Just love this new statewide program coming from the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines. The zoo is teaming up with 10 organizations to introduce Plant.Grow.Fly., a conservation effort to bring back native pollinators. Through Plant.Grow.Fly., Iowans are encouraged to plant pollinator habitat in yards, schools and businesses.
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Category: gardening
Spring is (almost) here: a look at the w...
Temperatures – finally reaching highs the state hasn’t seen since November – are one indication that spring is on its way. Another is the number of gardening and eco-events cropping up in Eastern Iowa. A look at the Homegrown calendar shows something happening every day this week, with some offering more than one option. If […]
Share your ideas for Homegrown Iowan
A feature on The Authentic Storytelling Project today about Homegrown Iowan offered an opportunity for me to reflect on the future of the website as we approach our anniversary. Homegrown Iowan is an extension of what I’ve been doing for years as a journalist: spreading the word about local foods, farmers markets, gardening and events […]
Biggest tomato, ever – the SteakHouse –
Seed catalogs are on their way and so are the new plant introductions. Burpee sent along information about this new, incredibly large “SteakHouse” tomato. For those of us with little space to spare in the garden, the container sweet corn sounds interesting, as well. Here is more from Burpee on the seed company’s latest offerings:
Have your garden, and eat it, too
No gardener has room for it all, but author Alys Fowler intentionally breaks the rules to show how you can “have your garden and eat it, too,” in her new book, “The Edible Garden.” Read on for how you can win a free copy of this 250-page book. Trained at the Horticultural Society, the New […]
Guest column: Holiday Plant Care
I had the opportunity to interview TV/radio host, author and gardening expert Melinda Myers several years ago when she was in Iowa for the Winter Gardening Fair. Just months later, she sent timely information on coping with flooded landscapes as Eastern Iowa was inundated by floodwaters. Melinda, who has a new book coming out this […]
My “issue” with hoarding
I shouldn’t be ashamed to admit this. I mean, it could be worse. Some people hoard “stuff.” Others stockpile food or even guns. Every fall, my annual hoarding tradition begins when I get the rake out of the garage. The object of my obsession: leaves.
Photo gallery: Last gasp of autumn
I feel somewhat cheated. After enduring an especially hot Iowa summer, it seems we’ve jumped straight into winter. It’s rare that we would get a full three months of fall, as the calendar dictates, but it would have been nice to have more than a week or two, (or was it just a day or […]
Ready for the big freeze? Five ways to p...
We shouldn’t be surprised that in mid-to-late October, we have a frost warning in Iowa. Normally, we would have seen at least a light frost by now, if not already a killing freeze. In fact, this map from The Weather Channel shows that Iowa is already past the average date of the first freeze. Here […]
Iowa mystery caterpillar looking for an ...
UPDATE: Laura Jesse, entomologist with Iowa State University Extension, said while she is not 100 percent certain from the photograph, it appears the mystery caterpillar is what several of us suspected: a white-lined sphinx moth. “They have a lot of variability,” she noted, and sent along this link: http://bugguide.net/node/view/3071 Previous post: A Homegrown reader is […]