Fairfield library?s Family Garden Day planned Monday

Fairfield Public Library will host its fifth annual Family Garden Day from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Monday. Fifteen professionals will share their knowledge, free of charge, to benefit home gardeners of all ages, and free hands-on learning activities for youth will be offered.

Learn about Scott Timm?s backyard chickens and hold baby chicks, then identify the queen bee in a glass hive at Charlie Nelson?s beekeeping table.

Horticulturalist Jennifer Dougherty will provide tips on container gardens. Doug Webster will explain the art of growing heirloom tomatoes, and Roy Eubanks will give tips on how to control pesky garden critters.

Play the ?good bugs ? bad bugs? game with etymologist Moni Hayne, and watch Indian Hills Community College culinary arts students demonstrate creative food carving techniques.

John Roush will teach basic lawn mower maintenance, and staff from the Fairfield wastewater treatment plant will explain the benefits of rain barrels and rain gardens.

Peer into microscopes to examine the diversity in living soils with Latoya Crick, and learn how to attract monarch butterflies at Hannah Dettmann?s table. Jefferson County Master Gardeners will demonstrate how seed tapes make it easy to plant rows.

Julie Johnston will present tips and techniques for successful shade gardening, and Claude Nicholson will demonstrate a way to increase yields by sprouting seeds before planting.

Children can participate in a seed pot craft project in the Youth Services Department.

Those attending the Family Garden Day will receive a passport to be stamped at each booth. Those who visit all the booths can enter the passport into a drawing at the front desk.

The children?s prizes were donated by local gardener Wanda Sandfire.