Interestingly, I think that anyone is a gardener (and thus knows more or less what they are doing) probably knows that this year, a couple of master gardeners have been hanging out at the Bellevue Home Depot on Fridays and Saturdays (between 10 and 2).

On the other hand, those of us who are idiots about gardening (ok, maybe just me) have absolutely no clue that there’s this valuable resource just sitting there, waiting to be asked stupid questions (you should have heard the doozy I asked this morning about my prayer plant). I’m not kidding. They’re there just to answer all your plant questions.

The WSU Extension - King County Master Gardeners “gang” used to hang out at Factoria Mall but I guess their “shady” appearance (ahahaha) made them unwelcome with the new owners. The fact that the garden/hardware shop closed down over there, probably also had a lot to do with it. But they’re at home depot now, and appear to have settled in nicely. Today I walked by with an armful of replacements for the various “things I killed this year” and gave them the old hairy eyebrow. The nice woman asked innocently, “do you have any gardening questions?”

That did it. It was like opening a floodgate. I had questions on everything from what to plant in my dead bare spots, to when to divide my perennials, to how to bring a plant back from the dead, and did it involve a lot of black magic or could I just kill a chicken over the spot?

But I digress, a lot. The important things to note are:

(1) My new favorite toy is totally my loppers. They are as tall as I am, practically. I used them to chop down a poplar tree, and they also came in handy to battle my blackberry forest (some of the vines are as hard as wood, and my smaller hand anvil cutter was not… cutting it). I love them so much that I actually cleaned them after I was done using them.

(2) In addition to asking WSU master gardeners stupid questions, you beginners can also do the following:

• Call them up and listen to their 24-hour taped information library!
• Call the phone clinic between 10 and 4, Monday to Friday, at 206-296-3440.
• Visit the King County Master Gardeners website
• Visit the WSU gardening website
• Look at available WSU publications (I see they have one about growing berries, but where’s the one about NOT growing berries??)
• Visit “Hortsense”, Home gardener fact sheets for managing plant problems with Integrated Pest Management.
• Visit the Center for Urban Horticulture which conducts a wide variety of adult education programs for beginner home gardeners to horticultural professionals, as well as youth and family programs. I know I always seem to work five times faster with an extra helper — it probably has something to do with the fact that I work twice as slowly as everyone else.
• Visit the Bellevue Demonstration Garden, which gives free gardening workshops. Next Saturday’s workshop is about tackling tough weeds!
  

Get out there and remember: it’s all fun and games until someone lops off a finger! I count mine every 5 minutes.