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Gardening in Iowa Zones
Zone maps are a gardener’s best tool for selecting plants that will do well in local gardens. This publication includes information about and how to use the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map and the AHS Plant Heat Zone Map.

Previously known as RG 215. RG 0215
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2024 Garden Calendar - Tree Care
Trees bring many benefits to home landscapes: lowering energy bills by providing shade or blocking winter winds, offering fruit for people and wildlife, and demonstrating beauty with attractive bark, seasonal flowers, or foliage throughout the seasons. With careful maintenance trees can be enjoyed for many years.

This calendar provides tips on properly caring for trees so that they may last a lifetime or more in your landscape.
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Calendar
$8.00
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Gardening for Butterflies and Pollinators
The flash of a colorful butterfly and the buzz of a bumble bee traveling between flowers bring extra beauty and enjoyment to our gardens. Planning your garden or landscape to include plants that attract and sustain butterflies, bees, and other beneficial insects can increase the populations of these desired insects and increase the diversity you can observe and enjoy. You will also be doing your part to help preserve butterflies, honey bees and pollinators that are threatened and in decline.

Previously known as RG 0601.
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Growing Tomatoes in a Container
Use these tips to grow delicious tomatoes in containers!
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Three Steps - PDF
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Three Steps (Spanish) - PDF
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Six Steps - PDF
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Six Steps (Spanish) - PDF
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Produce Safety in Gardens
Take steps to ensure that your garden's produce is safe to eat! Produce Safety in Gardens includes facilitator guides and participant materials for three interactive lessons focused on raising safe garden produce.

Activities introduce basic safety principles for working or volunteering in a garden, including proper handwashing, volunteer hygiene, identifying food safety hazards, and preventing cross-contamination.
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Want Yard or Garden Information? - Ask Iowa State University Extension and Outreach
You’ll find more than 100 publications with facts about flowers, vegetables, herbs, fruits, lawns, trees, and shrubs listed in this gardening resources publication.
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Horticulture Project Area Guide
How does your garden grow? In this project area, you will learn how to plant it, dig it, grow it, show it, and eat it.
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Early Spring Blooming Perennials
Several perennials that bloom in early spring are often forgotten about among flowers like crocuses and daffodils. Learn how pig squeak, heartleaf brunnera, Lenten rose, candytuft, crested iris, Virginia bluebells, moss phlox, lungwort or Bethlehem sage, pasque flower, and bloodroot could enhance your garden.
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Growing Together: Food Safety in Donation Gardens
Tips for keeping donation garden produce food safe during the stages of growing, harvest, and transport.
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Make Food Safety a Priority in Your School Garden
Research shows that a nutritious diet helps children learn better, and that kids are more likely to try and enjoy fresh vegetables and fruits if they helped grow them. School garden programs provide a unique opportunity for students to grow fresh vegetables, eat healthy food, and share their harvest with the rest of their school district by donating or selling it to the school cafeteria. To assure the food safety of the vegetables harvested from school gardens by students, schools should implement food safety protocols for their school garden activities.

This publication contains sample protocols for schools to use as they design best practices for their school gardens. These protocols are adapted from federal and state guidelines for Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and Good Handling Practices (GHP).
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Top 13 vegetables to donate to food pantries
Many gardeners produce excess vegetables during the growing season. Some preserve their surplus vegetables for later use, while others give friends and neighbors the extras. Another option for using this excess produce could be a local food pantry. This publication discusses 13 vegetables that can be donated to food pantries and tips for growing and harvesting those vegetables.
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Hop Production 101: Commercial Hop Yard Trellis Design
As hop production returns to Iowa, growers are wanting more information on producing healthy and abundant harvests. This publication discusses the best practices for designing and constructing a hops yard.
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Hop Production 101: Site selection and planting
As hop production returns to Iowa, growers are wanting more information on producing healthy and abundant harvests. This publication discusses the best practices for selecting a site to grow hops and how to plant the crop.
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Integrated Pest Management for Home Gardens and Landscapes
Identifying and encouraging naturally occurring predators and parasites is a useful gardening skill. This fact sheet describes 10 beneficial insects and also offers other tips for preventing insect and disease problems.
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Composting Yard Waste
Explains the materials needed for a compost pile and includes construction directions for building a 3-bin composting unit.
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Small Sprayer Calibration
Pesticides must be applied at the labeled rate to achieve consistent results. Taking the time to properly calibrate the sprayer can improve the performance of the product, diminish the possibility of injury, and reduce pest control costs.
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Rain Gardens: Filtering and Recycling Rain Water
Rain gardens collect and filter rain water to improve storm water management. They also can provide an attractive habitat for birds, butterflies, and beneficial insects.
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When to Divide Perennials
Herbaceous perennials are commonly divided for three reasons: to control size, to rejuvenate plants, and to propagate a prized perennial. The best time to divide perennials varies with the different plant species. Get the details here.
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Organic Mulches
When choosing which organic mulch to use, consider availability, cost, appearance, function, and durability. Includes information on using bark, cocoa-bean hulls, corncobs, grass clippings, leaves, newspapers, pine needles, sawdust, straw, and wood chips.
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Choosing a Landscape Contractor
Hiring a landscaper can be a daunting task. This publication provides information on professional certification and other requirements in Iowa, and topics to discuss with potential contractors.
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Choosing an Arborist
Tree work should be performed only by a properly trained and equipped arborist. Considerations in choosing an arborist include certification, insurance, references, contracts, etc.
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Sustainable Home Landscapes
Sustainable landscapes require less time, money and other resources.

