Plenty of activities set to keep gardeners busy

Spring is a busy time of year on anyone's gardening calendar. But ardent gardeners can learn how to make things happen in their yards year-round.

In fact, with all the gardening activities taking place this week, there's no excuse for boredom. You can learn about cactus and succulents; grow watermelons, cantaloupes and squash; enter your landscape in a contest; attend a flower-arranging show; exhibit fruits and vegetables at the county fair; or learn how to grow veggies. Here's a schedule:

'CELEBRATE CACTUS!'

The Cactus and Succulent Society of Southern Nevada has an excellent show and sale planned from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and April 13 at Turner Greenhouse, 4455 Quadrel St. Award-winning show plants and multiple vendors will be present, along with Southwest garden and related art.

For more information, call 645-2032 or see www.csssn.org and click on "Celebrate Cactus!"

This event also is a benefit for the club, which promotes public education through using conservation techniques with cactuses and succulents. Here's a brief overview of what you can see and learn, as well as the kinds of plants available for sale:

"Knock Your Socks Off" plant show: More than 100 prize-winning cactus and succulent plants will be groomed and staged for a judged plant show. The growers are from the society, but you are welcome to bring something in for boasting. It's open to the public. If you've never been to a plant show, this is worth seeing. Bring your camera.

Planting demonstrations and walks and talks (outdoors with shade): Valley experts who have helped create beautiful landscapes, enlarged the plant palette, played big roles in conservation and increased the popularity of collecting cactuses and succulents as a hobby will be on hand.

They are prepared to demonstrate planting techniques, even with those spine-ridden beauties. They will answer questions both days and take groups on walks among the vendors, nursery, landscape and greenhouses.

Local vendors: There will be many vendors of landscape, patio and collector plants such as caudiciforms, Joshua trees, ocotillos, barrel cactus and all manner of shade-loving succulents. Beyond that, there are vendors of Southwest garden and related art. Natural material artisans will show their work using wood, gourd, clay, porcelain, rock, copper and glass, along with oil paintings and creative photography.

I hope to see you there.

MELONS, CANTALOUPES, PUMPKINS ETC.

It's planting time to produce the ambrosia of your garden. Envision biting into a watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, crenshaw or a casaba you grew to the peak of sweetness. Or harvesting zucchinis and summer squash and using them for summer salads and 1,001 other uses. Or growing giant pumpkins and mammoth winter squash for those October festivals. These crops all love our hot, dry summers.

Learn how to get the most out of these vine crops. Master gardener Helen Brown and I will go over the finer details to show you how to produce them in your garden at 8:30 a.m. Saturday at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve, 333 S. Valley View Blvd. Call 822-7786 to reserve your seat.

Collectively, these crops are called vine crops. They're known for sprawling all over the yard, but only if you let them. Study your new catalogs now coming out. Almost every vine crop comes in the bush version and won't take the whole yard to produce. Brown will bring some of her many catalogs for you to select your choices to plant.

These vegetables all come with tendrils. These long, wiry things hang onto fences or trellises and take even less space. Or you can do like one gardener does and use hosiery. The elasticity in the hosiery enables melons to enlarge with no restrictions and uses less space.

Vine crops must have highly organic soil, because they demand large amounts of water and nutrients. The organic matter opens up the soil so plants can freely mine to satisfy their needs. Moisture also becomes critical when you consider these fruits are 90 percent water.

Plant seeds at the appropriate depth at the proper intervals. The information is on the seed packet. Firm the soil around seeds for good soil-to-seed contact. Keep soil moist until crops emerge. After seedlings emerge, thin to required spacings, which enables proper development.

Vine crops are the camels of the garden. They like big drinks of water about as often as a camel drinks, so it will be a long time between waterings. Organic products you worked into the soil store moisture for the plants to draw from, so you won't have to water as often.

'DANCING INTO SPRING'

This is the theme of the spring flower show sponsored by Nevada Garden Clubs and the Las Vegas Flower Arrangers' Guild. This two-day event takes place from 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. April 13, at the Nevada Garden Club Center, 3333 W. Washington Ave.

A special feature will be an exhibit by the Las Vegas Hawaiian Civic Club, including a demonstration of the art of lei making, and performances of Hawaiian dance on Saturday between 1 and 3 p.m. Leis will be on display throughout the weekend. For more information, go to www.nevadagardenclubs.org or call 242-9259.

CLARK COUNTY FAIR

"Catch the Experience" is the theme of this year's fair, which runs Thursday through April 13 at the Clark County Fairgrounds in Logandale. For details of all activities, and information about the fair, go to www.ccfair.com or call (702) 397-2604.

Whenever I think of fairs, I think of displays of quilts, fruits, vegetables, baked goods, flowers and animals with award-winning ribbons on them. The Clark County Fair has all of that and more. Livestock, including steers, pigs, goats and sheep, will be on exhibit.

GROWING VEGGIES

Yes, growing vegetables in our climate is tough. Let master gardener Don Fabbi take the toughness out of this task. He'll explain the process at noon Saturday at Plant World Nursery, 5311 W. Charleston Blvd.

FREE PLANTS

Drop by Dr. Green Thumb's booth at the Springs Preserve from 10 a.m. to noon Friday to get a free native plant. Choose one from the many species available, answer the question attached to it and take it home.

"We want to make this a tradition by giving away native plants on holidays such as Earth Day," said Laura Eisenberg of the Springs Preserve. "We are anxious for homeowners to incorporate these beauties into their landscape."

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