Winter Gardening Fair offers chance to prepare for growing season

Spring may still be weeks away, but now is the perfect time to start planning for gardening season.

At least, that's the advice from organizers of the Winter Gardening Fair, presented Saturday (2/25) at Kirkwood Community College by Iowa State University Extension and Outreach and Linn County Master Gardeners.

With more than 40 workshops, two keynote speakers and displays from horticulture-related societies and vendors, the fair offers a chance for new and experienced gardeners alike to start dreaming of spring planting.

'The thrill of snow is gone, perhaps, so this is the time when people start thinking about their gardens,' said event co-chair Larry Dawson. 'People want to think about this, to think about spring and being out in shorts and sandals and getting things done.'

It's also the right time to start planning for those efforts, said the event's other co-chair, Phil Pfister. February is the time to order seeds, draw out garden layouts and create a plan for managing maintenance.

He has been a master gardener for ten years and manages the Lowe Park Greenhouse in Marion. He will be teaching a class on organic vegetable gardening. He aims to cover a lot of ground in the one hour session, including different growing techniques, ways to extend the growing season, pairing plants together to fight pests, using raised beds and other topics.

'What we're trying to do is help people think through these kind of things,' he said. 'Now is actually the ideal time.'

Participants can choose four hourlong sessions to attend at the fair, with a break for lunch and to hear from two keynote speakers, Scott Koepke and Megan Cain.

Koepke, education director at Grow: Johnson County, will present 'Feeding Soil, Feeding Souls: The Values/Pillars of Gardening,' while author Cain, known as the 'Creative Vegetable Gardener' will present 'Design Inspiration for Creative Vegetable Gardening.'

With classes covering a variety of topic areas, from starting seeds at home to growing edible flowers to managing backyard woodlands, the fair offers a little bit of something for everyone.

'Even before I was a master gardener, I was interested in the Winter Gardening Fair because I can't think of another place where you can pick out four classes on such a wide variety of topics. If you have any kind of interest in gardening in all, the fair has something for you,' Pfister said. 'The winter gardening fair is the one event that allows us to reach out and educate more people than anything else we do.'

Dawson agreed.

'My biggest problem is trying to find just one workshop in each section to go to because there are always several I want to hear,' he said. 'You can go from herbs to vegetable gardening to trees to flower arranging. It's not just how to grow and plant seeds.'

He has been a master gardener for more than a decade and said he has seen an increased interest from the public in vegetable gardening over that time. People are also showing greater interest in ornamental grasses — which he will lead a session on — and in succulents. Those hardy plants will be the subject of one of the fair's four hands-on workshops, in which participants will be able to make their own broken pot succulent garden to take home.

The master gardeners who organize the fair are all volunteers. Dawson said the event is part of their mission of public education.

'Basically the primary goal is public service,' he said. 'We want to get gardening information of a different variety out to people, and maybe inspire some different things.'

If you go

- What: Winter Gardening Fair- When: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday  (2/25) - Where: Kirkwood Community College, Benton/Cedar hall, 6301 Kirkwood Blvd. SW, Cedar Rapids- Cost: $59- Information and registration: (319) 398-1022, www.extension.iastate.edu/linn

- Comments: (319) 398-8434; alison.gowans@thegazette.com