure that it's well watered. Don't rely on appearance because a lot of times some of these garden products that we have can look wet or look dark compared to what the soil is and so it can be a little deceiving. So you want to always make sure you're checking with your hands instead of using your eyes to take a look. 

00:11:13 Stephen Thal 

OK, how about, uh, some of the insects like squash bugs and so on. Uh, are they helpful to the garden or harmful? 

00:11:23 Heather Zidack 

They are opposite, they are harmful to the garden, so they are coming. Squash bugs usually start coming out-Wanna say end of June, early July, there's squash bugs, there's squash borers, there's things like that. And with those, if you're growing squash plants, you wanna try to remove them as early as possible. 

00:11:44 Heather Zidack 

They are something the squash vine borer I'll start with is one that lives in the soil. Once that hatches, it crawls out and chews into the stem and the larvae lives in the stem. So if you see a squash plant that's wilting and doesn't look so hot, if you trace it back to the stem in the ground, you might notice it almost looks like...um..It's it's not, but it almost looks like wood shavings. You'll see where it like burrowed into the stem if you cut that stem open, you'll probably find some kind of Caterpillar in there and they move quick. They move like a foot a day, so that's one to watch out for. 

00:12:22 Heather Zidack 

The squash bugs are a little less dramatic, but you'll notice they're eggs on the underside of leaves, and what I recommend for people who are dealing with squash bugs to do is remove them by hand, take a piece of duct tape, wrap it around your hand backwards, and just stick your hands to the leaf. It's enough to pull those eggs off without having to use any chemicals or pulling the leaves off the plant. It's a really effective method. 

00:12:47 Heather Zidack 

If you want to go a step further and you're out in the garden and you're deciding to plant your squash, it's mid-June so you could maybe plant this weekend if you're doing that, you could put netting onto your plants. As long as it's not the same place it was last year and that will help the adults from flying in and getting onto your plants in the 1st place. So that's a really good thing to. 

00:13:12 Heather Zidack 

You there's other bugs out there as well. In the summer, there's a lot of insects. If you've had a garden, you know there's a lot of bugs out there. Usually you can't tell by just the damage left. You need to find an insect that it's in action to treat your plants. 

00:13:28 Heather Zidack 

Because what we recommend doing is, it's called integrated pest management, or IPM. They have-in using that method, you're using your targeted approach to get rid of a specific insect that you have identified using specific methods. That way we're not overusing any products in our garden. We're not going and over exerting ourselves to take care of the issue. It's a smart approach and a targeted approach to whatever your garden problems are. 

00:13:56 Heather Zidack 

With that being said, this is a little personal plug here for the Home and Garden Education Center, but we will be hosting a home gardener seminar for integrated pest Management in August, so it's a multi speaker event. We have tips to manage pest disease, and other things in your garden and that's going to be coming up in August. If you'd like to get information about that, you're welcome to either call or e-mail us and we can put you on the list to let you know when that releases. But it's something that helps make that targeted approach. Couple of other insects that are out there right now are things like the four lined plant bug that does a whole lot of damage. It's damage, looks like like little brown spots all over leaves. I've seen them on basil. Specifically, they have a bunch of hosts, but I know they love my basil at home. 

00:14:50 Heather Zidack 

There's this spittle bug which has little foamy...Nests will say they're not really nests, but they're little foamy structures that they put around the center of a stem. When they're there, they're a short-lived insect that just kind of does its thing and dives out in the environment, and we don't even need to treat it. There's aphids. There's all sorts of things, so that's when learning what you're looking at can guide how you're treating it so that you're not using as many products in the garden. 

00:15:19 Stephen Thal 

Huh. What are my mosquitoes? How do you deal with mosquitoes? 

00:15:24 Heather Zidack 

Mosquitoes are different, but very interesting in the garden, so they're definitely out. Like I said, I am near a wetland, and so I'm definitely experiencing them out in the garden frequently at this point. Best thing to do when you're dealing with mosquitoes in your yard is if you are out. 

