Dayton "Dirt" - April 7, 2017

Next week starts the beginning of filling up the sales yard at the nursery as shrubs will be pulled from the over-wintering structures and truck loads of stock will be received from nurseries in Lake County.

This past week though has seen the repotting of about 1500 small azaleas and yes even more perennials and blueberries. Mountain Laurels are next to be potted and must be placed in a special site so that they are not irrigated with the other plants as they must be kept drier by receiving only one-half the irrigation.

After the seemingly never ending set up of the sales yard comes the shipments of many varieties of shrubs from Michigan nurseries that will be potted for later summer, fall and spring sales. Many of these shrubs are of the proven Winner brand that require the white Proven Winner pot. These pots are such that the nursery grower will only ship enough pots for the particular plants ordered. In this way, it would be difficult to propagate new plants from the ones received from the nursery and thus the patent on these plants is better protected form illegal propagation. In fact, when ordering the patented Proven Winner shrubs or flowers, the nursery grower makes it quite clear up front that the order confirms that the customer (Dayton’s) agrees to place the plants in the PW pots and will not illegally propagate the plants!

The hyacinths and narcissus at the nursery are in bloom to be followed in a few weeks by the thousands of tulips planted last fall. It’s too bad for the deer though as their tulip salad was sprayed by another application of deer repellent last week!

Tom