2015 Home and Garden Show

HOME 1THE WEIRS PUBLISHING CO. MAY 2015 SPRING HOME & GARDEN GUIDE

May 15th, 16th, & 17th • Fryeburg Fairgrounds, Fryeburg, Maine

Published Spring 2015

HOME 2 THE WEIRS PUBLISHING CO. MAY 2015 SPRING HOME & GARDEN GUIDE

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The 15th Annual Home Garden Flower Show’s May Fair at the Fryeburg Fairgrounds arrives just as spring bursts wide open. From May 15th to the 17th, the fairground is transformed into a show-case of gardening and home improvement op-portunities.

Chosen by Yankee Mag-azine as one of Maine’S Top Twenty events twice in three years, you’ll find landscape displays, lawn and power equipment, indoor and outdoor pellet and wood boilers, interior decorators, kitchen de-signers, windows, docks,

decks, solar and alterna-tive heating experts, brick oven demonstrations, and so much more. Home im-provement and innovative energy displays open a world of possibilities to anyone looking to rede-

sign their home environ-ment. Numerous garden centers selling thousands of perennials, annuals, seedlings, trees, shrubs and soil amendments sprawl across five acres of groomed grass, paved

walkways, and indoor ex-hibition space. Knowl-edgeable and friendly, our exhibitors can assist you in selecting healthy so-lutions to your garden needs.

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Our 2015 show intro-duces two new additions to the weekend. Our Wine & Cheese pavilion will introduce the wines of Maine and cheeses from Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. A wonderful opportunity to sample and purchase great wines and cheeses our region has to offer.

A silent auction to ben-efit local charities is also in the planning stage. Expect to see more information on our website and social media as we introduce the exhibitors who generous-ly donate to this worthy cause.

The always popular Meet The Chefs Cooking Series presents The Art of Creative Cooking for the 2015 series. With invited chefs, the series is always a crowd-pleaser. The pop-ularity of the series con-tinues and we have added another tent outside for more outdoor grilling and cooking demonstrations.

Fryeburg Fairgrounds is richly endowed with exposition halls. This show encompasses seven of them with more than 350 booths and tents filled with innovative businesses and artisans.

“We have assembled a unique mix of quality ex-hibitors, speakers, artists, crafters and landscape displays. Our exhibitors are here to help enlighten attendees to the newest energy saving products on the market, others to showcase their amazing talent in landscape and gardening expertise,” says Karla Ficker, Show Pro-ducer. “If it is information you are seeking for the

home and garden, plants or veggie seedlings to pur-chase, great garden crafts or you just want a fun way to spend a spring weekend for the entire family, this event should be high on your weekend schedule”.

For exhibitor information please visit the website

www.homegardenflower-show.com, email [email protected] or call1-800-359-2033.

We’re On! Are You!Visit our Facebook page

at www.facebook.com/fryeburgshow to stay up-to-date on all May Fair related news.

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“SPIRIT of Spring, thy coverlet of snow

Hath fallen from thee, with its fringe of frost,

And where the river late did overflow

Sway fragile white anem-ones, wind-tost,

And in the woods stand snowdrops, half asleep,

With drooping heads—sweet dreamers so long lost”.

f rom “The Waking of Spring” by Olive Custance (b. 1874)

As the snow f inally starts to melt and the temperatures begin to warm, it’s time to start to think about spring cleaning your garden. Check your inventory of garden tools and sup-plies. Clean your tools thoroughly and scrub off any rust that might have accumulated. You can put a light coat of mineral oil on the tools once they are clean, this will help to prevent rust build-up. Make sure the blades are all sharp and in good condition on your shears, lawn mower, weed whackers and hedge trimmers. If they need replacement or sharpening, you should be able to accomplish

that at a home improve-ment center or garden center in the area. Last-ly, make sure to check expiration dates on your garden sprays and chem-icals and throw away those that are no longer useable.

Af ter checking and cleaning your garden tools and supplies, you’ll want to begin the ob-vious clean-up of fall-en branches and debris from the winter months. You’ll then want to re-move and compost any leftover annual plants from the winter. Perenni-als will need to be tended to as well. As soon as you start to see new growth on the plants, you can remove any dead leaves and stalks and prune the perennials down to the ground exposing the new leaves.

Raking is an impor-tant task that will help to prevent leaf diseas-es in your garden. Old leaves and mulch from last year’s garden can carry mildew and spores that can infect this year’s

plants and flowers. By removing old leaves and mulch from your garden, you will help ensure that your plants stay healthy and strong. However, if raking proves to be too formidable a task, anoth-er trick is to cover up the leaves with a thick layer of new mulch. Mulch will help your garden look fresh and clean and can produce a similar effect to raking in terms of pre-venting leaf diseases.

