Idea Queen Tips & News

This is part six of our Gardening Ideas Series, which talks about where to find vegetable plants online and offline. See the rest of the series in our Gardening section.

While I personally buy my vegetable plants in local greenhouses, I know not everyone has that option. Which is why Nature Hills is a great place to look when buying vegetable plants online. Click the banner above for more information on their selection, including organic plants of all kinds.

This year we plan to plant our three favorite vegetable plants. We didn’t start them inside because it’s just easier to buy them, and we know they’ll grow well if we do. Here are those three:

- Tomatoes, Better Boys
Easy to grow just about anywhere, although it’s been our experience that a new garden freshly dug up will product the absolute best crops. The first year we planted tomatoes, we had hundreds (no joke!). This particular kind are our favorites, and perfect for salsa.

- Green Bell Peppers
Also great for salsa, thus the reason we buy them every year. In the past we’ve used them for other cooking as well. Sometimes peppers can be quite fickle though, and not every year is a good year. Keep a close eye on them as they are growing and keep them free of weeds.

- Jalapeno
Nothing fancy or extremely hot, just a regular Jalapeno (sometimes reffered to as “Early Jalapeno”). These are the best for salsa if you don’t use too many. It can also be a finicky plant, so keep it free of weeds and bugs. Also watch you don’t mow over it. Yes, I did that to a plant one year. Oops.
As mentioned previously in the series, we are keeping the tomatoes separate from the peppers on either ends of the “old part” of the garden. The tomatoes need a whole lot more room than the pepper plants do, and those pepper plants won’t get to big at all. You also need to make sure these get full sun and no shade from those tomato plants (or anything else for that matter).

For more vegetable plant ideas, be sure to visit Nature Hills Nursery, Inc.

This is part five of our Gardening Ideas Series, which is all about finding bulbs for your flower garden. To see all the past ideas, be sure to see our Gardening Section.

Perennials are probably my favorite types of flowers, since they require little to no effort on my part and can fill in anywhere in your flower garden.

While some flower seeds are classified as perennials due to their ability to reseed themselves, your best bet for a beautiful flower is to buy bulbs (or get starts from friends and neighbors, of course).

There are simply too many different types for us to list here, so I recommend heading over to Nature Hills Nursery, Inc. to see what they have available. Walmart is another option, although there’s a good chance they wouldn’t grow. Best to stick to trusted sources or live plants in your area.

Around my yard I’ve let the tiger lilies take over for the most part, but we’ve also added Iris and will be adding Bleeding hearts (which is more of a plant than a flower, but I did get a start of it like you would a flower bulb). Aside from those, I also like to plant some annuals around so my flower garden is never the same two years in a row.

I’ll be replacing the tiger lily slowly with other plants, and there’s no shortage of them online. Nature Hills currently has over 300 varieties to choose from, so you are sure to find flower bulbs to plant in your yard! I’ll be hitting this site up soon when I’m ready to add more.

This is part four of our Gardening Ideas Series. To see all the past ideas, be sure to see our Gardening Section.

If you haven’t started your seeds indoors yet, now is the time to do it. Unless you plan to either plant your seeds directly into the ground or buy plants, you may be pushing the clock slightly. Certain vegetables absolutely need to be started inside first, which I hope you have been following our series and already done.

While the weather might not be perfect for getting things planted, it’s a perfect time to start some major planning. Depending on what you are growing you’ll need to plan accordingly. Vegetables that grow on vines such as zucchini, squash, and pumpkin are going to need lots of space to grow. Corn needs to be planted in rows, or else it will not pollinate correctly. Other types of vegetables are going to need lots of sun, so you can’t plant them in a shady spot.

There’s so many variables it’s just not possible for me to list them all. However, I can give you some examples of what we are doing this year.

Since we are extending our garden, I’ve now got room to grow both tomatoes, peppers, and pumpkins. A few weeks ago I had to make a choice though - I wanted to plant sweet corn, but realized it just wouldn’t be possible. So I opted for the pumpkins, armed with my new knowledge of how to keep the squash bugs at bay. Because of the pumpkins, we’ll have quite a few flowers to plant. Some will get planted directly into the ground, while others we’ve already started indoors.

