It’s official: vegetable gardens are back. For the first time in 50 years, the White House grounds have a vegetable garden, and the First Family will be enjoying home-grown vegetables and fruit.

The First Family won’t be the only ones planting and enjoying fresh vegetables and fruit. It’s estimated that there will be 53 million homes that will plant a garden this year. This is up 19% over last year. There are many reasons people have returned to the garden:

1. Food just tastes better when it is fresh.
2. It saves money on the food bill.
3. Knowing their food is safe gives peace of mind.
4. It produces better quality fruits and vegetables than store-bought
5. The financial recession.

Colonial Nursery has everything you could need to plant a successful garden this year. We have expanded our complete line of vegetables and fruit plants. We have potato sets, onion sets, seeds and other related garden supplies. The ten most popular vegetables are tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet peppers, beans, carrots, summer squash, onions, hot peppers, lettuce and peas: all of these and more are available at our nursery.

So stop in and pick up everything you need for your garden, and ask us for some tips on making your garden great this year!

This year you will find several new plants at Colonial Nursery. It's likely that many of you have been looking over the current gardening magazines and have seen some new outstanding plants for your yard and garden. There is a good chance that we have some of them in stock, if not most of them.

To start with, you should check out a new salvia called 'Cathedral'--it's purple and blue and is a must for mixed combos. Also new is 'Calliope' geranium; a cross between a regular geranium and an ivy geranium, it is the best red I have ever seen on a geranium and the leaves are dark green. This plant has quickly made my top ten list of must-haves.

We also have new 'sun impatiens' that did remarkably well last year in trials all over the Midwest. If you've liked calibrachoa (million bells), you will love 'Tiny Tunia,' a new petunia with a ton of flowers on each plant. If you like 'Bacopa,' wait until you see 'Scopia Pink'--this will sell out fast!

We have a new potato vine which is more compact and more manageable then the old one. And check out the new colors in the 'Potunia' series; if you grew them last year, you know that they take a beating and keep on blooming. We have several new perennials, like echinacea 'Twilight,' coreopsis 'Crème Brûlée,' sedum 'Autumn Fire' and many more. You will be impressed with this year's line up--it's the best yet!

Have you seen some of the lovely container plantings springing up around town and here at Colonial Nursery and Garden Center? Have you ever considered building your own container plantings, with plants, flowers and a color palette tailor-made for your home?

Some of you are very artistic, and some of you--like me--are not. So, let's get to the secret of making a captivating container for your deck or porch. I've been smart enough to watch carefully and figure out how these talented ladies here at Colonial manage it. It's really very simple. (I think...)

Start with a thriller plant, one that shouts "look at me!"--preferably this will be a taller plant. Then find a spiller plant, one that will drape or cascade down your container. Last, you just need to find a filler plant; this can be a plant that is all foliage or a plant that flowers, but it should not have a tendency to take over the whole container. Pretty simple so far!

Now we’re down to color selection. First, you should choose colors that complement your container. Then decide if you want your container garden to be monochromatic (a big word for using the same shades of a color) or complementary (which are colors that oppose each other on a color wheel). There are also neutral colors: white, black, silver, green and shades of brown. These can be used to tone down your color palette to make your container garden "pop."

Of course, if you'd rather leave the planting to us, we have a wide selection of beautiful container plantings ready for you to take home.

Colonial Nursery spends countless hours coming up with "recipes" for creating stunning baskets every year.

Many of you know that we don’t skimp on the number of plants and size of baskets we use. Bigger is better; that’s a fact. Larger baskets won’t dry out as quickly and they also provide the room many plants need to mature. A lot of the new fiber baskets retain more moisture than their plastic counterparts and these new baskets are easier on the environment, too.

Proper care for your basket is the key to having a stunning display on your porch or patio. Generally, if you use a quality plant food like Osmocote or Miracle-Gro and water often enough to keep the soil evenly moist, your basket will flourish. You may need to trim back your basket from time to time to encourage new growth; normally around mid-summer is when this trimming helps.

If you have any questions on how to keep your baskets healthy, just give us a call. We'll be more than pleased to help you out.

Some of you may not have the space for a traditional garden. But don’t be fooled, you can yield more produce than most families can eat in a small space.

In a 4’ by 4’ space you can produce up to 120 plants per year. Each 4’ x 4’ box can be divided into 16 one square foot spots. Some benefits of square foot gardening are that you can use commercial bagged soil and not have to worry about a lot of fungus, weeds or diseases. Also, you can manage your garden much more easily than if it was a larger, more traditional garden space. Most square foot gardens are raised; this allows for warmer soil temperatures that speed growth and produce better yields. And a square foot garden uses one fourth the water that a traditional garden uses.

So if you don’t want to till, hoe or weed and you find yourself short on space, try square foot gardening. The staff here at Colonial Nursery have written "A Grower's Guide to Square Foot Gardening" that will be available to pick up here at the nursery this spring. It is really as easy as it sounds, so give it a try! You'll be pleasantly surprised.

Gardening with companion plants is a time-honored tradition. Eco-friendly and easy to implement, this practice encourages happy, healthy plants. Companion planting can produce many positive effects such as pest and disease control, enhanced growth and even an increased harvest.

Marigolds give off a fragrance that repels deer and white flies; they make excellent companions with tomatoes, cabbage and peppers. Dill attracts beneficial insects that help with the pollination of corn and also consume any pests, like aphids. (Dill is not recommended around tomatoes or carrots.) Garlic is a great repellent and a natural fungicide--great around tomatoes, cucumbers and eggplant. Basil planted next to beans, cabbages, tomatoes and asparagus makes all grow better and taste better. A great companion trio would be corn, beans and squash, as they work well with each other. GO GREEN!!

Have you been thinking about putting in a garden this year, but you're unsure of how to go about it? Hopefully I can help you out with the "dos and don'ts."

The number one thing to get you started is where to place the garden in your yard. This should be a spot with 6 hours of sunlight; this alone will prevent many problems one could have. Then, remove all sod and weeds. This can be done manually or with Round-Up® or black plastic spread out across the surface for ten days.

Till the garden soil and work in compost material--like rotted leaves, aged manure, peat moss or compost--that can be purchased here at Colonial Nursery. Fertilize with a good commercial fertilizer like 10-10-10 or a good organic fertilizer that is also available. Vegetables are heavy feeders, so don’t skimp on plant food.

Now you are ready to plant; we recommend planting 3 foot wide rows. This makes it easy to reach from either side. Make wide enough paths to walk around the plants to water and weed. Corn is best planted with 4 or 5 short rows 18" apart, rather than planted in one long row. Sprawling plants like cucumbers, melons and squash should be planted in hills 4-6 feet apart. Beets, carrots and salad crops work best planted in wide rows than in longer rows.

It’s best to plant smaller amounts of seeded crops each week than it is to plant them all at once. Planting this way will keep you in fresh vegetables all season. Gardening is fun--try it!

With all of us feeling the pain of our present economic conditions, and even with our costs at the nursery increasing, we have decided that Colonial Nursery will not be raising our prices at all this spring.

We believe that we're all in this together and if there was ever a time when you--our friends and customers--needed a little break, now would be that time. It is our hope that many of you won’t fall into the big box trap of always lower prices.

Most of you know that there's more than meets the eye when it comes to buying plants--like quality, hardiness for our area, and most important, locally grown. It’s pretty hard to have a plant flourish and produce if it has been grown down south or even in another country.

You can be assured that all of our plants are grown to perform in our area and the quality is great.