On Oct. 2 at 11 a.m., the Marshalltown Garden Club will present a program on spring flowering bulbs, especially the less well-known minor bulbs. The speaker is Aaron Steil, the consumer horticulture extension specialist with ISU Extension and Outreach.

October is the month to plant spring blooming bulbs. While planting consists essentially of digging a hole and placing them in the ground pointy side up, there are a few things that can be done to be more successful. Plant anytime in October and continuing all the way until the ground freezes – if people can dig a hole, they can plant bulbs. While stores are full of the popular tulips, daffodils, hyacinths and crocus, there are many other spring blooming bulbs planted in the fall that are great additions to the Iowa garden, including Winter Aconite, Snowdrop, Siberian Squill, Striped Squill, Trout lily, Grape Hyacinth, Summer Snowflake and Spanish Bluebell.

Steil began the new position last year, following the retirement of horticulture specialist Richard Jauron. Steil previously worked as assistant director at Reiman Gardens and taught a horticulture lab course for a decade. He has also done outreach through “Gardening with Steil” on Iowa PBS and on Iowa Public Radio’s “Talk of Iowa,” which provides horticulture advice every Friday. He earned his bachelor’s degree in horticulture and biology from Iowa State in 2005, and his master’s in public horticulture from the University of Delaware in 2007.

Steil said one of the things he enjoys about gardening is how it changes. Each year leads to new ideas, new products and opportunity for improvement. “No garden is ever perfect,” he said. “There is always something new to learn and there is always some new challenge to meet and hopefully learn from. I just think that whole process is a lot of fun.”

This program is free and open to the public and the club meets at the Marshall County Extension office at 2608 S. Sixth St. in Marshalltown.