October 1st

 

Stone Guys, crafted by Jason Benoit in Barre MA.  Jason is a super nice guy and he loves working with Stone.  He let my son cut a stone in half with a machine that he developed.  It was a lot of fun touring his property and looking at his work. 

 

This is not their final location, but I wanted to get them setup until I have the new area completed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 25th

 

 

I'm in the process on building a new garden in the middle of this walkway.  It will be similiar to the cacti garden that is pictured by the fourth step.

 

 

The grass in front of the patio did so well this year.  I planted Janathan Green Black Beauty and I'm very pleased with it.

 

 

 

 

August 11th

I have declared war on the voles, slowly I have been getting rid of them (a nice way of saying killing them), but not fast enough so I haven't continued to loose some plants and incur some plant damage.  Last night was the last straw, I have gone from putting Kaput bait near impacted areas to putting Kaput stations every three feet in several of my gardens.  I can see why the grounds keeper went crazy in Caddy Shack.  In one of my gardens from the night before I had 5 bait stations and all of them had the bait consumed, little tunnels coming up through the inside of the containers that I'm using.  I have also put mouse traps in many of the stations as well because I'm starting to wonder if the bait is killing all of them.

August 10th

H. 'Love Spat' (originator stock).  This is going to be a slow grower.



August 8th

Every once in a while, depending on lighting my DROID camera takes these soft pictures.  In this case, it's all good, looks like a painting (without involving photoshop).






August 7th

H. 'Days End'





August 5th

I have do lot more container gardening this year....thanks to the voles. 



August 1st

It has taken me a while to figure out what I didn't like about this garden, and then it was obvious.....it was too big.  I have been working non stop before (as in 5 am) and after working (into the dark) to get a trail cut in.  I have 5 NH granite steps cut in and the large rock towards the top was a major effort to move from the side of my property, it shows great weathering. 






July 31st

One of my favorites H. 'Lucy Vitols'



July 30th

Snapped this picture on a garden tour today



July 28th

Picture from a garden tour, this statue would look great hidden in my H. 'Mohegan'



July 27th

Taking a break, nice summer day to be at Clarks Trading Post.  Little fact that I learned last year on the back country Segway tour is that Clarks wolfman once lived in Pelham NH.





July 26th

H. 'Christmas Candy'






July 25th

Sometimes a customer will see a leaf that has slug damage and they will ask me what is eating the hosta.  This is easy to spot and easy to treat.  Once a week I walk around with Sluggo and throw a few pellets at the base of a hosta that shows slug damage.  I then pull the damaged leaves off so that I can check it again in a week to make sure the problem is resolved.  This H. 'Mohegan' got away from me, I normally get it much sooner and my display gardens show very little slug damage.  Its worth nothing that this is fairly inexpensive to treat for, because I make sure this doesn't get out of hand, I may use a third of a container in the course of a year (and I have a lot of hosta). 



You can see a very small slug that is working this leaf, right here................V


July 25th

H. 'Tatoo'



July 2nd

H. 'Fragrant Blue'



July 1st

We visited Tarbin Gardens in Franklin NH, I learned about it in NH Magazine article last year.  I recommend that you take the 11 o'clock tour with Richard, and pay the extra money to do the afternoon tea (my wife really enjoyed this).  Richard took two hours to walk us around all of the gardens, I would have been lost without his tree knowledge; I would have walked by a lot of plants that he took time to point out.

http://www.tarbingardens.com/ 

The formal garden at Tarbin, makes me wish I had a formal garden.



Less formal garden



Looks like it has always been there



H. 'Montana'



June 29th

The Hinoki Cypress has been removed, this was all shovel work to minimize root damage.  Took me about an hour to remove this, its bigger than it looks in the picture.  I only broke one branch in the process of removing it and getting it back to its new location.  I did this work starting at 5 am, the tree was out and moved by 6 am, it was humid and I was glad that I got up early to do this work. 




When I say I stripped the garden down to the ground, this is what I mean.....down to the ground.  I'm adding fresh composted soil, good stuff. 




The Hinoki Cypress in its new spot, it has been moved back about 2' and now has enough room to grow. 



The only thing left to do is add lots of water.



June 27th

Okay, time to fix these gardens, they need a lot of work.   Here are my before pictures, I have already spent 6 hours cleaning all of the plant material out.  I have given away a lot of plants, I have thrown away 3 big loads and I have potted up the rest to put back in the garden.  The only thing left are the three main trees and one of those will get pulled out and moved tonight.  Hope is makes it through the move, but it's not in the right spot and has to be moved.  I will post some pictures of it done to bare ground and then I will unveil the completed beds in a few days.  They will go from some of my worst gardens to some of my best gardens.









June 26th

Silver Mine, a gift from Tony Wong

June 24th

Podophyllum 'Spotty Dotty', the picture doesn't do it justice, I've got to get one of these for my garden.






