Extension Service News

OSU extension experts liven up the radio waves in Hermiston (08/31/2005)

Don Horneck (left) and Phil Hamm of OSU's Hermiston Research and Extension Center offer down-to-earth advice for Hermiston-area radio listeners. Photo by Peg Herring

They are the garden guys from "The Lawn and Garden Show" and they can be heard every Friday morning on KOHU, a regional radio station, offering expert, and sometimes funny, gardening advice to listeners in the greater Hermiston area.

In their off-air lives, the garden guys are Phil Hamm and Don Horneck of Oregon State University's Hermiston Agricultural Research and Extension Center. Hamm, the center's superintendent, is an Extension plant pathologist; Horneck is an Extension agronomist. On the radio, they are assisted by "button pusher" Jeff Walkercan.

Hamm and Horneck both are avid gardeners and draw on their own experience and expertise from OSU Extension to answer lawn and gardening questions from the community. They began the radio program as a way to help homeowners and reduce the number of phone calls to the office they received each week.

"We got a call the other day from a guy who was watering his lawn for two hours every day," Horneck said. "Every day! He could have grown rice in his yard at that rate."

One of the most common questions they receive is how to control Bermuda grass.

"There is no good way," Hamm said, "and so we have suggested that one option is selling your house and moving.”

"We have fun," Hamm added.

If you're in the Hermiston area – in northeast Oregon near both Pendleton and the Washington state border -- tune in to "The Lawn and Garden Show" on Fridays at 9 a.m. on KOHU, 1360 AM radio.

By: Peg Herring
Source: Phil Hamm, Don Horneck

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