Welcome back everyone to the Epic Gardening Podcast. I am really excited as we move

into spring obviously preventing some of the things that can decimate your garden is going to be something that you're going to want to pay attention to.

And we've had people on the podcast before and we've talked before about pests as well as beneficial insects, but today we have first-time

podcast guests Susan Mulbehill. She's a master gardener from Spokane

Washington and she's the author of the upcoming book, The Vegetable Garden

Pest Handbook, which I think Susan the lot and it's just simply hey what's this and it's a photo of a bug that someone has

sent me and so to have a handbook that you can even bring out into the garden and

sort of wander around and identify I think is a really smart concept for a book.

Yeah and I'm really excited about it.

So as a long-time vegetable gardener who loves growing her own food and then as a long time master gardener,

I answer a lot of questions just like you do.

And that's been the problem.

And so I felt there was a need for a simple to use guide to the most common vegetable garden

pests as well as the many beneficial bugs that help us out in our gardens.

Because I think a lot of times people don't, they see a bug and think oh that's a bad bug you know I don't want anything to do with it

But I wrote the book for all levels of gardeners from beginners to master gardeners in an effort to show them how to effectively control the bad guys by using organic methods.

And it's filled with all kinds of photographs of the different life stages because that can be a challenge too.

Yeah, I was going to say that I've gotten a question a lot and I always chuckle because I actually

when I first started out, when you see the larval stage of the ladybug, right?

People, it looks menacing, it doesn't actually look like a beneficial,

but in fact it's one of the most beneficial,

and you get people freaking out.

...