Imagine if you will a long strip of a garden that extends from one edge of our property to the garage. It’s about 25-30 feet long, but only about 5 feed wide. This actually works to our advantage though, since there’s only room for two or three rows of veggies. (Easy to maintain, you see). About half of it (what we are calling the “new part”) is reserved for the pumpkins and it’s flowers.

Starting from the “old part” from the edge of our property, we’ll be planting tomatoes. Most likely 6 plants, all big boys, planted in two rows. You’ll want to leave a little room for them to grow, because tomatoes (even with cages, which you DO need) are going to fan out a bit. Green peppers and jalapenos will be next, four of each, planted in 4 rows (they are smaller, and don’t fan out like the tomatoes do). Two rows of green peppers in the back, two rows of jalapenos in the front.

Next was going to come the strawberries, but they aren’t growing. Probably best, because we really didn’t have room for them anyway. Instead I’ll be planting Calendula right along the edge of the “old” and “new”. These are flowers are part of the collection meant to attract the fly that will eat those nasty squash bugs. They are getting an early start right now, and will be transplanted come May.

For a few weeks they’ll be a large gap between our plants, since it will take awhile for the pumpkins to take over and the next flower to come up. Alyssum will be planted in a scattered fashion on the bed of the “new section” since it’s a good “flower bed floor” covering anyway. It too is meant to keep the squash bugs out. They will get planting directly into the ground within the next week or so (I was informed even if we do have some below freezing nights it probably won’t hurt them, so I’ll get it started in mid-April).

On the edges of the “new section”, they’ll be several other flowers. Nasturtium on the front edge, Daisies on the back edge, and Zinnia on the final edge near the garage. All three will be planted directly into the ground in late April or early May. They’ll all have at least a month to grow before the pumpkin plants (started indoors over a week ago) are transplanted, which won’t be until the first of June.

The reason we’re holding off on planting the pumpkins are for two reasons. One, we want to make sure we have nice strong plants before we expose them to the bugs. Two, we were informed that planting them later will prevent the first round of bugs for finding them. Since we had them last year, there’s a good chance they are still in our garden (even though we are getting it tilled again this year). Planting the flowers early we hope will attract the flies, eat the bugs, and rid us of the problem completely. Fingers crossed, over course.

One last protection for our pumpkins are the herbs we’ll be planting near the garden. They got a head start as well, and only half will get planted outside (we’re leaving the rest inside to cook with). They won’t actually be in the garden, but near it by the garage and our tiger lilies.

That’s all for our vegetable garden! To see more on flower gardens and our plans, see our previous section on flower seeds.

Be sure to see Nature Hills Nursery, Inc. for the seeds mentioned here, plus, plants, bulbs, and other gardening supplies at good prices!

This is part three of our Garden Ideas Series, which will be talking about basic herb gardens and ideas for starting them indoors. See part one on flower seeds and part two on vegetable seeds.

We’re trying something new this year. Never before have we grown herbs, but we will be this year for a very specific purpose - to keep the squash bugs away from our precious pumpkin patch. That, and we thought it would be fun to have some home grown herbs as well, since we do a LOT of cooking.

Two types of herbs we started indoors already, and will be planted near our pumpkins along with several other types of flowers. These herbs are the following:

- Dill
This is one of my absolute favorite herbs, so I was pretty excited to see it on the list of potential plants which attract the squash bug’s enemy, the tachnid fly. I do love cooking with this, and have used it in breads and other really good recipes.

- Parsley
Another great herb, and something we use in our homemade breads and other recipes. I’ve read this is also a great herb to have growing around roses, since it’s suppose to help the health and fragrance. Quite a fantastic herb to have in the garden I’d say, or even in the kitchen!

Since this is our first year trying out herbs, we aren’t going too crazy here. We decided to grow them both inside and out, just to see what would happen and because the garden versions were meant to protect and not eat. It may be we end up with a lot of both herbs on our hands, but that would be perfectly fine too!

- Catnip
I don’t know if you want to call this an herb, but I don’t think it’s a flower either. We have cats, so we usually plant catnip for them as something fun. It gets started inside and transplanted every year. Although it never seems to last long outside because the cats eat it! That’s fine, that’s what we put it in there for!

