The long awaited time to begin shipping plants is here! We have begun sending gardeners in zones 8-10 their plants. Mixed with the excitement is the knowledge that the hardest part of our spring season has begun.
The quiet days of winter are over, plant growth is now measured in days not weeks. And because sending out the plants is all consuming, I am going back to the greenhouses. I hope the picture of all these plants going out makes you want to plant your garden.
I have been absent from the office and everyone has been asking where I might be? Some of you readers may remember my notes and pictures about collecting wildflower seeds last fall. It is a yearly ritual I look forward to, each bag of seeds are sifted and cleaned before being stored for winter.
All that is great fun in the fall, but spring is here and those seeds need to be planted now. Timing is everything when planting seeds, and you never know the exact time until it is upon you. So this week I knew all conditions were right and the wildflowers needed to be planted this week, at least before the next rain.
All there is to show are slits cut in the ground by my seed drill. But as any gardener knows, nothing holds more promise than a well planted seed bed. Soon little annual flowering plants will be sprouting all up and down the slits. Later the perennial plants will emerge. And soon, just a month and a little more, I will be showing you fields of wildflowers waving in the wind!
Spring is here, stop planning and get planting!
Returning from vacation is usually not something one looks forward to. It marks the end of the trip that you have been waiting so long to take. All the months that you spent planning, preparing, and getting everything in place seems like a distant memory now. As sad as this idea is, all good things must come to an end. If you don’t finish one vacation, how can you take another? Surely you have been dreaming of the day you can jump on a private jet, that you have hired through a company like Jettly, and travel to the likes of New York, London, Paris, and lots of other different countries and cities? Taking trips like this is what life is all about, and just think about all of the memories and stories that you’ll come back with. That alone must be enough to persuade you to take another vacation as soon as possible.
In the meantime, adjusting to the normality of your life is something that you’re going to have to focus on for now. With that being said, leaving plants in the greenhouse does leave something worth returning to. Walking into the greenhouse this morning, I was stunned to see how much all of my herb plants and flowering annuals had grown. Just look at the picture and see that our plants are ready for spring.
The basil plant had grown a full inch and the leaf buds are popping on the bay leaf plants! Spring is almost here, whether herb gardening or growing flowers and veggies this year the time to get started in now! Besides the plants, the rest of my job was about like average. Start thinking about your garden and let The Growers- Exchange.com help get your spring started.
Greetings from Abaco! I have found the most beautiful garden on the whole island. Right next door to where I am staying is a tropical paradise; plants we use as houseplants or summer annual plants are used as landscape trees and shrubs here. It is so nice to see all the blooms after our long cold winter at home. Since I am still on vacation, I am out the door again soon. Next week I will be back at the greenhouse and soon we will begin shipping all of our customers their herb plants and flowering annuals so they can start their own tropical paradise.
I came to the Bahamas to escape the cold and see some color, after so many months of cold gray skies and brown earth I couldn’t wait for spring in Virginia. My neighbor Valdo is an expert tropical gardener and like all good gardeners has shared his garden with me, carefully explaining what it takes to grow lush plants on a rock island. The beach is calling, so I hope you enjoy the picture of Valdo and Marilyn’s beautiful bouganvillea. And remember, spring is just around the corner. It couldn’t possibly snow again? Could it?
Last fall when I first began this gardening blog, I reported on my seed collecting endeavors. Seed collecting is just the first step towards growing plants. All those ziplock bags full of seeds were carefully stored over the winter.
And now we are at the next step, which is to plant the seeds. I had collected seeds from various flowering annuals, some perennials, and a few herb plants. The goal is to plant wildflowers in all the conservation grasslands around the farm. Annual plants such as cosmos and Gomphrena will give color this year as the perennial natives establish themselves. To create a blooming prairie effect Dames Rocket and Shasta Daisies start blooming in spring and are followed by Coreopsis, Rudbeckia, Ratibida, and Echinacea in summer. A total of thirty types of flowers were planted
This year I am planting what I call “the grand finale”. Summer into fall will find Helianthus full of yellow sunflowers intermixed with the blue haze of wild Ageratum. I will have to wait until the following fall to see how it works, perennials must have time to establish. But for now we must wait and have faith that planting these seeds in the cold ground will sprout and grow in spring.
As spring gets closer, these recurring winter storms will have to stop sometime. Today is bright and clear but the fifty-degree temperature feels more like forty. We are not there yet! Here in our greenhouse, spring feels like a real possibility. All of the little annual plants are growing nicely. Herb plants are a little more complicated, so some are grown but dormant.
No culinary herb represents summer better than the basil plant. Looking at these strong little seedlings, we know we will soon be herb gardening. And basil will be high on our list, our frozen pesto is long gone, so we cannot wait for this year’s first crop of fresh cut basil. Read this recipe and start dreaming yourself…
The Perfect Pesto
Ingredients
• 1/4 cup walnuts
• 1/4 cup pine nuts
• 3 tablespoons chopped garlic 9 cloves
• 5 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 1/2 cups good olive oil
• 1 cup freshly grated Parmesan
Directions
Place the walnuts, pine nuts, and garlic in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Process for 15 seconds. Add the basil leaves, salt, and pepper. With the processor running, slowly pour the olive oil into the bowl through the feed tube and process until the pesto is thoroughly pureed. Add the Parmesan and puree for a minute. Use right away or store the pesto in the refrigerator or freezer with a thin film of olive oil on top.
Basil seedlings growing at in our greenhouses.