This book provides information on creating an environmentally friendly, economically feasible, and beautiful landscape by placing the right plant at the right place.
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$6.00
Ornamental Water Features for the Midwest
Water gardens are appealing to many, but the climate in the Midwest presents some specific challenges. This book examines the many considerations to building a water garden in the Midwest and includes basic guidelines for construction, maintenance, and selecting plants.
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$7.00
Weed Management in the Home Garden
Describes three methods of weed control for the home gardener; includes tips for using mulches effectively.
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How to Construct a Cold Frame or Hotbed
Cold frames and hotbeds are used to germinate seeds of cool season crops in the early spring and to harden off plants before transplanting outdoors. Both should be placed on well-drained soils with a southern exposure. A list of needed materials plus instructions are provided.
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Prairies and Native Plantings as Outdoor Classrooms -- Sustainable Urban Landscapes
This publication outlines a process and the resources needed to help establish prairie to be used as an outdoor classroom. Such a classroom can be used to educate elementary through high school aged students about science, math, language arts, social studies and the arts.
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References and Resources for Prairies and Native Plantings -- Sustainable Urban Landscapes
Prairie plants and other native plants are returning to the Iowa landscape. This publication offers a list of resources that will help those planning to create any size prairie plantings.
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Garden Tips Guidelines to Seasonal Chores -- Reiman Gardens
Learn to properly maintain your garden all year round. Includes information on what steps to take with your lawn, fruits, trees and shrubs, flowers, herbs, houseplants, and/or vegetables in the early and late part of each season.
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Questions About Composting -- Reiman Gardens
If you are starting a compost pile in your yard or garden this year, this publication answers a few of the commonly asked questions about composting.
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Water Gardens: FAQs -- Reiman Gardens
Starting and maintaining a water garden of any size inevitably brings questions. Find answers to the most commonly asked questions here.
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Home Landscape Planning Worksheet: 12 Steps to a Functional Design
This worksheet will guide you through the process of designing a functional landscape plan -- from gathering the right information to refining the preliminary design and selecting plants. Includes graph paper and 2-part questionnaire.
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Griffith Buck: Rose Hybridizer
Griffith Buck introduced 85 rose cultivars plus 15 geraniums and a heliotrope during his nearly 40 years at Iowa State. Here's more information about the man and his plants.
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Therapeutic Gardening: Creating Raised Bed Planters -- Reiman Gardens
Raised beds and planters make gardening accessible for gardeners of all abilities. Use this information to decide where to put your bed or planter, the materials that will be needed, and the types of plants to consider.
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Home Landscape -- Understanding the Basics of Landscape Design
Whether you want to do-it-yourself or are working with a professional, this guide offers a step-by-step approach to understanding the design process. Color photos and diagrams show how to use basic design elements to create a pleasing and functional space. Included worksheets can assist you in analyzing your site. An additional resource list and convenient index are also found inside.
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Therapeutic Gardening: Resources -- Reiman Gardens
Resource list for making gardening easier and more accessible, including books, organizations, websites, and selected educational programs.
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Therapeutic Gardening: Gardening Tips for Older Adults -- Reiman Gardens
Here are descriptions of several simple ideas and inexpensive tools that can help people continue gardening as they grow older.
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Garden Soil Management
Manage your garden soil more effectively. Learn about tillage, integrating organic matter, soil testing and pH, fertilizer application and more.
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Starting Garden Transplants at Home
Learn how to start annual flowers and vegetables at home, to enjoy them earlier in the growing season. This publication tells you how to select seeds; choose potting mixes, containers, and seed; and later move seedlings to the garden.
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Ornamental Grasses with Winter Interest -- Reiman Gardens
An excellent way to brighten the winter landscape is to plant trees and shrubs with ornamental characteristics, such as colorful fruit or exfoliating bark.
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Water Gardens: Aquatic Plants -- Reiman Gardens
Learn how to start a water garden. Topics include plant selection, floating plants, submerged plants, shallow marginal plants, deep water plants, planting methods, and fertilizing plants.
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Pollinators in the Garden -- Reiman Gardens
Publication discusses what pollination is, common pollinators in Iowa, and how to attract pollinators to your garden.
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Lichens -- Reiman Gardens
Many gardeners are concerned about unusual gray-green growths on tree trunks and branches. Learn more lichens, where they are found, and their different types and uses.
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Especially for Kids! Insect Investigator -- Reiman Gardens
Learn how to keep an insect investigator journal and see how many of the world's one million different types of insects you can find.
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Especially for Kids! Plant Zoo -- Reiman Gardens
Discover the many plants that have been named after animals. Public gardens, such as Reiman Gardens, have several of the plants described here.
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Sphinx Moths -- Reiman Gardens
Learn more about a fascinating insect behavior viewed in the home garden—nectar feeding by large, dark moths (sphinx moths) that look like hummingbirds.
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Using Mulches in Managed Landscapes -- Sustainable Urban Landscapes
Tips on using mulches to maximize benefits and avoid pitfalls.
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