May 5 Column: Garden Expo

What is your idea of a dream garden event? Mine is a huge gathering of vendors selling oodles of lovely plants, attractive garden art and handy tools; educational activities to help me increase my gardening skills; food to keep my energy level up; and best of all, free admission and parking. Yes indeed! Well, Garden Expo will take place next Saturday (May 11) and it is all that and more! Learn about it in my column in today’s edition of The Spokesman-Review: Garden Expo gives gardeners time to learn, play, shop.

This is Garden Expo’s 20th year, which blows my mind. I actually went to the very first one which was held at the Northeast Community Center and there were about 20 vendors. Even so, everyone who came to it had a grand time.

Flash-forward to today’s beloved Garden Expo, where there are 250-plus vendors! Isn’t that amazing? For those of you reading this who don’t live in the Inland Northwest, I’m sorry to be torturing you with today’s topic. But, on a positive note, if you have a particularly active and energetic garden club in your area, tell them about Garden Expo and see if they can spearhead such an event. You can learn more about it on the Inland Empire Gardeners’ website.

I would personally like to thank and congratulate all of the TIEG members who selflessly volunteer their time to make Garden Expo the success that it is, each and every year. And here’s to 20 more years!

On another topic, this week’s “Everyone Can Grow a Garden” video is about growing cool-season vegetable crops. The crops I planted during it are Swiss chard, beets, carrots and rutabagas (yes, rutabagas, for the first time ever!). There are two BIG tips that I share in this video that are worth learning about:

I’d love to hear what you’re growing in your veggie garden this year. Let me know at Susan@SusansintheGarden.com. Have a great week!