Archive for April, 2013
We got a few Cha Ching Cherry Petunias in as samples. We planted them in hanging baskets but one of my waterers planted up this 8” pot with 3 plants per pot in it. I think it turned out nice. What do you think?
This combo caught my eye too. My crew planted this combination with some leftovers. There are only a few of these, but I am thinking about doing more of this one next year.
OK that’s an exaggeration. I want to reiterate that abnormal springs are now the norm so we are definitely in the middle of a normal spring where it snows in Kansas City on April 21 and freezes in Arkansas on April 24. Now it’s pouring rain in parts of Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. Say what you will about the weather, the weekends have been nice, and next week looks great.
I think we might actually be past the worst, but I am sure we will have a few more obstacles to overcome. “Overcoming Obstacles” is basically the mantra of farmers, nursery people, greenhouse growers, garden center owners and landscapers. We take what comes at us, and we overcome.
I was talking to a group of people while giving them a tour here. It was raining and about 45 degrees. I explained what we do and the challenges we face. One person actually understood what we do and said, “Wow, your business is like one big gamble.”
So we take what comes at us. We adapt. We make mistakes. We dump plants. We plant new ones. We keep going. And we gamble again next year.
P.S. Taking pictures on a cloudy day doesn’t always give us a the best pictures.
I don’t know about you, but I am getting sick of this weather. It was 90F here this week before the cold front. This morning it was 36F when I came to work.
Instead of typing a lot, I am going to go try get a few videos for you this morning…
…and now 6 hours later I am finally able to get this uploaded. So much for getting it all done faster. You would think it was a Monday.
We have a lot of great looking plants available now and some that won’t be available until Monday. Be sure to use the forward availability for your Monday orders. Thanks and have a great weekend!
Here are two new Confetti Garden mixes that I really like – Oktoberfest and Nightlights:
I don’t know about you but we are only getting spring about 2 days a week around here. The rest of the time the weather is reverting back to February. A lot of the areas we shipped to had a frost on the ground this morning.
As near as I can tell we are about 2-3 weeks behind this spring. We have had to dump some product and go on to new crops to keep the quality looking good. Overall though, we have not had to skip over much so all in all despite being behind, we are in pretty good shape. We do have a lot of plants that are ready to find a good home.
We have over 100,000 pots of #4.5 Premium Annuals ready and looking great. There are several pictures below showing how much color we have. We also have a lot of great color in our 1204 and J6 flats.
OK, today has been insane. I have to go to the pictures now or I will never get this done.
1 Gallon Sunpatiens are looking really good.
Here are the #4.5 Premium Annual pictures. You can thank me later.
New! Chocolate Covered Cherry Coleus
Nice color on the Dahlias, Geraniums and Double Impatiens. Light to Medium Color on the Lantanas.
Great looking Osteospermums
The Plumbago is ready and the Succulent are very nice.
I think I like these new Sweetie New Guinea Impatiens
#6 Geraniums have Good Color and we are into a few colors of a new crop of #6 Wave Petunias. I will be adding in more colors as they get ready in the early part of next week.
1204 Peppers
1204 Vinca…… I though I took more pictures of the 1204’s sorry.
There are more pictures of the J6 Annuals below.
1801 Annuals
Baskets
J6 Annuals
More Buds than blooms on the 1 Gallon Hibiscus
1 Gallon Daylilies and some Quart perennials.
I hope your week went well despite all the rain. We got plenty of it here. I don’t think there was a single person on the farm who was dry on Tuesday or cold on Wednesday. It was a miserable week, but today and the weekend looks great.
Even with the rain, we have been shipping steadily. The crops look great. We have been behind on some items that are now available like the #12 Confetti baskets. We have good availability on most of our J6 and #4.5 Premium annuals and good color too. We are going to be in between crops on our Wave Petunias #6 and #10 baskets. I hope that I can start pulling some by Wednesday of next week.
It’s picture time! Now tell me that our plants don’t look great.