Creating a Gorgeous Raised Bed Garden

If you're looking to add a touch of beauty and functionality to your outdoor space, raised beds could be the perfect solution. Whether you're limited on space or just starting out on your flower-growing journey, raised beds offer a fantastic way to cultivate a thriving garden right at your doorstep. At PepperHarrow, we've embraced raised beds as a key part of our dahlia breeding efforts, and as an integral space for relaxing and entertaining. Today, we're going to guide you through the process of creating your very own raised bed garden.

Why Raised Beds? Raised beds offer a range of benefits and hey, let’s not overlook their beauty, making them an excellent choice for both beginners and seasoned gardeners. They're particularly useful when your soil isn't ideal for flower growth, providing you with a controlled and enriched growing environment. Additionally, these beds are easier to maintain compared to open-field plantings. Weeding and tending to your plants become less of a chore, and watering is more convenient since raised beds are often closer to water sources. Keep in mind that raised beds require more frequent watering than plants in the ground.

Designing Your Garden

Before you roll up your sleeves to get to work, take the time to draw out and design your raised bed garden. Sketch out a plan on paper to plan out a space that works for you, allocating enough space between each bed to allow for 3-foot-wide paths. Staking out the corners of your garden area with wood and tying strings between the stakes can help you frame the space accurately and ensure its level.

Here are the Materials Required for the Beds We Created for our Eight 4-by-8-foot raised beds in a 30-by-40-foot area, gather the following materials for each raised bed:

• (3) 2-x-12-x-8 treated lumber

• (1) 4-x-4-x-4-inch treated lumber

• (4) 6-x-6-inch steel corner braces

Additional Supplies:

• 200 feet of 6-foot or wider landscape fabric for weed barrier

• 100 Landscape pins to secure the fabric

• 160 3-inch exterior screws

• 48 2-cubic-foot bags of wood chips

• 160 1-cubic-foot bags of topsoil

• 500 pounds of chipped limestone road stone

• Drip irrigation or overhead watering apparatus

• Optional decorative arches for growing vines

• Seeds of your choice!

Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Raised Garden:

Step One: Preparing the Ground

1. Draw your raised bed plan on paper, considering the layout and spacing.

2. Stake each corner of your designated area using wood and tie strings between the stakes to outline your space and ensure it's level.

3. Lay down landscape fabric as a weed barrier.

Step Two: Creating the Base

1. Spread gravel evenly across the entire area using a landscaping rake.

2. Prepare the lumber, using 8-foot boards for the sides and cutting an 8-foot board in half to form two 4-foot ends.

Step Three: Assembling the Bed

1. Use your drill and screws to secure the lumber at the corners, utilizing the 4-x-4-inch lumber as braces.

Step Four: Adding Growing Medium

1. Lay six bags of wood chips in the bottom half of each raised bed, smoothing them out with the landscaping rake.

2. Finish by adding 20 bags of topsoil to fill the beds to the top. Keep in mind that the soil will settle over time, so you may need to add more before planting.

Sparkle Details =Dream Space

The last step is to add pieces that make your raised bed garden sparkle. Items like arches for growing vines, bistro lights, table and chairs are great things to add to really make the space inviting. All of this you can use for hosting guests, or for your own personal enjoyment.

By following these steps and using the materials mentioned above, you'll be well on your way to creating a beautiful and functional raised bed garden, just like the ones at our flower farm! As you tend to your flowers and watch them thrive, you'll appreciate the benefits of raised beds, from improved growing conditions to easier maintenance.

Whether you're an aspiring gardener, dahlia breeder or simply passionate about cultivating a beautiful flower garden, raised beds provide an excellent foundation for your gardening endeavors.

Happy growing!

XX Jenn and Adam

Blush Dahlias We Grow on the Flower Farm

Blush dahlias are a popular color among our florists and customers as a cut flower and it’s also a popular color with gardeners who purchase dahlia tubers as well! We want to share the list of our fav blush varieties we grow here on the flower farm. We’re always looking to add more, but these are staples for us each and every season.

Bloomquist Tory P

This is THE truly blush colored dahlia. It’s the perfect bloom to match a request for blush from a local florist or wedding couple. It’s also highly sought after as a tuber variety.

Cafe Au Lait

This large, beautiful bloom is just stunning. Their blooms are so large, they’re referred to as ‘dinner plate’ dahlias.

Tahoma Kellie

The bloom is smaller than most, but because of the long, sturdy stems and smaller bloom size, it’s perfect for bouquet work.

Pink Pearl

Another great shade of blush and a nice, long lasting bloom. She also blooms early in the season, helping to fulfill dahlias orders early.

Sweet Nathalie

This is a MUST have tuber for blush. The blooms are easy to work with and on the medium to large side in size. She can take on a bit of a mauve hue.

