For those of us who feel like gardening failures this year because our tomatoes, peppers, and squash have been looking anemic, heed this advice from UConn's Home and Garden Education Center: It's not you, and it's probably not your soil or the plants. It's the weather.

Carol Quish, one of the friendly voices at the center's toll-free number, has been providing this answer a lot so far this year.

"People are calling, wondering if their peppers and tomatoes need more fertilizer," she said on a recent wet Tuesday in June-which could have been every Tuesday in the month. "What they need is more sunshine and warmer temperatures."

Warm season crops include beans, cucurbits, watermelon, and sweet potatoes, plus cilantro and basil, popular summer herbs. Just remember that many of these, such as okra, originated in equatorial climes.

Not only will they perish in a late season frost; their roots just don't do well in cool soils. Once it does warm up, most of these plants, which are deep rooted and generally more drought-tolerant than their cool-season leafy friends, should perk right up and make up for lost time.

Ever the optimist, Quish, who has been gardening for years herself, says to just keep enjoying the cool-season veggies: lettuces, spinach, and cole crops of broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage that have been thriving in our Seattle-like weather. Most summers, these plants would be bolting by now, triggered by the heat to produce flowers and seed pods, which turns their leaves bitter.

The trick is to just keep planting a few more of everything each week or so, according to Dawn Pettinelli, who manages and coordinates the UConn Home and Garden Education Center. In addition to the horticulturalists who are available Monday through Friday, the center has a soil testing lab that tests for nutrients of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK) and soil pH or acidity. For a small fee the plant diagnostics lab will examine diseased plants, weeds, insects, and other pathogens and provide chemical and alternative remedies.

Fall is the best time of the year to get garden soil tested, Pettinelli notes. Not only does this give the gardener more time to apply composted manure to add nitrogen and extra lime to acidic soils, it provides for these organic compounds to break down in the soil and do their magic for next year's crops.

For help, go to www.ladybug.uconn/edu, email ladybug@uconn.edu, or call the UConn center toll-free at 1-877-486-6271.

The Veggie Girls, those helpful women in their purple shirts at Smith's Acres in Niantic, are reporting more plant disease questions this year, too. They encourage customers to bring in funny-looking leaves and plant parts for diagnosis and solutions, including organic plant food and fertilizers. Meanwhile, Farmer Joe's fields have been yielding an abundance of lettuce, spinach, and other greens.

If you'd like to see what Connecticut gardeners would be normally doing this time of year, check out the perpetual garden calendar co-developed by the Colchester and Redding garden clubs. It is one of three fundraising activities for the Colchester club to support its community talks, "Learn and Do" activities, and beautification projects.

The club also has teamed up with the CT Audubon Society's Glastonbury center to sell the society's "For the Birds Cookbook." The calendar and book are each $5, and group orders from other garden clubs and organizations are welcomed.

"We are a young club, started six years ago. We've grown from 15 to 41 members, including four husbands," said Katherine Kosiba, club president and co-chair of Community Wildlife Habitat of Colchester, in an e-mail message. Town volunteers are working hard to get Colchester certified as the first Connecticut community to achieve the environmental and habitat milestones set by the National Wildlife Federation.

The NWF describes a community wildlife habitat as one that provides habitat for wildlife throughout, in individual backyards, on school grounds and in public areas such as parks, community gardens, places of worship, and businesses. For more information, go to www.nwf.org/community.

There also are a few weeks left in the club's sale of yellow daylilies, dug from Bacon Academy in Colchester. The school's environmental studies class has helped with the digging. Contact Kosiba at mkk178@att.net for pricing and availability of the daylilies, as well as the calendar and cook book.

Catch "CT Outdoors" with Suzanne Thompson on Tuesdays from 12:30 to 1 p.m. and 6:30 to 7 p.m. and Sundays from 7 to 7:30 a.m. on WLIS 1420 AM, Old Saybrook, or WMRD 1150 AM, Middletown. When she's not writing or talking, Suzanne can be found puttering around her gardens in Old Lyme. She can be reached at sthompson@wliswmrd.net.