Georgia’s climate is perfect for growing many vegetables. It’s also the perfect place for plant-destroying diseases. But there are things home gardeners can do to protect their bounty.

There is nothing quite like the taste and freshness of homegrown vegetables. While growing them in the South can be a challenge – thanks to weeds, disease and insects – many of us prefer a more simplistic, environmentally-friendly approach to growing our veggies.

Welcome to the 35th annual Spring Garden Packet from the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Written by CAES faculty, editors and graduate and undergraduate students, these articles are provided to help you with timely, valuable statewide gardening information.

The University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences will hold the 2010 landscape updates and trainings January 15 and February 26 in Perry. The trainings will cover weed and insect control, soil compaction and thatch, small engine maintenance, cost management and pesticide recertification credits.

If you're into birding or just enjoy watching the action at your bird feeders, some scientists have a request: look for ticks.

In the sunny days of spring, you won't even notice the tiny young of some beautiful spiders emerging in your garden. But keep watching. By late summer or early fall, you may be able to see these large, striking spiders as they trap and eat insect pests.

From time to time, someone somewhere in Georgia turns over a rock or log and finds a grayish brown, flat worm with a head shaped like a half-moon. It's one of those things that, when you find it, you just have to find out what it is.

There are more than 120,000 species of flies in the world. But when most people hear "fly," they think of the housefly. Wherever people are found, houseflies are there, too.

Urticating caterpillars give you hives. No, really. The technical term for hives is urticaria. And one of the things that can cause it is a caterpillar.