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The Master Gardeners have been at the Threshing Show for eight years, and this year was the best ever. Since I had very knowledgeable Master Gardeners with me, I was able to direct the questions to the best sources and record questions, as well as tally contacts. We answered more than 350 questions and there were more than 800 contacts. I considered it a contact when someone would talk with family and friends about our many displays or pick up information.

In my last article I predicted the question that would be most frequently asked at the Threshing Show. I predicted that tomato problems would be the main question and it was. Main concerns were blight, yellow leaves, blossom end rot, blossoms falling off, or no fruit. The best advice we could give was to wait it out and hope the weather becomes more consistent.

Creeping Charlie was the next most popular question, (as I had predicted.) Creeping Charlie loves shade and lots of moisture. There is so much of it this year that as one Master Gardener stated, the questions should be, "How do I get the grass out of my Creeping Charlie?" Bob Mugaas, Extension Educator, was at our Master Gardener meeting. He is the U of M Turfgrass Manager, and shared some ways to control Creeping Charlie through herbicides. I'm sure that one of us will do a column on Creeping Charlie in the near future.

I was way off on the lack of Monarch butterflies and honey bees being a problem. We didn't get one question on either of them. I might have jumped the gun as the honeybees are now on my Heritage raspberries, and monarchs are starting to come to my zinnias.

I thought there would be more questions about the emerald ash borer (EAB). Peggy Boike had a great display and lots of information on the subject and media information has also answered some questions. Keep watching your trees and see where the borer is headed, because it will be in our yards in the future.

We had many more questions about Japanese beetles than I had predicted. Whenever someone asked about them, we asked if they were from the city or the suburbs. Wherever, they're eating everything in sight. They often are in a three year cycle but in some cases they attack every year. They have been around for 30 years and like the EAB, in time we will have to deal with them.

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