What's Going On?
2/16/2012 It's been busy. We've begun planting seeds, sticking cuttings, planting hanging baskets and anything else we can get our hands on. When we have down time from planting we are putting pots into trays to run through a machine to fill them with dirt. There's a lot that is already planted. 8 inch Geraniums, 6 inch Geraniums, 4 1/2 inch Geraniums, petunia, scaevola, new guinea impatiens, and fuchsia hanging baskets. Cold crop vegetables will be transplanted from seed plugs into their selling pots shortly. We use the seed flats because they hold about 500 seeds so while the seed are growing it saves space & doesn't waste alot of dirt if the seed doesn't come up. If you've ever had trouble with seed not coming up, you aren't the only one. We've had thousands of seeds not come up in the past. So far this season the seeds are coming up really well. We planted onion seeds (sweet spanish white, candy & burgundy) on friday & they were already starting to sprout on Monday. It's exciting to walk through the seed house just to see what else had come up.
Although we are closed this time of the year you can still call us or email us to ask any questions.
1/29/2012 Busy time is starting up. Last week we planted spring pansys and geraniums. This week we start planting annual seeds, hanging baskets, and sticking cuttings. We also plant 4 1/2 inch geraniums. Its a busy week because this is the week that everything starts coming in. We'll be planting petunia, impatien and portulaca seeds, along with some other misc annuals. We have about 12,000 cuttings coming in this week. These include geraniums, thunbergia, succulents, petunias (like double waves & blankets), and lantana. We also have fuchsias, new guinea impatiens, and calibrachoas coming in for hanging baskets. Most of these plants are patented so you have to buy them from the breeders and they do not grow from seed. Such as double wave petunias, the only way to grow them is from a cutting, unlike regular wave petunias that grow from seed. Our cutting house is like a sauna. We keep the humidity up so we don't have to water that often. The cuttings need to stay moist while starting to root in so the high humidity allows for the mist system to run less often. Hope to get some pictures so you can see inside the growing houses.
1/17/2012 Alot of people wonder what we do in the months between Christmas and opening for Spring. We have about 5 weeks before we start planting annuals, vegetables and herbs for the spring. Cleaning is the biggest part of the first 2 weeks. We blow water out of our hoses & turn off water pumps that aren't being used to make sure the water doesn't freeze. Any greenhouse not in use the heat is turned off. Since the growing side houses are connected with no doors, we seal them up individually so when we start planting we can heat only the greenhouse in use.
We are also getting pots and trays together. This is when we use the pots that customers have brought back to us. We disinfect the pots that we can use right away. Pots that we cant use go into boxes that we put in our trailers for later use (you never know when you might need them).
Check back for updates.