00:15:44 Heather Zidack 

They come out at dawn and dusk, so being outdoors at those times, you want to wear bug spray, especially like when that's when they're most active. 

00:15:52 Heather Zidack 

If some people do wear bug spray throughout the day because in areas that are bad, they're always out there. So it really depends on what your yard is like. After rain, you can dump out any containers they've caught water because what they do is they lay their eggs and their larvae actually live in water before they go into the air. So you want to make sure that the air-that the water is dumped. You want to empty any of your bird baths and rinse them regularly for the same reason. 

00:16:24 Heather Zidack 

And one thing that's really interesting with mosquitoes is we see a lot of mosquito repellent plants that are sold and advertised to us and this is a big thing for a lot of people. One thing that I warn people about with this is that their job as a mosquito repellent plant is to keep the mosquitoes away from the plant itself. 

00:16:46 Heather Zidack 

So it's an immediate proximity. 

00:16:49 Heather Zidack 

What we do is we tend to harvest the oil from these plants and put them into repellent products. So like the citronella plant for example, or lemongrass or things like that, we extract those oils and then use them in our insect repellents. It's not necessarily going to protect you if you have a pot of lemongrass on your patio because it doesn't have an 8 to 10 foot range. It only has a few inches around that plant that really has that repelling effect, so. 

00:17:21 Heather Zidack 

That's how that works. They're great to have, but also just to keep in mind, with that, we never recommend crushing or rubbing any kind of plants on your skin without first consulting with a doctor or an allergist just to make sure that you're safe and you're doing what's best for your health. 

00:17:39 Stephen Thal 

This is Stephen Thal with another segment on Focal point and we're interviewing Heather Zidack from UConn Plant and Science Department up in Storrs. 

00:17:49 Stephen Thal 

And she's been leading us through the different weather patterns and also how some of the plants are impacted. And we also were talking about some of the oils that plants develop and how effective they may be in various stages. 

00:18:06 Stephen Thal 

It's very interesting and I think something else we got to take care of here is how do we, what kind of soil do we use and what kind of fertilizers we use, right, Heather? 

00:18:17 Heather Zidack 

Yeah. So soils are really important because that's the foundation of your garden. That's really where the not just your plants are taking root and and having their structural support, but also that's where the plants are gonna pull everything from nutrition, water and everything that they need. So whenever you have a garden, we always recommend calling our the soil Nutrient Analysis lab, either the one at UConn or the experiment station to have your soil tested. We recommend testing every two to three years and what they do is they look at the nutritional value of your soil. They don't look for anything else, but they will tell you what the nutrient levels are. 

00:19:00 Heather Zidack 

Are and I know with the UConn Labs specifically, what they look at is are specific values and how it would relate to your garden. So if you fill out a report that says I'm looking to grow vegetables, they'll kind of help you figure out what amendments you need to make for your garden to grow those vegetables. I can't speak. For what the experiment station does, but they are available as a resource for the public as well. And sometimes it just comes down to who's closer to you and how do you want to move forward and what information you want to get? 

00:19:35 Heather Zidack 

So that's really important. Get your labs and get your soil tested and figure out what your nutritional values are. Really important for, especially vegetable gardens, where nutrients are are kind of going through the systems a lot quicker than in established beds. 

00:19:55 Heather Zidack 

A lot of trees and shrubs and perennials that are established may not need fertilizer every year. They might need it every other year. It really depends on the species. There are some native species that rarely need fertilizer at all, so know what plant you have and then we can look into it a little further. 

00:20:14 Heather Zidack 

But like I said, those vegetables tend to have high demand and need more support because they're producing food for us. So what you want to look at are big three, our nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium or we say NPK. Your nitrogen is responsible for growing really lush leaves. Your phosphorus is really good for things like flower, fruit, a lot of your bloom booster fertilizers tend to be high in phosphorus, and your potassium is good for root growth, drought resistance, it helps to reduce some water loss, and they're still researching a lot of these things. 

