Roger Swain, former host of the PBS show The Victory Garden, entertains the Garden Club on Sept. 28, touching on topics from growing tips to storage solutions. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)

Members and guests at the Sept. 28 meeting of the Garden Club of Harvard were treated to a talk by celebrity guest and master gardener Roger Swain, host of the PBS program The Victory Garden from 1980 to 2001, and former science editor of Horticulture magazine. Swain regaled the audience with anecdotes and advice culled from his years as a gardener.

“Find stuff nobody else is growing, and grow that,” he advised. “Don’t grow what you find in the grocery store.” If you live alone and have a big garden, he said, “Grow squash.”

He showed off squash specimens that included Survivor, grown from seed saved by a Holocaust survivor, and other favorites such as Delicata, Honeybear acorn, and Waltham butternut.

He told listeners that squash shouldn’t be picked until its backside starts to change color, and passed along other tidbits of squash-related information: “Wait ’til they mature on the plant, let them sit in the sun for about a week, and store them in a single layer in a box. Squash doesn’t like to be cold. A cool bedroom, with a temperature of 55 to 65 degrees, is the perfect place to store it.” And where in a bedroom would you store squash? Under the bed, according to Swain.

Swain told audience members that the best way to beat garden pests is to keep them away from plants in the first place. He advised using black plastic as mulch and using row covers until plants are big enough and strong enough to hold their own against the tiny critters that crawl, slither, fly, and munch their way through the garden. His ultimate advice on pest control? “More diseases and pests have been defeated by careful use of seed catalogues than anything else.”

Roger Swain discusses the many wonderful squash that grow in this climate including the patty pan in his hands.

Swain boasts a connection with Harvard going back about 50 years, when he spent time here as a child, visiting former resident Eleanor Strong. Strong, who was president of the Garden Club from 1962 to 1963, is, according to Swain, “a giant in the Boston gardening movement,” where she has been a community garden advocate in Boston’s South End since the early 1970s. He said that, as an adult, he often returned to Harvard for Strong’s advice on vegetable gardening.

Swain said that his long-held passion for gardening stems from a need he feels to “pass it on.” He told listeners, “The gardening skill is what sustains people on this planet.”