Parks Wholesale Plants

Archive for October, 2010

Want an idea for a great Halloween prank?  Forget about TP’ing your neighbor’s house tomorrow night.  What you should do is buy a bunch of pansies and plant their flower beds for them.  They would never see THAT one coming and would never suspect you of something so nefarious.  Try it and see what happens.

I almost forgot to update the blog today and post this new availability.  It’s been one of those weeks.

New Ready List For November 1 – avail-10.29

Lots of pansy pictures for you.

The first are of the Colossus Pansies:

Matrix Pansies

Delta Pansies

Panolas and Violas

The Great Pumpkin is coming.  Are you ready?  If not, we still have pansies, snapdragons and mums that look great and are guaranteed to stop the Great Pumpkin in it’s tracks.  We have beau coups of  J6 pansies that are starting to color up so no need to worry about disappointing the Pumpkin by not have pansies and mums to go with your pumpkins for your customers.

They were on the availability last week but you may have missed them so I want to point out these awesome fall combo pots that we have ready.  They consist of pansies, violas and snapdragons which are all cold hardy and will re-bloom when the temperatures start warming up next spring.  These pots are a much better buy than a #12 mum that will last four weeks.  Check out the pictures below.

Availability – avail-10.22

Fall Deco Combos

#6.5 Mums

#12 Mums – the head sizes vary from the medium sized one on the left to HUGE as does the bloom stage which are cracking to color.

Pansies, Panolas, Violas and Wave Petunias (for you south LA folks)

Here is a sample of a #6 Plentifall Pansy crop we custom grew for a landscaper.  Based on the information we have seen.  Plentifall Pansies perform well in the landscape.  We currently have plans to offer these as pre-booked items for landscapers and garden centers that want to carry them next fall.

Here are some pictures from a landscaping job one of our customers did in Webb City, MO.  If you have some pictures you would like for us to feature here on our blog, you can email them to info(at)parksbrothers(dot)com or email them to your sales rep.

I like pansies almost as much as I don’t like mums.  They have all the attributes that mums lack and their only drawback is that they don’t like it hot.

What other flower can you plant that will last for seven to even nine months?  You can plant them in September (if it cools off early enough) and they’ll look good until April or even May (if it doesn’t get too hot).  In additions to that, you have a lot of vibrant colors to chose from and here in the south if the winter is mild enough, they will bloom all winter long especially if you live in Zones 8-9.

The biggest challenge to growing pansies it the timing.  When will your sales peak?  Last year it was late October.  This year we needed them all ready the third week of September.  Next year, who knows?  So much goes into determining how many to grow and when to try to have the pansies ready.  We rarely have perfect weather for growing them so we are constantly either trying to keep them short, bushy and blooming or pushing them to hurry up and bloom while simultaneously growing the perfect plant.  Our growers and waterers do a great job doing this, and we have great crops of pansies each year.

So this year, with the hot summer two things happened.  First, the heat impeded the pansies uptake of nutrients which put all of our crops a week or two behind.  Second, the heat cooked everyone’s flower beds so EVERYBODY wanted them replaces as soon as possible.  These two conditions led to what I call The Great Pansy Famine of 2010 also known as “Shoot, we’re sold out of pansies and the next crop won’t be ready for another 10 days.”

But it looks like the famine may be nearing the end.  We have parts of tow crops of J6 ready with one more coming on that will be ready in about 10-14 days.  Plus two more crops of #4 pansies.  We also have #6.5 and #12 mums that are still in Bud or are Cracking some color with a few that have some Light Color, plus the ornamental cabbage and kale to go with all of them.

Availability for the week of October 18 – avail-10.18

We got some help today planting pansies at Tate Elementary School.  Becky, David and I got there early.  Beck and David did all the heavy lifting.

Then it was time for the kids.