Get ready for annual fall flower show and sale

The theme of the Nevada Garden Clubs' annual fall flower show and sale is "An October Odyssey." It will run from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 25 at the Nevada Garden Club Center in Lorenzi Park, 3333 W. Washington Ave. It's a free event, so bring the whole family and come on down.

The show will feature floral designs and wonderful fall foliage and blooms that are a feature of Southern Nevada's autumn season.

You are invited to enter your favorite horticulture specimens and walk away with a blue ribbon. Bring your potential winner to the garden center on Friday between 3 and 7 p.m. or early Saturday before judging starts at 8:30 a.m. For more information and how to enter in the competition, call 242-9259.

Horticulture entries include: roses, cut flowers, herbs, ornamental grasses, fruits, vegetables, trees, shrubs, vines, ground covers, container plants, cactuses and succulents. From novices to master flower show judges, your winning specimen and/or design will take center stage at the garden center.

A sale by various garden clubs will be on the patio, consisting of everything from garden items and plants to artwork.

If you have been thinking of joining a garden club in Las Vegas, come down to the garden center and see what they do. You might feel a special connection with the flower arrangers' guild, the chrysanthemum society, the rose society, the bonsai club, the cactus and succulent society or the Pahrump Valley Garden Club, to name a few.

FALL GARDENING SERIES

To tell someone how to water is difficult. Let master gardener Scot Troter answer those hard questions -- how much, how often and how to tell when to water -- and then watch your landscape improve and those water bills drop. This free seminar is 7 p.m. Wednesday at the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension's Lifelong Learning Center, 8050 Paradise Road. The fall series concludes Oct. 28, when you'll find out how to grow anything in the desert. To reserve a seat, call 257-5555.

PLANT SIZES

We all seem to want instant landscapes so we purchase bigger plants. We theorize that bigger plants will give us fuller landscapes faster. So we acquire larger plants, but are there advantages of selecting larger plants over smaller ones?

We live in a valley with long growing seasons, and as a result small plants start out much faster. If we care for them properly, they'll outgrow and even overpower the big ones in a few seasons. Following this reasoning, why buy larger shrubs, when smaller ones will outdo the larger shrubbery in as little as five years? By small, I am referring to shrubs in three- or five-gallon containers. They'll save you money, you'll have fewer backaches carrying lighter plants and you'll be digging smaller holes. I've observed over the years that smaller plants take off much quicker and grow faster after planting than big ones.

The same is true for trees. Several university research studies confirm that five- to 15-gallon containers outperformed those in 24- or 36-inch boxes. In one seven-year study, the difference was amazing. Yes, the younger trees were skimpy, but they grew as high as 30 feet tall with the trunk diameter getting as much as a foot wide. The smaller trees overtook and surpassed the large ones in five short years.

So was the higher cost for larger trees worth it? Probably not, but because most of us are impatient, we'll buy the larger trees. In reality, it's only for the immediate impact, but it's short lived.

Now throw caliche into the equation. The bigger the new tree, the deeper you must dig the hole; you'll most likely need a jackhammer to bust up the caliche. Consider planting smaller trees, with the root balls resting on top of the caliche. It's OK to expose a few inches of root ball above the surrounding grade. Now simply cover the exposed root ball by mounding soil around it. Gradually taper the soil away to blend with the natural grade. This is "mound planting," and if done properly the rising elevation will hardly be noticeable.

So next time you plant a tree or shrub, select the "small fries" and in no time, they'll outgrow the biggies. If you don't believe me, come see the gardens at the Springs Preserve, 333 S. Valley View Blvd., and see how they've flourished in just two years.

Linn Mills writes a garden column each Sunday. You can reach him at linn. mills@springspreserve.org or call him at 822-7754.