Narrows Ryder

Although a little on the white side, this is one that’s passable for blush and has nice tall, sturdy stems to work with.

Best Care Tips for Fresh Flowers

Best Care Tips for Fresh Flowers

After a successful weekend at farmer’s market, design classes and hosting a Bloom Bar at our flower farm, there was one question from everyone that kept coming up: What’s the best way to keep our flowers looking fresh?

After 11 years of growing and selling cut flowers locally, we have some great tips to share to help extend the vase life on your fresh cut flower bouquet and we’re going to share those with y’all!

The first thing to consider is: did you purchase your flowers already in water, or was it a wrapped bouquet that you transported home out of water?

If you purchased flowers already in water, it’s okay to not fuss too much with them when you first get them home. The key will be to maintenance them each day afterwards, which we’ll discuss below.

On the other hand, if your bouquet was purchased and you had it out of water to transport home, such as a wrapped bouquet, before you place it in your water you’ll want to trim the bottom of your stems before putting it into your vase of water.

Prepare Vase

Anytime you remove your flower stems from the water, pockets of air get into the stems. To remove the little air pockets, you’ll just want to trim a small amount from the bottom of the stems before adding your flowers into your vase of water.

Make sure your vase has been washed out thoroughly with soap and water before you use it for your fresh flowers. Keeping all of your supplies clean for your fresh flowers will go a long way to helping your fresh flowers stay beautiful longer. This includes the floral snips, or scissors you use to snip your stems.

Add Sugar & Bleach

Add 1 tsp of sugar and 1 tsp of bleach to your clean water

We’ve found that the sugar & bleach mixture works well in helping extend vase life for fresh blooms. The sugar gives your flowers something to eat and the bleach keeps the water clean. The perfect combination for fresh flowers!

The amount of each of these will vary depending on the size of the vase you use. Shown here is a 32 oz vase, hence the 1:1 ratio for the tsp. If you use half this size of vase, cut this amount in half.

Remove Foliage

Remove any leaves/foliage from the bottom of the stems - any foliage that will touch the water.

Removing foliage from the bottom of your stems, anything that will touch the water, will make sure your flowers stay beautifully for days. If any foliage gets into the water, it will start to break down and cause rot and bacteria. This makes the water ‘dirty’ and will shorten the vase life for your fresh flowers.

Taking a small amount of extra time to remove all foliage that will touch the water, before you place your fresh flowers into your vase of water, will ensure success in extending the vase life for your fresh blooms.

Trim Stems

Anytime you remove your flower stems from the water, pockets of air get into the stems. To remove the little air pockets, you’ll just want to trim a small amount from the bottom of the stems before adding your flowers into your vase of water.

After following all of the above steps, finish up by placing your fresh flowers in your vase.

Be sure to change the water every two days, following the above directions, especially re-trimming the bottom of the stems before you place them back into the water.

Vase life for your fresh flowers can vary depending on the type of flower in the bouquet; however, you can typically expect your fresh flowers to last between 7-10 days.

PepperHarrow's 10 Year Anniversary!

IT’S BEEN A WONDERFUL 10 YEARS ON THE FLOWER FARM.

We’ve had so many success and failures over the last 10 years. It’s been full of learning and growing - of our land, flowers, and most importantly, in ourselves and our relationship. At times it hasn’t been an easy endeavor, but the reward of owning our own business, creating success, and growing the most gorgeous local flowers in Central Iowa has been worth all of it 1000X over.

Cute Celebratory Boards by @CakeDSM

Celebrating 10 years of owning a small business is pretty surreal. We high-fived, and celebrated this huge milestone, but we also found ourselves completely taken aback that it had been 10 years. It’s funny how the years seem to blend together and how 10 years ago almost feels like a yesterday.

We celebrated our special night with over 125 of our most favorite customers, they are the folks that have supported us and enabled us to hit this huge milestone. It’s with their support, encouragement, and love of our small business that has helped us build our dream into a reality! Okay, totally gushing over our customers, but y’all get the point. They’re the most wonderful peeps and have treated us so well over the years. Because of this, we treated everyone who came out to complimentary food, beverages, ice cream, and of course FLOWER BOUQUETS!

Yep, that’s right! We sent them out into our flower fields to cut their own bouquets to take home as a small token of our appreciation for them. It was the absolute BEST to see everyone enjoy themselves so much and to also see the beautiful bouquets they created. It was a hit with our Friends of PepperHarrow and something we’d like to treat our best customers to every few years.

