SALE!!!

Our sale starts today, September 24th at 9:00. Come early for the best selection. All plants, pottery and Pecan & Eucalyptus Mulch are half price!!! We will be open until the 30th. See you in April. Thanks again for the support.
Regina and Steve

Fall Stuff

We have received our last shipment of the year!!! Pansies, Violas, Snapdragons and Mums. They are full of buds and blooms. We also have a good assortment of fall vegetables. Things are already selling fast so hurry in and get some fall color now!

September

Fertilize Lawns. If you understand the growth cycle of grass you will know when to fertilize it for optimum growth and health. Cool season grasses such as Fescue, Rye and water-guzzling Blue Grass begin to grow in spring by using food stored in the winter. The blades then produce enough food on their own to provide energy for rooting, thickening and spreading. When the heat of the summer sets in the lawn needs more food than it can make on its own. It relies on food stored in the previous fall to survive. If no food was stored in the fall you will see damage to grass blades and roots. This is when your cool season lawn is most susceptible to insects, diseases, weeds and drought. If your lawn was properly fertilized it will go dormant and survive on stored energy. As summer rains come and autumn approaches the lawn comes out of dormancy and begins to rebuild itself. Towards winter blade growth slows but the grass continues to produce food and builds up reserves that will help it through next year's time of stress. Knowing this you will want to have nutrients available for late summer growth as well as for late fall food storage. Fertilize your cool season lawn in mid-spring and early September with Gro-Power Hi-Nitrogen 14-4-9 and again in late October with Gro-Power Flower & Bloom 3-12-12 as a winterizer. The winterizer will encourage root growth and winter hardiness. Do not fertilize in summer when the lawn is dormant or barely growing. Only the weeds benefit from this. Warm season grasses like Bermuda and Buffalo grow more aggressively in summer, slowly during spring and fall and go dormant in the winter. Fertilize these grasses heavily in the mid-spring, lightly again in mid-summer and use a winterizer fertilizer in mid-fall.

Plant Pansies and Violas. OK, if you don't know it by now I will tell you one last time: Pansies & Violas are cold hardy, cool season annuals that will live and bloom through the fall and winter in our climate. Now is the time to plant them. When you start pulling out your Marigolds, Petunias, Zinnias and other warm season annuals, replace them with Pansies and Violas. Use Uni-Gro Potting Soil to refresh your pots and improve your beds with Back to Earth Compost.

We will be closing for the season on September 30th. Our sale will start on Friday the 24th with 50% off all trees, shrubs, perennials and other selected items. We will reopen in April 2011 so stock up on Uni-Gro Potting Soil, Back to Earth Compost, Manure and Top Soil. 


Thanks for making this a great season for us and we look forward to being bigger and better next year!!!!!!!!

2011 Seed

Our 2011 Lake Valley Seeds have arrived. It is time to plan/plant your Fall garden. If you have questions come in and let us help.

Roses et al

All of you that came to the nursery this year asking about our roses will be happy to know that we just put in an order for over 200 Jackson & Perkins and Weeks roses. If all goes as scheduled they will be delivered just in time for Mother's Day 2011. We have ordered a good selection with some new introductions as well as the very fragrant old standards.

We are also working on a fruit and shade tree order for 2011. This will be a one time blow out sale towards the end of May. We felt there was a need for some of those tried and true varieties that do well in our area. Another thing you have been asking for that we decided to deliver on. So look for that as well.

The 2011 Lake Valley Seed should be here within the next two weeks for those who are planting a fall garden. Lettuce, Spinach, Beets, Carrots and many others can be planted through mid-September for fall harvest. All of Lake Valley Seed is untreated and there are no GMO's. There is also a USDA Organic line.

Don't forget that we will be closing for the season on September 30th. We will have Pansies, Violas, Snapdragons and Fall Veggies some time in September. Check back here and I will let you know when they land.

Things to do in August

Deadheading is one of those really satisfying chores. When you have finished everything looks neater and flowers more abundantly. The purpose of a flower is to attract pollinating insects and birds so the plant can produce seed. Once flowers start going to seed most plants will stop flowering or not flower as prolifically as before. If you interrupt this cycle by keeping pollinated or seed-bearing blooms removed from your perennials and annuals they will put their energy into producing more flowers instead of seed. Deadheading will also keep invasive species from self-sowing and taking over. Plants that only bloom once such as Creeping Phlox (Phlox subulata) and Candytuft (Iberis) should be cut back by half after blooming. Other perennials that bloom continuously over a long period of time like Coreopsis, Scabiosa, Yarrow (Achillea), Coneflowers (Echinacea), Blanket Flower (Gailardia) and many more should be deadheaded by removing spent flowers down to where a new bud has formed or to a spot of active growth. When the deadheads outnumber the flowers shear the whole plant to the foliage and it will soon rebloom. Annuals such as Marigolds, Petunias, and Zinnias should be deadheaded as well. Prune or pinch dead blooms at the base. Towards the end of the season you may want to let desirable plants go to seed and don't forget to leave some seedheads for winter birds to enjoy.