Be sure to see more herb seeds, live plants, and gardening supplies at Nature Hills Nursery, Inc.

Since spring is almost here, it’s time to start planning and planting those seeds, bulbs, plants, bushes, flowers, and vegetables. If you need some help, Nature Hills has free catalogs available.

If you are going to buy online or by mail, I highly suggest this particular store. Their prices are reasonable and selection is just outstanding. They’ve got just about anything you can think of for all gardening supplies, making this an excellent place to request free gardening catalogs.

Click here to order a Free Nature Hills Nursery Catalog

This is part two of our Gardening Ideas Series, which will talk mostly about vegetable seeds and where to buy them. You can see part one here.

Our garden wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t have some type of veggies planted. In past years we’ve taken the easy route and purchased most of our plants, but lately we’ve begun to start quite a few indoors.

While we do plan to buy several plants this year, there are a few we’ll be starting in pots come spring break. Here’s what we plant to start in pots:

- Strawberries
We’ve actually already started these, since I found some cute mini kits at Target around Valentine’s day. Although I have my doubts they are going to grow right (due to an accident involving cats and tiny little pots), so I may just buy some more seeds and try again. The tricky thing with the strawberries though is they are so tiny! It’s about impossible to sow them!

Once they are ready for transplant, I’ll be putting them on the edge of the garden in a row coming out from the back (sideways, if you will), which is the center of our backyard and gets the most sun.

- Pie Pumpkin
We tried this last year with not so great luck, but after some research I’ve zeroed in on the problem. What we had was “Squash Bugs”, which attach pumpkins, cucumbers, and squash. One of the tips was to not only start your plans indoors (which is what we did last year, thus the reason we did at least get ONE pumpkin), but to plant other flower seeds with it.

So to add to our list of flower seeds in our garden, we’ll be planting alyssum, zinnia, daisy, and nasturtium (as well with some herbs) to attract tachnid flys, which are a natural enemy of the squash bug. It will be rather different this year with a garden lined all the way around with various flowers and herbs. I’m actually excited to see how it’s going to look! All these flower seed will get planted directly in the ground somewhere in late April or early May. Calendula will be started with the rest of our flowers in the next few days (over spring break) and transplanted outside in May.

To take yet a further step, we’re planting the pumpkins in a different place than we did last year. Our garden is basically a long strip, probably 12 feet by 4 feet, that lines the back fence. Off to one side is an unused area that I’ll be expanding the garden to and planting the pumpkins at. (So now it will be more like 15 feet instead of 12 feet). In the “old” garden is where the tomato plants will go, and in between the old and new right on the edge is where the strawberries will go.

The pumpkin seeds we’ll start over spring break just as we normally, but we don’t plan to transplant them until after the first of June. We want a nice, healthy plant, and we picked up a tip that says this might help miss the first infestation of squash bugs, thus giving our pumpkins a fighting chance. Boards will also go around the plants so the bugs will crawl under them at night and we can squish them in the morning.

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Aside from the two mentioned above we plan to start inside, we’ll be planting two other types of veggies in to the garden this year. One is tomato plants (big boys are our favorites) and green peppers (probably both green bell peppers and jalapenos) which will be purchased and planted directly in the ground. We could grow these from seeds as well, but tomatoes and peppers can be quite picky, so we prefer to buy them.

For more seeds and ideas for what to plant in your garden, be sure to check out Nature Hills Nursery, Inc.

This is part one of our Gardening Ideas Series, and will talk mostly about flower seeds. As in where to buy flower seeds online, and when to plant, and what we plan to add to our garden this year.

I love flowers. One of my fondest childhood memories was taking a walk through the greenhouse next door to my dad’s. I also loved the smell of the walk-in cooler with the carnations, baby’s breath, roses, and assorted flowers. It’s no wonder I have flowers growing all over my small yard.

In addition to the perennials that come up every year (which I’ll talk about in the flower bulb installment of our series), I’m planning to plant the following annuals and perennials this year:

- Four O’Clocks
While these are suppose to be in full sun, last year I planted them around my tree. They were absolutely beautiful, and I plan to do it again this year. The beauty of these plants is you can easily pluck the seeds from the plants. They aren’t hard to see - just look for a black seed around a blooming stem. Really the seeds stick out and are easy to spot. Plus one plant will produce tons of seeds, ensuring you an endless stock of these plants. You can even give some away to friends and family.

