Fort Walton Beach plant clinic can help with lawn, landscape, garden problems

Larry Williams,UF/IFAS Extension Agent, Okaloosa County.

FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla. – An upcoming plant clinic in Fort Walton Beach is designed to provide answers to lawn, landscape, and/or garden problems.

The plant clinic will be held Friday, April 21, from 9 a.m. to 12 noon at the temporary UF/IFAS Extension Annex at the Okaloosa Technical College (OTC) in Fort Walton Beach.

The plant clinic is not a seminar or lecture-type program. Still, it provides a place for individuals to bring samples of their lawn, landscape, or garden plants for diagnosis, including weeds and insects for identification.

To participate, bring a fresh sample of the weed, plant, insect, etc., to the clinic. This may include a plant stem with several leaves, a four-inch square of grass with roots attached, etc.

I, as well as UF/IFAS Extension Master Gardener volunteers, will be on-site to help diagnose samples brought in for a diagnosis. Bringing completely dead plants or samples from the middle of a dead lawn area is not helpful for diagnosis.

It’s best to bring samples that exhibit early symptom development and have plant parts that are still partially alive (green) for accurate diagnosis.

You also may bring a sample of soil from your lawn, landscape, or garden for pH testing. Use a clean shovel, trowel, or soil probe to collect a representative sample by taking thin slices or cores of soil to a depth of six to eight inches from ten different spots throughout the plant bed, lawn, or garden.

Thoroughly mix all the small soil slices/cores together in a clean bucket. Place one to two cups of this mixture in a closable plastic bag or small throwaway plastic container and bring it to the clinic for testing. Attach a slip of paper with your name, phone number, and where the sample was taken (e.g., lawn, vegetable garden, flowerbed, etc.).

Our former location on Hollywood Blvd. has closed. We are now in a temporary location in the back of the OTC Campus at 1976 Lewis Turner Boulevard in Fort Walton Beach.

There are two entrances to the OTC. Use the entrance closest to the fire station, not the main entrance, and follow the signs to the Extension building at the back of the campus.

Call the OTC Extension Annex at 850-651-7476 or the Extension Office in Crestview at 850-689-5850 for directions.

Larry Williams is the Extension horticulture agent with the Okaloosa County Cooperative Extension Service, University of Florida. Contact Larry at 689-5850 or email lwilliams@myokaloosa.com.