Mulch, Mulch, Mulch. I always talk about the benefits of mulching. A good layer of mulch in your vegetable garden, around your trees and shrubs or in the perennial bed will conserve moisture, keep the sun from beating down directly on those little surface roots, regulate the soil temperature year round, suppress weeds and make the ones that do show up easier to pull. If you use Back to Earth Compost it will slowly break down and add humic acid to the soil.

We will always stock Back to Earth Compost as well as Composted Manure, Top Soil and our great Uni-Gro Potting Soil. We have a good supply of Trees, Shrubs and Perennials and the honest advice to help you be successful in your gardening efforts.

Controlling Insects

Because we had such a wet winter insect populations are at an all time high. There have already been reports of Blister Beetle swarms and we had a really nice Swallowtail Butterfly farm on the dill at the nursery. These are 2 good examples of when to break out the big guns and when to just enjoy the show. I realize that no amount of prevention will keep a swarm of Blister Beetles from cleaning out your vegetable garden or landscape but it is the key to keeping destructive bugs in check. Keep plants healthy by watering correctly and using organic fertilizers. Insects love to feed on plants that are drought stressed and enjoy the weak, fleshy growth produced by frequent applications of Miracle-Gro or other chemical fertilizers. Another way to discourage harmful insects is to attract the beneficial insects that feed on them to your yard. Good bugs prefer the nectar of annuals and perennials with small flowers. These would include parsley, thyme, chamomile, hyssop, lovage, lavender, alyssum and marigolds just to name a few. Know your friends. Ladybugs, Praying Mantids, Lacewings, Ground Beetles and many tiny wasps are all helpful in the garden. Check your plants frequently for sign of insects including the undersides of the leaves where insects like to hide and lay their eggs. A few holes in a few leaves is not cause for alarm. If the majority of the plant is healthy and unaffected and you don't see any insects the damage was probably caused by the wind or a bug just passing through. If an insect is not attached to a plant or eating a leaf he is probably a good guy. Once you have identified a real problem use only organic pesticides. Chemical insecticides are non-selective and destroy all insects. Bad bugs recover more quickly than their predators making each consecutive infestation worse and harder to control. Organic insecticides can be very selective leaving good insect populations to help control the problem. The most common garden pests are a variety of sucking insects. They insert their proboscis into the plant tissue and suck out the juices excreting a clear, shiny, sticky substance called honeydew. Seeing this honeydew may be the first sign of a problem. You may also notice misshapen and curled leaves or blossoms that are brown around the edges and fail to open. Thrips are almost microscopic and look like pieces of tan thread. Aphids are tear shaped about 1/8 of an inch long and can be green, black, brown, yellow and with a woolly white coating. Spidermites can be detected by their webbing and are visible when you tap a leaf or branch onto a white piece of paper. They look like little brown specs but they move. All of these soft bodied insects can be controlled by first washing them off with water and then applying Safer's Insecticidal Soap. This insecticide contains potassium salts that will dry out these insects and not harm beneficials. Scale is also a sucking insect but since it forms a protective waxy coating over itself once it attaches to your plant most insectides don't work well against it. Horticultural Oil will coat the scale and smother it. Beetles that feed on foliage such as Flea Beetles, Cucumber Beetles or Blister Beetles can be controlled with a dusting of Diatomaceous Earth or Safer's Yard and Garden which contains pyrethrin. This will kill all hard bodied insects including Squash Bugs but also Ladybugs and other beneficials so use it selectively. Caterpillars that eat the leaves of plants like Cabbage Loopers and Tomato Hornworms can be handpicked or controlled with BT (bacillus thuringiensis). Some caterpillars are the larvae of those colorful butterflies you have been trying to attract to your garden. So if it is something you can afford to share, like the dill at our nursery, you might just let them enjoy it. If you check your plants frequently and try to balance your environment most insect attacks won't get out of hand. If you have questions about a particular insect, put it in a jar and bring it to the nursery and we can most likely help you identify it and offer a solution to it. See you soon.