Photo Courtesy of CakeDSM

Our 10 year anniversary celebration was not only to celebrate the farm, but we also held it in support of our local Madison County Conservation, who is building a new conservation center at Pammel Park. If you missed out on the opportunity to contribute, you can do so by scanning the PayPal QR code, below to make a donation. Or, you can send payments on PayPal via email address to: naturalist@madisoncountyparks.org

All proceeds will go directly to the conservation center as well as other nature enrichment activities for an outdoor classroom space. Next time you visit Madison County, check out some our treasured parks. You can get a list of them here.

Thank you so much for helping us celebrate 10 years and here’s to another wonderful 10 years of success to come! We can’t wait to share more of our flower farming journey with all of you, as well as more exciting announcements to come.

XX Jenn and Adam

Parenting While Running a Flower Farm

Let’s face it, being a parent is the hardest job we’ll ever do in our lifetime, but add work commitments, cleaning, making meals, and maybe, just maybe, squeezing a tiny amount time out for our ourselves to preserve mental sanity, on top of simply being a mom, is even more difficult.

The whole concept work/life balance thing is not something I’ve been good at mastering, but I wanted to share some of my own stories about running a flower farm while raising three beautiful children. The stories range from the good, to the bad, to the downright ugly. Raising kids definitely isn’t an exact science. I’ll also share some small, practical tips on how to manage a full-time job, but saving plenty of time for family time.

When we first started flower farming journey in 2011, our kids were so little. Our oldest was 7, followed by our 3 year old and finally, the baby, who was a 10 month old at the time. Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into with trying to manage growing flowers and raising kids. It was totally ‘insane in the membrane’ as Adam always says.

One thing about running a flower farm many don’t always know is that both Adam and I are out in the flower fields for over 14 hours most days, sunrise to sunset. When the kids were little, it would be a constant struggle having them outside with us, trying to keep them entertained while we planted, weeded, watered, and harvested all of our flowers. AND all the while we were learning how to flower farm, which is totally different process than just growing a beautiful, bountiful garden.

The Bad

There were were many times I’d lay the baby down for a nap and would head back out outside with my little hand-held baby monitor. I’d work for what felt like 10 minutes before I’d hear her awake and start playing in her crib. I’m a little ashamed to admit that I’d let her play for at least another 20 minutes until she’d start calling or crying for me. Looking back, this is a total mom-guilt moment for sure.

One of the funniest/scariest moments ever, was ‘loosing’ the baby, because I’d been outside working and had our oldest child take the lead on watching her. She crawled and snuck away from him while he was watching cartoons. After frantically searching for her for at least 10 minutes and after using my shrill, frantic, terrified ‘mom’ voice to call her name, we finally found her in the kitchen behind the island, playing in cups full of flour from the baking cabinet.

The Good

Raising kids and trying to work on the flower farm isn’t full of all bad stories. There have also been some really wonderful moments for both the kids as well as my husband and I. We’ve spent countless hours together working in the gardens, teaching the kids the intrinsic gardening learnings that translate to real life skills, sharing names of flowers, showing them how to harvest, and how to care for the land.

You might think these things would be a bad memory for them, and certainly it’s probably something that they don’t yet cherish yet, but I know they’ll look back on those memories fondly, remember the time we spent together as a family, and may even end up on a farm themselves later in life, chasing the intangible joy of their childhood

My most favorite family activity with the kids is watching them make their own bouquets with the flowers we grow. It’s very interesting to see their little personalities come out in what they design. The boys have stopped making bouquets at this point, but have benefited from our flower farming endeavors, impressing their dates with bouquets of flowers occasionally and even like our ‘free’ corsages and boutonnières for homecoming and prom dances.

I shared a little bit more about myself and one of my biggest joys about being a mom and running a flower farm on Des Moines Moms’ blog. You can check it out here: https://desmoines.momcollective.com/jenn-oneal-pepperharrow-farm/.

The Most Important Message of All
Running a flower farm and raising kids isn’t a perfect scenario, but you can find some sort of balance with it. The biggest secret to all of this is you have to give yourself a little grace, and not focus on perfection.

Did everything get done that you needed to get done? Probably not, but was it done good enough? Done.

Did your kids eat dinner? Okay, maybe it was a quick sandwich, but they did eat, right? Done.

Give yourself a little grace and know that no one is perfect and certainly no garden or flower farm is ever completely perfect, tasks are never completely done, the list just keeps going…for all of us, so there’s no need to strive for perfection and wear yourselves and your kids out.

Cherish every moment spent with your kids and also cherish the wonderful learning opportunities in the garden. Get them excited to see the first blooms on flowers they helped plant and give them freedom to cut blooms to enjoy for themselves and place in their rooms. At the end of the day you want to make sure yourself and your family are happy, healthy, and loved much. This is the most simple, best thing we can do!

XX Jenn

Photo by Leah Ried