These flowers I’ll be planting directly into the ground after the risk of frost has passed, usually in late April or early May. They grow pretty quickly and spread out very well, making them a nice filler for under a tree.

- Canterbury Bells, Sweet William, and Delphinium
This may seem like a slightly odd combination of flowers, but it’s what I found in my stock. Not sure where they all came from, but I sure to like the looks of them. I’m not sure where I’m going to plant them all just yet, but they will for sure all get a home in my wrap-around-the-house flower bed.

What I plan to do with these is get several mini pots or containers for multiple flowers and start them ahead of time (usually we plant our seeds inside over spring break or in late March, giving them 6-8 weeks before planting them outside). The main reason I plan to start them inside is this - I want to see what each of them look like before I plant them around the house. All three are labeled as perennials because of their ability to reseed themselves, so I need to make sure I’m going to like them first before being stuck with them. Although I have planted Sweet William in the past, and they make for a nice “filler” on the floor of a garden.

- Morning Glory
I don’t know why, but this is my absolute favorite flower. Some call it a weed, and it does reseed itself sometimes. I have also yet to find a perfect place to grow it in my yard. The plant is really a vine and needs somewhere to climb.

A few years ago I tried growing them in the middle of the backyard (yes the MIDDLE. As in nothing else around it….I did this because there was a bare spot from where a sandbox had been the previous summer), but it just didn’t look right. Last year I tried the fence, but quickly realized that wasn’t very neighborly of me because the people behind me (who actually own the fence), may not care for them.

This year I’m going to break down and buy (or make) something for them to grow up on. Like a trellis or something similar homemade. Then where I put it won’t matter, because it will look beautiful about anywhere. Truth be told I really want an arch, but that’s not in the budget this year. However, a homemade trellis that the kids make from popsickle sticks might just do the trick…and make for a fun project as well.

These seeds will get planted directly in the ground come May when the threat of frost is past.

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Well that’s about it for the flower seeds we plan to plant indoors within the next few weeks and come May. As mentioned before, we’ll plant the ones inside in small pots around spring break, which starts the second to last week in March. Not only does it give us something to do while the kids are out of school, but it gets us in the mood for spring and our garden started as well!

If you are looking for more seeds to buy or are curious about other flower seeds, be sure to have a look at the flower seeds at Nature Hills Nursery. They’ve got a fantastic selection, good prices, and detailed descriptions of each so you know what to do with them before you buy them.

Have fun!

Since spring is just around the corner, we’re starting a brand new series on gardening here at the blog. For the next several weeks we’ll be bringing you tips, ideas, and where to buy seeds, bulbs, and live plants. This series will including gardening ideas for flowers, vegetables, and herbs.

Being a farmer’s granddaughter and having a weekend dad who was once in the floral business (who also still lived next door to a greenhouse), I know that gardening and farming is in my blood. When I bought my first home, I couldn’t wait to start adding my own personal touch to the floral decor and growing my own food. Eight years later and I still get excited when the snow starts to melt, exposing my garden once again.

My house isn’t big, and I don’t live on a very large lot. One lonely tree stands in front of the house, but flowers are rapped completely around and a small garden is tilled in the back. Every year I try out something new, no matter if it’s a new vegetable or annual flower, or even a new perennial in a place where there wasn’t anything before. In the summer, our yard is simply alive.

For this series, we’ll be referencing Nature Hills Nursery, Inc. because I really like this store. It has everything you could possibly want for gardening, including seeds, plants, bulbs, and other supplies for decent prices. If you are looking to buy any of the gardening supplies you see in this series online, we’ll give you a link from this store.

If you live in central Iowa though, I highly recommend Hendrikson’s Greenhouse in Newton. This greenhouse was once owned by my dad’s family long before I was born, and really still is. The current owners have always been somewhat of an extended family to me with my dad still living next door, and I’ve known them all my life. They are great people and this is truly a “family owned business”.

Be watching every Wednesday for a new segment of our gardening ideas series!