The winter months are the prime period at the PDDC when staff are able to concentrate on outreach activities that do not involve diagnosing diseases on plant specimens.  One of the major outreach efforts of the PDDC has been and continues to be the University of Wisconsin (UW) Garden Facts fact sheet series.

The UW Garden Facts were originally conceived and developed by the University of Wisconsin-Extension Horticulture Team.  These one-page fact sheets were designed to be user friendly for home gardeners.  They are short, concise and easy to read, with an emphasis on answers to questions that homeowners often ask about horticultural issues.  Due to their popularity, the UW Garden Facts series was eventually expanded to include UW Farm Facts (covering more agriculture-oriented topics) and UW Pest Alerts (covering new and emerging disease/pest issues in both the agricultural and horticultural arenas).

The UW Garden Facts/Farm Facts/Pest Alerts series currently has over 250 titles, all of which are available in several formats for download free-of-charge from the “Fact Sheets” section of the UW-Madison/Extension Plant Disease Diagnostics Clinic website.  A web friendly version of the fact sheets (for reading online) is also available on the website.  If you are a horticulture or agriculture professional and would like to distribute the fact sheets as part of your business (which is encouraged), there is space to customize each fact sheet with personal or business information (e.g., a company logo).

A two CD compilation of University of Wisconsin Facts is also available.  The compilation contains the full set of the fact sheets and costs $30 for the general public and $20 for Master Gardener volunteers, plus shipping and handling (approximately $3.00 per CD).  To order a compilation, contact:

Brian Hudelson
Plant Disease Diagnostics Clinic
Department of Plant Pathology
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1630 Linden Drive
Madison, WI  53706-1598
Telephone:  (608) 262-2863
Email:  pddc@wisc.edu

Complimentary copies of UW Garden Facts/Farm Facts/Pest Alerts are also available in the display outside the PDDC (Rm. 183 Russell Labs at the address listed above), and complementary horticulture-related disease titles will also be available February 9-11, 2018 at the PDDC booth (booth 833-834) at Garden Expo 2018.  To keep up to date on new and revised fact sheets, be sure to follow the UW-PDDC on Facebook and Twitter @UWPDDC, or contact the PDDC at the phone number or email address listed above.

Happy reading!!