Dayton "Dirt" - March 20, 2015

The first shipment of trees for potting just arrived last week which includes maples, flowering crabapple, whitespire birch and many others. The trees have a trade 3 gallon root ball that only have a mesh bag to hold soil around the roots which prevents the trunk of the trees from scraping by plastic pots. Since the trees have already been root-pruned by the mesh bag in which they were grown, potting should be easy and fast followed by rapid rooting into there new 10 and 15 gallon pots.

 

In the greenhouse, new varieties of annuals have arrived to be made into hanging baskets and single pots. Torelus and Stachys are two new types of crosses between genus categories (which is quite rare) and will produce new exciting flowers that do not exist in nature. The rooting of  cuttings in the greenhouse still goes on with a shipment of unrooted perennial and annual flowers from Brazilwhich includes the Sun Harmony type of impatiens in which one plant grows into a small flowering shrub- like plant by mid-summer. These impatiens are directly stuck into a 3" pot and must be syringed with clear water about once an hour on a sunny day so that they can begin to form roots in 2 weeks. Then too are the geranium cuttings that have been directly stuck into 3 inch pots in which they will be sold in May.

 

Hundreds of clematis vines are waking up and will begin to need trimmed weekly to develop a compact bushy form. At least three new varieties will be offered this year with no less than 8 new clematis vines already ordered for the spring of 2016. The new crop of clematis will arrive in mid-July in order to be potted and then over-wintered just at freezing to vernalize the plants. Vernalized or cold treated dormant clematis vines along with many perennial flowers grow beautifully the next spring as the dormant period gives the plant time to grow a massive root system.

 

So much goes on behind the scenes at the nursery that some days seem like a ball of confusion although somehow with a lot of effort, “it” all gets done - well almost all.

 

Happy Spring!

Tom