Gearing up for Spring
Last Updated on Sunday, 16 January 2011 07:58 Written by Phillip Sunday, 16 January 2011 07:58
I often get asked, “what do you do all winter when the Nursery is closed”? To me, that question always makes me chuckle. It’s generally the 3rd week of November before all of the plants are put away for the winter. During that time I’m also getting Spruce tops and Christmas greens delivered for Winter decorating. I also have a Winter container class, the Saturday before Thanksgiving. So for me it is generally mid December before my year is winding down. And then we all know how busy the Christmas holidays are for everybody.
Learn MoreHappenings at Viola Nursery Oct 16th
Last Updated on Saturday, 16 October 2010 08:58 Written by Phillip Saturday, 16 October 2010 08:56
This past week has seen incredible weather here in our area. I don’t know if it is a common term in other areas of the country (or world), but in the Midwest we call this “Indian summer”. What ever it’s called, I’ll take it! With sunny skies and temperatures in the low 70′s, outdoor work can go nonstop. This unusual weather also allows me to enjoy my annual planters for a few more weeks. Even more fun is watching annuals still performing in the garden.
While we didn’t have any large landscaping jobs this week, we still found plenty to do. One of the homes that we perform weekly maintenance for, got a make over of an existing flower bed. Two years ago when we started doing the maintenance at this home, an over grown and unattended landscape is what we began with. The home owners had located here from a home in Michigan, with a well kept landscape. With little plant knowledge, the home owners told us to “get the basic landscape back in shape and then start creating new beds”. Well this is the first bed that we are recreating. While watching it grow for a couple of seasons, we were able to see what belong there and what had grown from the wild. With a few perennials still left in place we decided to fill the bed with tulips and Daffodils. Because the home owners would like more color in there yard we can create this with the bulbs, and by adding annuals next spring.
At the Nursery we started to create an area for a new greenhouse for next spring. This house will be an additional retail sales house for mainly vegetables and herbs. With the ever increasing demand for both of these items, we’ve come to the point where we can no longer have a few tables set up without cover in the Spring. This extra house will also give us more sales space for annuals under cover. While having annuals for sale outside, always looks appealing in pictures, in our area there are to many days with cold rainy weather. This kind of weather is unpleasant on my plants and on my customers! With the arrival of the new greenhouse scheduled for next week, I hope our good weather holds out.
We still have not had a real hard killing frost, so many of the plants have not yet gone dormant for the season. When this happens, we can go full speed ahead with trimming and preparing the plants for Winter cover. Until that frost happens, I know I have plenty of other things to keep me busy. I have two more landscaping jobs waiting to be do, along with year end tasks at the Nursery.
Viola, MN 55934