Spring Planning for the Flower Garden

Spring is the perfect time to start thinking about your flower garden. Whether you're an experienced gardener or just starting out, there are a few tips and tricks that can help ensure a successful, beautiful display, full of blooms all growing season long. Here are some spring flower garden tips to help you get started with a beautiful flower garden:

Choose the Right Plants: When selecting plants for your garden, it's important to choose ones that are well-suited for your climate and soil type. You can consult with your local nursery or gardening center for recommendations on plants that thrive in your area. Check out our flower, shrub, tree, and ground cover suggestions for each growing zone in our guest contribution for MarthaStewart.com. You can access it here!

Choose Easy to Grow Flowers: We love growing easy to grow flowers, because they give us high impact color and blooms for very little effort. These are also great to look at when you first start a grade, because they’ll help you to build confidence as you grow! Here’s some great ideas via our guest feature in MarthaStewart.com for 12 Easy Annuals for Beginner Gardeners.

Zinnias are Easy to Grow Flowers & attract butterflies at PepperHarrow Flower Farm

Prepare the Soil: Before planting, make sure to prepare the soil by adding compost or other organic matter to improve its texture and nutrient content. This will help your plants grow strong and healthy.

Water Wisely: It's important to water your plants regularly, but be careful not to overwater them. Too much water can lead to root rot and other issues. Check the soil moisture regularly and water as needed.

Provide Enough Sunlight: Most flowering plants require plenty of sunlight to thrive. Make sure to choose a spot in your garden that gets plenty of sunlight throughout the day. We recommend at least 6 hours of sun each day for a plant that requires full sun, part sun or also shade. For shade plants, they just really don’t like a lot of intense sun, dappled is best!

Deadhead Regularly: To encourage your plants to produce more blooms, it's important to deadhead them regularly. This involves removing spent flowers from the plant to promote new growth.

Protect from Pests: Unfortunately, pests and insects can be a problem in any garden. To protect your plants, consider using natural remedies like neem oil or companion planting with herbs like basil and mint, which can repel pests.

We hope these tips help you create a beautiful and thriving spring flower garden! If you need more flower garden inspiration, follow along with us on Instagram via pepperharrow_ or on Facebook: PepperHarrow. And let us know if you have any questions, by commenting below!

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