5th annual home garden tour takes place May 30

If you are a fan of gardening or want to get some ideas or tips to add to your own, an annual event taking place next week is for you.

The fifth annual University of Nevada Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners home tour is happening Saturday, May 30.

Involving several Pahrump residences, many of which are home to master gardeners, those interested take themselves on a tour of some of the best gardens the town has to offer.

The tour will cost $3 for adults and there is no charge for children to take the tour.

“This is a self-guided tour and from 8 a.m. to noon,” said Debby Woodland, Master Gardener coordinator for Southern Nye County. “There’s seven sites available, so that three dollars buys you a ticket, so that way you have the address and a map.”

The tour is planned to start at site one on the north, and is planned for participants to head south on their way to the various homes. You can take in the tour at your own pace, so there is no set time schedule for the trek.

“These vegetable gardens are not so much for produce production, but rather the diversity and the types of gardening,” Woodland said. “Some are raised beds, some are in ground, and to me you can ask those growers how they grow their products. You can ask questions like, where they purchase their soil, or they’ve made their own soil.

“It just gives the local residents an opportunity to see other people’s vegetable gardens and how they do it.”

The man who is home to the scheduled first stop on the tour, master gardener Frank Rucker, along with his wife, have been taking part in the event the past three years and they try to incorporate different types of techniques in their garden.

“What my wife Cindy and I have done is we made a diverse garden variety,” Rucker said. “We’ve done raised beds, we have container gardening, we have silver mulch, a plastic reflective silver that goes on top of the soil. It’s supposed to keep the soil cool and reflect light up under the plants, which keeps the aphids from attack quite as bad, because we’re all natural. We don’t use pesticides.”

Rucker says the turnout has been good each year, whether it’s scorching hot outside or not.

“It’s actually been very good,” he said of the turnout. “Everybody that’s came to our place originally has returned every year. We usually get 90-100 people in the four-hour period. Last year we did it late in June and it was hot, we were thinking nobody is going to show… and still they showed.”

If you are interested in taking the tour you can purchase tickets ahead of time at the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension office at 1651 E. Calvada Blvd. or at the farmers market on Saturday, in the parking lot of Draft Picks at 110 S. Highway 160.