June 22nd

It's raining, the gardens need it and I save a bunch of time :-)

H. 'Loyalist', just started selling these



June 21st

So nice that the grass has filled in on this project, the gardens behind the wall are filling in nicely as well.






Perspective is everything, I realized after taking this picture that I needed another trail that would cut behind the hosta trail back to my woodland garden trail.  I had to crawl out on the roof to get this picture and from that view it was obvious, I will get a picture, I have already installed the new trail.


I still feel like I need to connect something from the right of the arch to the previous raised wall project....just haven't figured out what I want to do yet.




June 19th

 

Finally, the bee's are here....very late to be getting a bee package.  Luckily the hives are mostly built out from previous bees.

 

Umm....don't drop this ;-)  Didn't use gloves or my veil to install this year, nothing bad happened but it was a little stressful.

 

 

The Queen, in her queen cell

 

Getting settled in

June 16th

 

Ah, my favorite garden view.

 

 

 

June 15th

 

 

June 13th

 

I have been working in the gardens a lot, too cold for the bugs, it's raining off and on so I don't have to water anything in and the hosta are taking off due to all the rain.

 

When I'm working in the gardens I move around quite a bit, maybe it's walking to the upper landing to get a bucket of bark mulch, or perhaps I need to dump some weeds in the compost pile.  When I'm walking around I'm looking at the gardens and making mental notes of things that need to be done (this is how an introverts brain works). 

 

Well, I have been walking by my front hosta garden and it's easy to see that the hosta need more space, they have gotten too big.  Finally, this weekend this issue has made it to the top of my priority list.  I have been avoiding it, the task is a big one and involves expanding the beds and moving big plants.  It's not hard, but it is a lot of work.  I got my edging shovel out and expanded the garden area out another 2 -3 feet, I make fast work of this.  I started moving plants yesterday, moved three big ones.  I won't do all of this work at once, every day I will move plants around until it is right.  If I try to do it in one day I tend to rush the work and cut corners.  This morning I moved one more (the gold feather boa in the bottom picture).  The other advantage to doing this work slowly is that I can keep looking at the garden and take time to think about what to move where. 

 

The goal, to keep the plants whole, I don't divide a lot of these.  I will make sure the spacing is right and it gives me a chance to work on color combinations.  Once I start this work I'm always pleased by the outcome, it should have been done last year, except there is this whole time problem (I don't have enough).

 

 

 

 

June 12th

 

Okay, my blog has been mainly garden pictures this year, time to put a useful tip in.   Once in a while when I split a hosta, a division comes off without any roots.   Don't throw these as out they can be saved.

 

I was dividing H. 'Blue Arrow' and a small division snapped off.

 

 

Clean the stem; it should look white like this.

 

 

Use a sharp knife and cut diagonal towards the bottom of the stem (an exacto knife works well)

 

 

Coat the cut with rooting powder (I give it a thick coating).  You can buy rooting power at most nurseries.

 

 

You can see the thick coating of rooting powder.

 

 

I use a potting mix that I make sure is packed down and I then push a hole in using my finger.  The final step is to surround the stem with the potting mix. 

 

 

Lable, top dress the plant and water it (I mix in Neptunes Harvest).

 

 

I have a staging area for plants that require extra attention

 

 

June 11th

 

Well, here it is a H. 'Great Expectations' that actually has a full size leaf in my garden.  I didn't think I would ever see the day.

 

 

Here it is sitting next to the tc great expecations that I got 4 years ago.

 

 

 

June 10th

 

I went over to an avid gardener's garden tonight and got a division from her H. 'Great Expectation'. I can not believe that it's this big.  What a great plant! Obviously something happened with the later tissue culture runs on this plant because the ones I have are not even close to this size (by a long shot).   This plant is huge. I will post a picture tomorrow of the division I got from it and find a way to show scale.

 

 

 

 

June 9th

 

H. 'Kiwi Forest'

 

For the first time, I will be pulling this out of the ground to take a division off.  It will be going up for auction in about a month. 

 

Tomorrow I will be going to a friend's garden to take a division of H. 'Great Expectations'.  She says that her plant is pretty big; the ones that I sell have been slow growing and picky about planting conditions.   My theory is that the newer tissue culture of this plant is not as good for some reason, but I will have a much older tc to compare to now.  For sure, Great Expectations has not lived up to it's name in my garden.  I can say it has grown much better since I pulled them from the field and have grown them in pots.  Someone gave me this tip, and it seems to be true.

 

 

June 8th

 

Got up this morning and it was raining hard but it didn't stop me.  I went under my EZ-Up and potted up plants for two hours. 

 

Rodgersia Podophylla, I now have this available for sale.

 

 

Weather has been perfect for the past week allowing me to get a lot of time to take care of the gardens.

