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Find growing advice at Sacramento's Farm-to-Fork Festival




Getting up close and personal with local food, literally or fancifully,  is the whole idea of the Farm to Fork Festival,  which began in 2013. It's now a two-day event. (Photos: Kathy Morrison)



Master gardeners will be part of huge community event devoted to locally grown food

Growing food -- as well as eating it -- is a big part of the sixth annual Farm-to-Fork Festival, Sacramento's second largest public event behind only the State Fair.

Now in a two-day format, the festival opens from 4 to 9 p.m. Friday, Sept. 28, on Capitol Mall between Third and Fifth streets in downtown Sacramento. On Saturday, the free event expands to Eighth Street and will be open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Capitol Mall will be filled with demonstrations, booths and activities.
Sacramento County master gardeners will staff an information booth to answer questions about edible gardening as well as other topics. The master gardeners will also offer for sale their 2019 calendar and gardening guide dedicated to food gardening, "Saving the Harvest."

Besides lots of information on how to grow food including in containers and small spaces, the new calendar and guide ($10) includes detailed instructions and tips from the Sacramento County master food preservers on home canning, freezing and other ways to make the most out of a backyard harvest -- or farmers market finds, too.

Expect to see plenty of vendors at the festival.
Speaking of which, several vendors will offer produce and other Central Valley products for sale at the Farm-to-Fork Festival as well as always-popular free samples.

Food, beer, wine and cider will be sold, too; about 100 regional wines will be served. Four stages will be devoted to cooking demonstrations.

About 145 vendors will be on hand Saturday; 75 are scheduled for Friday's opening. Last year's festival attracted about 60,000 patrons, according to Visit Sacramento, its organizer.

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Garden Checklist for week of April 20

Before possible showers at the end of the week, take advantage of all this nice sunshine – and get to work!

* Set out tomato, pepper and eggplant transplants.

* From seed, plant beans, beets, cantaloupes, carrots, corn, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, radishes and squash.

* Plant onion sets.

* In the flower garden, plant seeds for asters, cosmos, celosia, marigolds, salvia, sunflowers and zinnias.

* Transplant petunias, zinnias, geraniums and other summer bloomers.

* Plant perennials and dahlia tubers for summer bloom.

* Plant summer bulbs, such as gladiolus and tuberous begonias.

* Transplant lettuce and cabbage seedlings.

* Smell orange blossoms? Feed citrus trees with a low dose of balanced fertilizer (such as 10-10-10) during bloom to help set fruit. Keep an eye out for ants.

* Apply slow-release fertilizer to the lawn.

* Thoroughly clean debris from the bottom of outdoor ponds or fountains.

* Trim dead flowers but not leaves from spring-flowering bulbs such as daffodils and tulips. Those leaves gather energy to create next year's flowers. Also, give the bulbs a fertilizer boost after bloom.

* Spring brings a flush of rapid growth, and that means your garden is really hungry. Give shrubs and trees a dose of a slow-release fertilizer. Or mulch with a 1-inch layer of compost.

* Start thinning fruit that's formed on apple and stone fruit trees -- you'll get larger fruit at harvest (and avoid limb breakage) if some is thinned now. The UC recommendation is to thin fruit when it is about 3/4 of an inch in diameter. Peaches and nectarines should be thinned to about 6 inches apart; smaller fruit such as plums and pluots can be about 4 inches apart. Apricots can be left at 3 inches apart. Apples and pears should be thinned to one fruit per cluster of flowers, 6 to 8 inches apart.

* Azaleas and camellias looking a little yellow? If leaves are turning yellow between the veins, give them a boost with chelated iron.

* Pinch chrysanthemums back to 12 inches for fall flowers. Cut old stems to the ground.

* Weed, weed, weed! Don’t let unwanted plants go to seed.

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