Archive for March, 2013
Hello,
What do you think of spring so far? My sales people are sweating their numbers when they compare them to last year, but I’ve told them that it’s apples to oranges. We can’t compare an early spring to a late spring. The big question is will the sales catch up? I think they will. Based on the chatter on Twitter and Facebook, there are a lot of people who are ready to garden if the weather would just cooperate.
There is a freeze forecasted for a lot of our areas we ship to along and north of Interstate 40. Some areas have snow forecasted for Monday. Snow in April??? We are in another one of those new normal springs. Basically, my definition of a “new normal” spring is a spring that is completely different from the previous 3-4 springs.
All the weather talk aside, we are really hustling to keep the plants looking good. This has been a hard growing spring. There has been too much cool and cloudy weather. Even with all that the plants look great. We are into some new crops with lighter color on several items. Some items are now available that have not been ready yet this spring like the #4.5 New Guinea Impatiens and #12 Trailing Petunia Combo baskets. We are running behind on our #12 combo baskets due to the weather.
J6 Pacifica Mix Vinca in full color. It’s hard to beat Vinca for eye-catching color.
The 1204, J6’s and 1801 are split between good color on the last crop and light color on the next crop. We are all over the board on color for next week. Be sure to watch the comments. I will be updating them early next week to keep them as current as possible.
Our larger sizes (#4.5 Premium, #6’s, 1G’s and #8’s) are looking good.
Lots of our popular #10 Hanging Baskets…
…and some #12 Baskets too.
Charley’s Vegetables and Herbs
Perennials – all of them on the list are looking very nice. We even have some color showing on a few of the quarts.
Spring hit us with a cold and icy first day. It snowed in parts of northern and central Arkansas as well as in parts of southern Missouri. It hailed here last night. Mostly, we just got cold weather and rain. We did need the rain.
Cold and wet is not very conducive to working in gardens and flower beds. It looks like everyone holed up this week and watched basket ball.
We have a lot of plants ready to move out as soon as the weather cooperates. March has not been a good month for growing with the cool temps and cloudy weather. Some of our crops are behind schedule which is a good thing. Others are on schedule and some we have had to skip over and go to the next crop to maintain quality.
We have moved a lot of over-grown baskets to our shade house and cut them back. They didn’t sell when they were ready and got too big. We have also moved other crops out to the cooler shade house to help hold them and keep them from getting too big too fast. Over all we are in good shape for quality and availability. More items have been added to our list again this week.
We have had the new Burpee Bumper Crop Heirloom Tomatoes on the list, but I have forgotten to mention them here for the last couple of weeks. They are the new grafted tomatoes that promise 50% more tomatoes per plant. They are great for gardeners with small gardens who love the taste of heirloom tomatoes.
They have big tags which explain the benefits of the grafted tomatoes to your consumers.
We have Sunpatiens ready now too.
Bacopa baskets look great!
We also have #1G tomatoes available in decent numbers.
Begonias in all sizes are coloring up.
Other items that are looking good.
I didn’t take a lot of pictures of our packs but most of them have Color to Good Color. Some of the begonias are light on color.
Our 4in Tomatoes are perfect.
This is a picture of our new #12 Coco Cone Planters. The coco-liners have Aquasav liners that creates a reservoir at the bottom of the container to help keep the plants watered. All the coco planters we have will have the Aquasav liners in them. The liners are sandwiched between the coco fibers.
Here are our Sunpatiens that we are shipping out this week (Mar. 19, 2013), and also some of out foliage baskets.
Hello,
I hope that you all had a great week and have an ever better weekend. The weekend is shaping up to be a good one, and next week is looking good too.
I actually had some time this morning to write up something right here in this spot and my mind is blank. I can’t think of a thing to say. I blame my brain deadness on the time change and allergies.
Update: I need to fix a water leak one the water line at my house. This is all you get this week. Sorry. I might try to post a video this weekend.
We are steadily adding to our availability in numbers and items. New items this week are #10 Plumosus Ferns, Purslane and Cora Cascade Vinca baskets, #1G Sunpatiens and Colocasia (Taro) and #4.5 Pentas, Double Impatiens and Plectranthus. A lot of our bigger #12 items are coming on but aren’t quite there yet. I will probably add some inventory in on those sometime next week.
Lots of color in our Begonia and Impatiens greenhouse. The Impatiens baskets and #12 Impatiens Combo Deco pot are especially nice.
The rest is a hodge-podge of items and color.
1204 Vegetables and Annuals
#6 Wave Petunias