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Spring is coming! Get gardening advice, inspiration at Open Garden Day

Fair Oaks Horticulture Center to be open Saturday, March 8

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Kathy Morrison PUBLISHED MAR 6, 2025

See what's starting to bloom at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center on Saturday morning during Open Garden Day. Kathy Morrison

March in the Sacramento region is the ramping-up month for spring gardening. An ideal place to find inspiration, advice and answers to seasonal gardening questions is Open Garden Day, to be held Saturday, March 8, at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center.

Sacramento County master gardeners will be on site from 9 a.m. to noon, rain or shine, ready to talk about their favorite topics. Emphasis in the garden this month includes how to:

-- Divide plants to propagate them;

-- Cut back perennials before spring growth;

-- Get started with compost;

-- Measure and adjust soil pH for blueberries;

-- Prune grapevines by cane or spur methods.

Gardeners are welcome to roam the Horticulture Center, which also includes an orchard (check out the new avocado plantings), a vegetable garden (preparing for spring veggie planting) and an herb garden (pruning the scented geraniums).

Visitors can also bring their plant and pest questions (and bagged samples, if possible) to the "Ask the Master Gardeners" table for answers.

The Fair Oak Horticulture Center is located south of the Fair Oaks Library and Fair Oaks Park, 11549 Fair Oaks Blvd.

Open Garden Days generally happen once a month; the next one will be Wednesday, April 9, from 9 a.m. to noon. See the full 2025 schedule here.

In between, the master gardeners on Saturday, March 22, will present a class on worm composting; deadline to sign up in Monday, March 10.

The class runs 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the UCCE Office Auditorium, 4145 Branch Center Road, Sacramento. Cost is $35, open to ages 13 and up. Space is limited. Each participant will receive educational materials, a worm bin with bedding, red wiggler worms and adoption papers. Registration link and more information can be found here.

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Keywords:

Open Garden Day Fair Oaks weekend event free event plants orchard herbs Sacramento gardening winter March UC master gardeners Fair Oaks Horticulture Center blueberries propagation grape pruning

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Garden checklist for week of May 17

With an eye on warmer weather to come, continue to work on the summer vegetable garden:

* Remember to irrigate your tender transplants. The wind can quickly dry out young plants. Seedlings need consistent moisture. Deep watering will help build strong roots and healthy plants. Water early in the morning for best results.

* Plant, plant, plant! It’s prime planting season in the Sacramento area. Time to set out those tomato transplants along with peppers and eggplants. Pinch off any flowers on new transplants to make them concentrate on establishing roots instead of setting premature fruit.

* Direct-seed melons, cucumbers, summer squash, corn, radishes, pumpkins and annual herbs such as basil.

* Harvest lettuce, peas and green onions.

* In the flower garden, direct-seed sunflowers, cosmos, salvia, zinnias, marigolds, celosia and asters. (You also can transplant seedlings for many of the same flowers.)

* Plant dahlia tubers.

* Transplant petunias, marigolds and perennial flowers such as astilbe, calibrachoa, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, rudbeckia and verbena.

* Keep an eye out for slugs, snails, earwigs and aphids that want to dine on tender new growth.

* Feed summer bloomers with a balanced fertilizer.

* For continued bloom, cut off spent flowers on roses as well as other flowering plants.

* Put your veggie garden on a regular diet. Set up a monthly feeding program, and keep track on your calendar. Make sure to water your garden before applying any fertilizer to prevent “burning” your plants.

* As spring-flowering shrubs finish blooming, give them a little pruning to shape them, removing old and dead wood. Lightly trim azaleas, fuchsias and marguerites for bushier plants.

* Don’t forget to weed! Those invaders are growing fast.

Send us a gardening question, a post suggestion or information about an upcoming event. sacdigsgardening@gmail.com

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