00:20:51 Heather Zidack 

But what you look at when you're buying a fertilizer for your garden is you look for there's three numbers on the bag a lot of times it's and it's a lot of times in increments of 5 but not always. So like a 5-5-5, 10-10-10, something like that. These are percentages by weight of those nutrients in the bag. And they go in the order of nitrogen and then phosphorus, and then potassium. So sometimes they can be comparable to each other when you're working with a product because they're balanced in ratio. It really depends on what you need to apply. 

00:21:25 Heather Zidack 

A lot of the tone products that we see and weekly fertilizer products are much lower concentrations. So I've seen some fertilizers out there that are like 3-4-3, very low, but just a little bit of food to keep them going because if you're over applying, you can actually cause damage by providing too much fertilizer. 

That's another reason going back to that soil test can be really important. 

00:21:50 Heather Zidack 

You always want to check the back of the bag. There is usually going to be not just those big three nutrients that we need, but also a lot of micronutrients as well, and that will vary in your soil as well. And when you get a soil report, you get all of that information. 

00:22:08 Heather Zidack 

Another really important thing is to stop fertilizing in August or September because-What we want to avoid is pushing any tender growth before frost, so if we start backing off in August and September, especially with some of these slow release fertilizers, we're not gonna continue feeding the plant and encouraging it to put out tender young leaves that then get bit by frost. 

I think that's pretty much most of the soil rundown, a crash course. 

00:22:38 Stephen Thal 

Yeah, that's important. Thank you. 

00:22:40 Heather Zidack 

Would you like the number for the soil lab? 

00:22:43 Stephen Thal 

Oh, definitely. 

00:22:45 Heather Zidack 

All right, so this is for the UConn Soil Analysis Lab and it's 860-486-4274. Again 860-486-4274. 

00:23:01 Stephen Thal 

Great. Now after all of this, what else should we do to keep the gardens going? 

00:23:09 Heather Zidack 

So there's a lot of things that you can do right now. In June you want to be cutting back your perennials for sure that anything that has already flowered for your perennials you want to try to cut back. If you cut back some of these early flowering perennials at this point in the year, it may encourage them to push out new flowers. This happens very frequently in things like Salvia and Nepeta, which is known as Catmint as well. So if you cut back things that have already bloomed. 

00:23:43 Heather Zidack 

It will help encourage new growth and new flowers where you potentially. A lot of plants are in production mode right now. So they're producing fruit or flour for you. So water is going to be incredibly important. I went through all of the details with you before of like how to check your soil, but make sure that you can be checking your soil to see if there's enough moisture in there. 

00:24:05 Heather Zidack 

We don't recommend watering in the evening if you can avoid it. Early morning is going to be best because you're going to saturate that soil. And then it has the day to dry out instead of saturating at night, getting dark and cool. And then that's when there's a lot of rotten things that can happen. 

00:24:23 Heather Zidack 

You also want to avoid water on your leaves. You want to add water to the soil because if you have any droplets on the leaves, it can actually burn the plants a little bit. Believe it or not, plants can get sunburn, so you want to be careful. 

00:24:37 Heather Zidack 

It's also a good time to prune spring flowering shrubs immediately once the flowers are gone, so a lot of shrubs out there are like, again, I go back to rhododendrons, lilacs, things like that. They're gonna start to set their buds in this summer or during the fall. So if you prune too late, if you prune in the fall, when you're doing all your other cleanup chores or you prune over the winter like you do with your summer blooming shrubs. You could lose your seed-your 

00:25:05 Heather Zidack 

Lose your flowers. The next thing is that you can still plant from seed right now, so there's a lot of things out there that you can do. Radishes, beans, squash, carrots are all pretty quick to come up, so you could put those in the garden. Just check the back of the seed packet to see how many days till maturity we have and if it falls within, you know from here too. Let's say October, you've probably got a good shot in getting a crop. I know radish is an example only goes about 21 days in between seed to days to harvest. So that's really cool. I've even planted sunflowers in July after I've harvested. 

00:25:45 Heather Zidack 

My garlic needed to throw something in the bag, so there's a lot of really good plants out there that you can still plant in June. It does. It's not too late. 

00:25:54 Stephen Thal 

That's great. 

