Maricopa Library opens doors for gardening gurus

For those who have taken classes on gardening in Maricopa soil but still don’t quite know what to do, the experts are presenting three classes starting Saturday.

Maricopa Public Library is opening its doors for two of the sessions.

The University of Arizona Cooperative Extension has had training for master gardeners and classes on “salsa” gardening for the general public. The new trio of classes, called Desert Gardening 101, will focus on creating confident backyard gardeners.

“We didn’t get them close enough to what they wanted to do,” Master Gardener Dave Brady said.

The new classes will start at the level of those who are new to gardening.

Classes will cover the basics of setting up an irrigation system and using steer manure. There will also be labs to test the “percentage of sand and silt in their ground, the clay in their ground, the pH in their ground and the salinity in their ground.”

Attendees will get worksheets to measure their soil compared to where it needs to be for gardening.

“The farther they are away from the chart, the more organic matter they need to add,” Brady said. “But also they should do this every year so that consistently they are getting closer and closer.”

The first class is Jan. 17 and filled up in less than a week. It is made up of three sections: Attendees will learn about the extension office resources and basic searches online to find good gardening tips. Then there will be a detailed discussion of soil. Then staff members from the extension office will talk about the steps of building a garden.

Afterward, attendees should be able to create a garden and be ready to plant.

On Feb. 14 the class will cover “how you go about planting your garden,” Brady said. That involves a planting guide laid out over 12 months to take advantage of the Arizona climate. There will also be a discussion of succession planting, allowing gardeners to space out their harvest instead of having all of their crop mature at the same time.

The class will talk about how to plant, what kind of fertilizer to put around it, gardening strategies, cultivation and avoiding the no-nos of too much watering and too much fertilizer.