After five-year hiatus, popular event features five historic homes
This is one of the five homes on the 33rd Curtis Park Home and Garden Tour this Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Photo courtesy Sierra Curtis Neighborhood Association
It’s back! One of Sacramento’s favorite neighborhood traditions returns Saturday with the 33rd Curtis Park Home and Garden Tour.
Set for 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, April 22, this popular tour has been on hiatus since 2018. Its first off-year in 2019, organizers needed a break after 32 consecutive spring tours. Little did they know that the pandemic would stretch that break into five years between events.
This Saturday, the tour is back in force with five private homes built – like most of the Curtis Park neighborhood – between 1910 and 1940. Their styles include Streamline Moderne, Mediterranean and Craftsman with interiors ranging from classic to contemporary. According to the organizers, featured gardens include entertaining spaces, English cottage designs and drought-tolerant landscapes.
Hosted by the Sierra Curtis Neighborhood Association, the tour supports the Sierra 2 Center for the Arts and Community and neighborhood programs. Advance tickets, available via the center’s website, are $25 for non-members of SCNA; tour day tickets are $30.
Whether buying in advance or on Saturday, start your tour at the booth at the corner of 26th Street and Donner Way on the north end of William Curtis Park. That’s where you’ll pick up your map and program, which acts as your passport into participating homes.
Each stop is located within walking distance of the park, where there also will be a celebration of Curtis Park’s history with displays, music, vendors, food and coffee. (That’s where the restrooms are located, too!) Among the vendors will be Light and Breezy Paper, Handmade, OB Woodworks, Kelsey Caroline Designs, Arizmendi Ceramics, Knott Just Art and Library Cat Designs.
Like classic cars? The Capitol A’s Model A Ford Club will tour around the neighborhood as well as display cars at participating residences. Watch plein air artists at work in some of the gardens, too.
Questions? Email events@sierra2.org.
Details and tickets: https://sierra2.org/event/home-tour/.
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Food in My Back Yard Series
April 22: Should you stock up on fertilizer? (Yes!)
April 15: Grow culinary herbs in containers
April 8: When to plant summer vegetables
April 1: Don't be fooled by these garden myths
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March 18: Time to give vegetable seedlings some more space
March 11: Ways to win the fight against weeds
March 4: Potatoes from the garden
Feb. 25: Plant a fruit tree now -- for later
Feb. 18: How to squeeze more food into less space
Feb. 11: When to plant? Consider staggering your transplants
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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.