An important part of spring cleaning your garden is pruning. It’s always a good idea to wait until after the se-vere frosts to assess and prune your garden plants. You’ll want to prune plants that have old, diseased or broken stems or those that sim-ply are growing wayward. A good pair of pruning shears is essential to get the job done right.

Spring cleaning your garden also involves maintenance tasks such as repairing any fencing around your garden area

Spring Cleaning Your garden

See GARDEN on 8


Ask The BuilderBattered Old Garage

Can Be Repaired

by Tim CarterSyndicated Columnist

You might be tempted to tear down this garage and start over, but there’s a good chance you can bring it back to its glory with a little effort.

DEAR TIM: I purchased a piece of property that has a 150-year-old garage in bad shape. It’s got a dirt floor. The roof is shot. It leaked so badly that in some places the wood roof sheathing is completely missing. The rafters that support the sheathing seem undersized and are not rotted for some rea-son. It’s a sorry-looking garage and I wonder if I should just tear it down and start over. Is there hope in a situation like this? What do you look for to decide if it’s too far gone? If I decide to just re-pair it, what would you do to restore it? --Walter G., Granite Falls, Minn.

DEAR WALTER: You first sentence contains a valuable clue that would help me guide my deci-sion. That garage was built a long time ago. If the exposed rafters are not rotted and most of the other framing and siding is in good shape, that tells me it probably was framed with old-growth timber that’s nearly impossible to find. Much of that wood is naturally rot resistant.

For that reason alone, I’d do everything possible

to salvage this historic and noble structure. I wear my heart on my sleeve when it comes to history and his-toric buildings so I’m not always objective in these situations.

You need to do a close inspection of the framing and make sure that there’s minimal rot. I’d also take a good look at the foun-dation to make sure it’s still in great shape. Then check the garage walls for plumb. Use a plumb bob for this, as it’s not a good idea to just put a 4-foot level on different wall studs.

Even if the structure is leaning one way or anoth-er, you can often rack it back into shape and get it plumb with minimal effort

and time. Once plumb, you just install some new diagonal bracing to hold it in place.

Here’s what this garage is whispering in your ear. It has withstood bru-tal, heavy snows for well over 100 years. It’s been punished by fierce wind-storms, and it’s still there. Some modern garages I see built won’t make it 50 years. While the roof rafters may appear under-sized, they probably are not. The lumber species may be a super strong one.

You can bolster the raf-ters by installing second-ary horizontal framing members called collar ties. These help strength-

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Many people are turn-ing to gardening. Call it a reawakening of the plea-sures of staying at home; call it reconnecting with the earth. Either way, if the endeavor is a renewal of a remembered pastime or entirely new, success will make the fruits (and vegetables) of your labor sweeter.

Economy first. A veg-etable garden can save you money, a lot. Win-ter squash for instance, sells for about a dollar a pound in the off sea-son. You can grow 100 hundred pounds (easily a winter’s worth) for about three dollars.

Salad greens cost about sixty cents per salad. Your cost: fifteen cents. Sweet peas, green beans, and summer squash will spill out of your garden and their garden-fresh taste will redefine those vegetables in your mem-ory.

Carrots, onions, and beets are easy to keep over winter if you grow enough surplus.

So hopefully you are motivated for the next part.

Every seed and seedling has the genetic ability to thrive. But without your care, most won’t. Your care begins with soil preparation, followed by planting, then, in many cases, thinning, weeding, and finally harvesting.

Leave one of these ele-ments out and you will likely get less than you hoped for. Care for your garden from start to fin-ish and you will feel like you’re in Eden.

A small well-cared-for garden is far more pro-ductive than a big gone-to-weeds garden. Fur-thermore, the resources that you gather to enrich your garden will be more effective in an intensively planted and cared-for plot. Start small.

Al l vegetables need sun, sufficient water, soil that is not too acidic, and decent drainage. Ten

hours of sunlight per day is needed for robust growth. Soil needs to be moist but well drained. New England soil tends to be acidic. Seeds don’t germinate well in acid soils and plants can’t take in the nutrients they need if the pH is too low (acid). Hill soil in ‘beds’ prevents standing wa-ter from damaging you plants.

For beginner garden-ers, it is best to stick to easy-to-grow vegetables.

1.Cherry or salad to-matoes, green beans, summer squash, pota-toes, cucumbers, and swiss chard are among the easiest.

2 .Next, I would add beets, carrots, peas, winter squash, broccoli, paste tomatoes, slicing tomatoes, and lettuce. They are slightly more difficult because their seeds are tiny (carrots), they require disciplined thinning (carrots, beets, and peas), or they need to be harvested properly for use in the post-sea-son (winter squash and paste tomatoes)

3.If you like herbs, ba-sil, dill, cilantro, and parsley can be consid-ered here. Herbs are re-ally fun if you know how to use them in meals.

4.I consider the fol-lowing vegetables more difficult. Peppers, cab-bage, cauliflower, on-ions, leeks, and spinach require some special at-tention.

