Autumn Brings Opportunities To The Active Gardener

If you have been in the Nursery business for any length of time you know that spring is the busiest time of the year.  Coming out of the dreary winter months most people look forward to getting out into their yards and gardens in an effort to bring some life back into their landscapes. To that end garden shops are stampeded by gardeners looking for fertilizers and seeds and plants and tools. Yards get fertilized, shrubs get pruned, and flowers are planted, all with the idea of breathing color back into our lives.  It is an exciting time of year for the gardening enthusiast.

Bloom-a-thon Azaleas:  Re-Blooming azaleas for the Midwest 

With the introduction of Encore Azaleas several years ago, Midwesterners finally had an opportunity to garden with azaleas that would bloom more than once a year.  Now, there is a new kid on the block; Proven Winner’s Bloom-a-thon azaleas.  This series of azaleas, which has been under testing for several years and was available for sale to the general public starting in 2012, brings another advantageous alternative to the azalea enthusiast.  The series only has 4 different colors, red white lavender and pink, but they are rich, deep and showy.

Encore Azaleas For The Midwest (Review and Comparison)

When it comes to Azaleas, Midwesterners have always had the challenge of finding varieties that exhibit all the traditional attributes that make azaleas so popular in the south, and also have a reasonable level of hardiness.  Southerners have always had a wide variety of plants of different shapes, sizes, and flower color variations to choose from in order to satisfy their azalea sweet tooth.  But we in the Midwest have been limited and as re-blooming azaleas have come into existence that limitation has become more pronounced.  Any azalea that blooms more than once a season is going to be more desirable than one that doesn’t, simply due to the increased number of days in bloom.  The fact is that the vast majority of azaleas are hardy to the southern zones; 8, and 7 but not zones 6, 5, or 4, which represents most of theMidwest.  As a result, the breeding programs that have been searching for that re-blooming characteristic are yielding plants that are not mid-west hardy because the gene pool for hardiness is just so limited.

Overwintering Plants In The Nursery

When the leaves begin to change and the beauty of autumn is upon us, it is a signal to us in the nursery trade that winter, too, is on its way and we must begin making preparations.  In the days when nursery production was all bb, and all the plants were in the ground, there was nothing to winter prep.  Plants simply went dormant naturally and their roots systems, being in the ground, rarely needed any additional winter protection.  But when nursery production moved toward growing plants in containers above ground it became necessary to come up with overwintering techniques that would protect root systems and insure plant survivability. 

   Fall blooming Perennials are a favorite landscape plant among gardeners.  After a hot and dry summer, fall bloomers are a welcome sight announcing the coming of the fall season with brilliant colors that can brighten any planting bed.  There are many genera to chose from and regardless of what you chose, planting early in the fall will insure that the plants have time to become established as well as give you the maximum amount of time to enjoy their color before cold weather sets in.