 |
|||||||||||||||||
|
5/12/11
Topics |
|||||||||||||||||
|
Buying Your Summer Bloomers
|
|||||||||||||||||
|
One way to further your chance of success is to buy Proven Winners®. What are Proven Winners®? They are a select group of plants that are copyrighted by a group of growers who own the rights to those particular varieties. They are hybrids of popular flowering plants, with the undesirable qualities bred out of and the desirable qualities bred in. The seed is controlled, so it’s not available to homeowners, but you can purchase the plants. These flowers have been tried and tested, and all the descriptions about their benefits are as written. You will definitely have flowers that are new, colorful and exciting.
|
 |
||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||
|
Buying your summer bloomers Each year, more and more homeowners are buying their annuals in pots and flats from the ‘box stores’ and ‘super box stores’. The competition for these sales dollars is ferocious. More and more of the bedding plant growers are growing exclusively for the various large retailers. For a grower to supply these store chains, they have to produce the potted and flatted annuals for up to half the cost that they used to produce them for. How do the growers afford that? Let me explain. To grow |
|||||||||||||||||
| a prime plant growers would start the annuals in their greenhouses twelve weeks before the selling season begins. That’s a lot of heat, fertilizer, and other maintenance costs. To cut cost, some growers have reduced their growing time to four to six weeks. These plants are no where as mature as they used to be. The size of the flats has been reduced. Instead of flats with individual cubes one inch by two inches, they are now one inch square, saving on soil and again an inferior product. But hey, look how much money you’re saving, or are you? Each growing season is six months long. How well your annuals do depends on good finished annual plants being planted to begin with. If you want the best looking landscape on the block, buy high quality plants that many of the family owned garden centers carry. Remember, you always get what you pay for and annuals are no exception. |
|||||||||||||||||
| Who has the best Flowers? Family owned and operated green houses and garden centers are known in the nursery industry as “Mom and Pop”. They tend to have the highest quality when it comes to blooming plants for summer. Another advantage of buying your flowers from ‘Mom and Pop’ is they will have a much wider selection of varieties including the new varieties. They will also tell you which ones are best for shade, part sun, and full sun. You will also obtain valuable information of which ones require the least amount of care to the ones that require the most. Even the proven winners grown by cost cutting growers are not the same quality of those grown right. |
|||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||
| Final Note: Remember it is still too early to plant your summer bloomers and veggies. The soil in your beds is still too chilly. Planting any summer flowers in cool soil, regardless of who grew them, will cause those tender roots to stunt and those plants will never be as good as those that were planted later in May. The average date of the last frost in this area is May 17th and I’ve seen it snow as late as May 17th. |
|||||||||||||||||