By Cindy Burton

WSU Master Gardener

The popular First Saturday Workshop series will return Oct. 5 in the Master Gardener demonstration garden at the Grays Harbor County fairgrounds.

The free event, running from 10 a.m. until about 2 p.m., will feature a plant sale and activities for children.

“We wanted to make this a workshop that the whole family could enjoy,” said Trish Bradbury, the Master Gardener in charge of this event. “We added some fun things for the kids to do while their parents scout for plants for their yard. We hope this event appeals to gardeners of all ages.”

Our child-friendly activities will include a demonstration on how to make a “seed bomb.” These are golf-size balls of moist soil and clean kitty litter with non-invasive, easy-to-germinate seeds poked into the center. When dried, a seed bomb can be tossed onto open soil where it will absorb water and give the seeds a place to germinate — and, in a few months bloom. Kids will watch how seed balls are made and get a ready-to-make seed bomb kit to take home. Moms be forewarned: When you use the seed bomb kit at home, it is a messy process, but fun.

If drawing is something your child enjoys, there will be a site for kids to draw on blank seed packets to illustrate the plant seed inside. There will also be a short garden-search activity.

The workshop’s focus will be a slate of demonstrations including how to save seeds, how to successfully start new plants from cuttings, and how to divide perennials — all using the plants growing in our demonstration garden. Master Gardeners will help members of the public select and harvest from these plants. They will be free for them to take home to use in their own landscape.

For gardeners who love the color and variety offered by annual flowers, the demo garden has a variety to choose from. Popular seed-saving annuals range from the fragrant and edible nasturtium to the delicate but prolific re-seeder love-in-a-mist. Also available will be an array of varieties including sunflowers, marigolds, calendulas and cosmos.

The beautiful South American relative of petunia, called painted tongue, provides a small amount of seed but will also be available. And though considered a bit weedy due to the copious amount of seed produced, we’ll have colorful members of the Amaranth family including celosia, quinoa and amaranth.

Be aware: The seeds from all our garden annuals have been freely cross-pollinated, so any gathered seed will include traits of the parent plant. These traits may not be expressed as dramatically in next year’s plants.

Gardeners seeking summer-blooming shrubs will be delighted to take home cuttings from the garden’s popular peegee hydrangeas or one of its hardy fuchsias. During the county fair, these plants are very popular with visitors as they are in full bloom in August and hold the blossoms into fall. To avoid over-harvest and support the health of these plants, only a select number of cuttings will be taken before the workshop. A demonstration on how to take and care for cuttings will be presented. At that time, all the pre-cut plant material will be available for workshop participants to take home.

For the gardeners who enjoy the leafy perennials that just keep giving year after year, there will be a demonstration how to divide some of the other garden favorites: tall phlox, Japanese forest grass, astilbe and ajuga. These plants are reliable and easy to grow in the home landscape. Excess plants will be shared with workshop participants.

This workshop offers a little something for everyone. But for those gardeners who do not find the plants they seek in the garden free, there will be a nice selection of plants for sale in the garden’s compost area. A wide variety of plants ranging from exotics to natives, annuals to perennials, and large to small will be on sale for $2, $5 or $10 each. These plants were gleaned from the demonstration garden or donated by Master Gardeners.

Please bring a bag or box to tote all your plants and seeds home. For information on future First Saturday Workshops, check out the Master Gardener website: PNWMG.org.

Cindy Burton has been a WSU Master Gardener for nine years. During that time, she has developed the Demo Garden in Elma to be a popular stop for visitors to the Grays Harbor County Fair. Want to become a WSU Master Gardener? Visit PNWMG.org to learn about the program.

Photos courtesy WSU Master Gardeners The WSU Master Gardener Elma Demonstration Garden shows several colorful plants that will be featured in the Oct. 5 workshop.

A workshop visitor heads home with a peegee hydrangea blossom from last year’s Seed Saver event.

A reliable summer bloomer, there are three varieties of Rudbeckia in the garden from which visitors may wish to gather seed.