00:25:55 Stephen Thal 

We have about 6 minutes left. Anything you'd like to cover in the last 6 minutes? 

00:26:02 Heather Zidack 

Yeah. 

00:26:03 Heather Zidack 

Couple of really important things too. Looking at your house plants, so if you grow house plants and you want to put them outside, I think we finally hit that point where they can go out on the patio and be pretty comfortable for the rest of the summer. 

00:26:18 Heather Zidack 

Temps have stabilized for tropical and exotic plants that usually thrive indoors. So like I said, we look for that 50° at night and we're definitely there. It took a while, but we got there. If they haven't been outside yet and you're just putting them out soon, you want to start slow. 

00:26:36 Heather Zidack 

If you put them in a sheltered, shaded kind of outdoor space for a few days before you move them to full sun into the high heat of the day. So you wanna make sure that they have a couple of steps to take in between going from inside your office, let's say, from out to your patio. So that's something really important that you want to make sure that you're doing. The other thing that's really, really important, and I emphasize this with all gardeners at this point in the season is get yourself into the habit of making observations you really want to go out into your garden and take a look at the leaves. Take a look at the undersides of the leaves. 

00:27:16 Heather Zidack 

Take pictures. This is a great way to monitor so that if something does look a little different or disease develops or insects start showing up, you know early enough to do something. 

00:27:29 Heather Zidack 

I see a lot of times gardeners necessarily don't see what's happening in their garden, and then we hit a point where we're overwhelmed with disease or pest or weeds, even because of all the rain we've had. So if you can go out and get yourself in the habit of just looking at your plants, seeing what the leaves actually look like. Seeing what's normal and what's not normal. 

00:27:52 Heather Zidack 

That's really important to do so that when something abnormal happens, you're right on top of it and you can do something to save your plants instead of losing your fruit or your tomatoes or whatever the case may be. 

00:28:05 Heather Zidack 

If you do notice anything, it's really important to know that our office is here to help you with the UConn Home and Garden Education Center. We can always look at photos via e-mail. That e-mail is ladybug@uconn.edu again, ladybug @uconn.edu. Or you could call us at any time. Our number is 860-486-6271 again 860-486-6271 and we can help with plant disease as well as insects and environmental things that just look weird in the garden. We can help get you pointed in the right direction so. 

00:28:49 Heather Zidack 

That's definitely something that I I remind everybody is just be observant, be out in your garden, you know, be present with what you're doing. If you're out there watering, don't just go looking around at everything else around you go get the plants that you're watering and see what's going on. 

00:29:05 Stephen Thal 

Ah, that's great. 

00:29:07 Stephen Thal 

So we have to hope this is good information for our listeners and we have the phone numbers and we'll have them have you give it to them one more time. 

00:29:18 Heather Zidack 

So give you a couple of phone numbers, so I'm with the UConn Home and Garden Education Center. Again, my number here is 860-486-6271One again 860-486-6271. There's also the soil lab that I had mentioned earlier. Their number is 860-486-4274, again 860-486-4274. Between our two offices, we can definitely help gardeners get a handle on what they need to know. 

00:29:55 Stephen Thal

Well, we thank you for coming into focal point. We always appreciate the invaluable information to help our listeners enjoy their garden, not only a garden if they're doing or house plants or combination thereof.

00:30:13 Stephen Thal 

This is Stephen Thal with another segment on Focal Point. 

00:30:13 Heather Zidack 

Thanks for having me. 

00:30:17 Stephen Thal 

We hope you enjoyed today's program. 

00:30:20 Stephen Thal 

Two quick items for you. Please wear sunglasses and a hat when you're outside with the bright sun, and also to do a emergency plan for your home or for your business or whatever. And practice it very important to involve the people in case there is an emergency. People. Everybody knows what to do and that's the key piece. 

00:30:47 Stephen Thal 

So again, enjoy the Summer. 

00:30:50 Stephen Thal 

Stay safe and stay healthy, Steven Thal saying thanks to our guest speaker, Heather and all of our listeners that tuned in today.