They either are vulner-able to insect damage (cabbage and cauliflow-er), have special needs (onions need more than 14 hours of sun in order to form large bulbs) , or occupy a short season (spinach goes to seed when the weather turns warm).

5 .Eggplant and the melon family might be long-shots depending on the season. These will be successful some years (hot and dry) and dismal others. There are many more unusual vegetables that you might want to eat. Read up on them and decide how much

growing Your Food: TipS For eConomY and SuCCeSS

attention they need to succeed. Then decide if it’s worth it.

Compliments of David Neufeld, exhibitor and owner of Northstar Stone-works and TrueBrick Ov-ens lives in Sweden, ME and will be presenting seminars at the Northern

NE Home Garden Flower Show, at Fryeburg Fair-ground, MAY 15TH-17-TH. For more information on the show visit www.homegardenflowershow.com or www.facebook.com/fryeburgshow.

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en the roof. If you already have major collar ties that span across the base of the rafters sitting on top of each side wall, you can add slanted framing mem-bers from the collar tie to

your family and yourself. Follow all the recommen-dations at the EPA web-site about how to deal with lead paint on exterior surfaces (www.epa.gov/lead/).

If this were my garage, I’d take extensive photos and video of each step of the restoration process. Future owners of your property will really appre-ciate seeing the makeover happen and they’ll ap-preciate knowing where buried and hidden things might be in case they need to service these things at a future time.

Be sure to include a cool time capsule in the concrete floor. Make it out of a waterproof sturdy plastic jar and bury it with just an inch of concrete cover in a corner of the garage. Mark the outline of the jar in the wet con-crete and put this in the wet concrete: Time Cap-sule - Placed XX / XX / XXXX (the date you pour the slab). Future owners will one day open it and have a great time looking at a newspaper, coins and any other period items you place in the jar. A time capsule is a great fun project to build if you have young children.

Need an answer? All of Tim’s past columns are archived for free at www.AsktheBuilder.com. You can also watch hundreds of videos, download Quick Start Guides and more, all for free.(c)2015 TIM CARTER DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

BUILDER from 5 and water shield mem-branes. Put this on the entire roof covered with a great shingle and the roof might last another 100 years.

I’ve got no issues trying to bring this garage up to modern-day standards. If you decide to install a concrete slab in the ga-rage, I’d do several things. First, I’d put a floor drain in the garage to catch any melt water that might come off your car or truck in the winter.

Be sure to install a great vapor barrier under the concrete slab. The best ones are cross-laminated. If you can’t afford that, then put in at least a 6-mil vapor barrier. This product will keep mois-ture from the soil from entering the garage and rusting all the metal you store in there.

Extend electricity to the garage for all sorts of rea-sons. Follow all codes so it’s safe and don’t under power it. If you plan to use power tools and even electric welders, do the calculations so you have all the power you’ll need.

Since it’s a detached garage building, I’d con-sider a WiFi garage door opener. This way if you forget to close the ga-rage door, you can do it remotely from anywhere you have an Internet con-nection, including your smart phone from across the world!

When you go to repaint the exterior, be aware there’s a great chance you’ll have to deal with lead paint. Don’t just scrape away or use a pow-er sander recklessly. You can contaminate the soil,

and cleaning out last year’s containers and pots. It’s a good idea to mulch any dead plants from those old pots and compost the soil. Oth-er spring tasks include cleaning out birdhouses and feeders, checking sprinklers and thorough-ly cleaning any fountains or statues of the insects, algae and parasites that may have accumulated.

By taking the time to

spring clean your gar-den thoroughly, you’ll be ready and able to fully enjoy your gardens as they come to life!

Compliments of The Home Garden Flower Show – MAY FAIR, at Fryeburg Fairground, MAY 15TH – 17TH. For more information on the show visit www.homegar-denflowershow.com or www.facebook.com/frye-burgshow.

GARDEN from 4

Deck Demo DayAt Brock’s - 298 North Main St - Rochester, NH 03867

Saturday, May 16 Factory Reps on hand 9am-1pm

Did your deck take a beating this winter?Our Simpson Strong-Tie rep will be here to advise on checking deck safety.

Also joining us: Roadkill from The Morning Buzz!

Deck Demo DayAt Brock’s - 298 North Main St - Rochester, NH 03867

Saturday, May 16 Factory Reps on hand 9am-1pm

Did your deck take a beating this winter?Our Simpson Strong-Tie rep will be here to advise on checking deck safety.

Also joining us: Roadkill from The Morning Buzz!

the rafters much like you see in modern trusses. These will stiffen the roof rafters, too.

If you decide to save this garage, I’d suggest you invest the small amount of money and be sure you

put a minimum of 30-pound felt paper under the roofing. This underlay-ment will do a great job of protecting the structure. If your budget can handle it, the best underlayment would be the modern ice

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2015 Home and Garden Show