 

H. 'Love Pat'

 

 

 

June 7th

 

H. 'Tokudama Aureonebulosa'

 

 

 

June 6th

 

Someone asked me, "How much time to you spend weeding?"  I answered quickly by saying, "Not that much."  If you love being in the gardens you forget how much time you spend on these tasks.  Generally about 45 minutes a day is spent on maintaining the gardens.  That covers weeding (the bulk of time), moving plants that don't seem to be happy in their location, edging and those types of things.  It is a challenge running a small home nursery.  I spend a bulk of my time maintaining the hosta fields and potting up plants. If I took all of that time and applied it to just gardening, I would gain a lot of time.  On the flip side of that because there are so many tasks, I have to learn how to work more efficiently. Much of what I learn and apply to my own gardens has been shared by others, and selling plants puts me in communication with the people that are gardeners.

 

H. 'MidNight Ride'.  I don't sell a lot of these as people don't want to buy green hosta but it looks really good in the garden.

 

 

June 5th

 

Finally, a water feature in my gardens. It's nice working in the backyard and hearing the sound of running water; a nice calming effect.  I'm not sure the pictures show this very well, but the granite base of this is VERY heavy.  I'm feeling sore from moving this from my car to the garden. 

 

This was really simple to setup. It's running on an 8 watt pump and the dome comes off to install the pump.  Took me about 30 minutes to setup, most of which was cleaning up the granite. 

 

 

 

June 4th

 

I bought this perlite pot at the Tower Hill Botanical Garden sale last year, and it sat by my shed with one plant in it.  It's nice to finally get this project completed.

 

Speaking of Tower Hill, I sold at the Tower Hill plant sale again this year (this is my third year).  I brought 60 plants and sold 45 at that sale.  I love these events because you get to interact with vendors selling great plants and garden supplies.  I also like interacting with customers and answering questions.  I'm just a small home nursery, so 45 plants put a dent in my four display tables so I will be busy potting up replacment plants.

 

We had a nice day; it was sunny and in the 70's ...can't beat it.  I bought a really nice Japanese Maple, you will see it in a future post.

 

 

June 3rd

 

Touch of class, getting bright morning sun

 

 

June 2nd

 

Kiwi Forest, one of my favorites

 

 

June 1st

 

Planted some of the pots this weekend.  They really highlight the mini and small hosta.  My son enjoyed creating one of his own.

 

 

 

May 29th

 

 

May 28th

 

H. 'Tiffney's Godzilla'

 

 

May 27th

 

The home of one of my customers in North Andover MA.  The Hosta and Heuchera are starting to fill in nicely.  This dry creek bed isn't so dry in the spring, you will see water flowing down it to handle over-flow from the drainage pumps. Functional and nice looking. When these plants were put in last year there was a big pear tree that we were planting around but sadly a micro-burst storm took the tree down after the planting. 

 

 

May 26th

 

H. 'Heart Broken'

 

 

May 25th

 

H. 'Liberty'

 

 

May 24th

 

I'm now offering an Epimedium for sale E. 'Sulfureum', it's $9 for a healthy division.  I had seven and now I'm down to 4.  Let me know if you want one.

 

 

May 22nd

 

New Nursery Tables are full, I added another 30 plants after taking this picture and the pots are now on a separate set of benches.  

 

 

 

 

May 20th

 

E. 'Dark Beauty'

 

May 19th

 

Two weeks late, but finally in bloom.

 

 

May 17th

 

 This top garden was installed last year and you can see the new woodland trail going off to the right.

 

 

May 16th

 

New nursery benches are in and soon I will have 2 of each of my plant offerings potted up and on the tables.  I would get started with that today, but it's raining.  Oh yeah, it's going to rain Monday through to next Saturday as well.

 

 

 

H. Eternal Flame

 

 

May 15th

 

Komodo Dragon is just coming out, what a nice hosta

 

 

 

 

May 14th

 

We will now be displaying our plants on these new nursery benches.  It's going to be great getting the plants organized by name and displaying them off the ground where they will be easier to see.   I was going to put the benches on the thick weed fabric that you see at most of the nurseries, but that didn't seem very natural to me. I decided to use stone dust.

 

 

 

 

 

May 13th

 

I bought this 'Hepatica' at the Tower Hill Botanical Garden Fall sale last year.  I was on the fence, and then I saw how fast they were selling, a woman had the last one in her hands and then she put it back and bought something else (close call).  I scooped it up for $4.00 and I'm happy I did.  I'm using a soap stone plant marker; found a pile of these when I was rock hounding up north.  The guy sold me a bin full of them and they were cheaper than the metal markers I use.

 

 

May 12th

 

Finally, a nice division from one of my most prized hosta, Kiwi Milkyway.

 

 

May 11th

 

H. 'Small Parts'  it may be a small hosta, but it's a fast grower.

 

 

May 10th

 

First order of the season, potted up.  It's still a little early to pull an order.  I like the plants to be fully leafed out, but it was a birthday gift for someone. 

 

 

May 9th

 

Sea Octopus, many people that spot this in the garden want to take one home.

 

 

 May 8th

 

H. 'Northern Exposure'

 

 

May 7th

 

Ants!  Got this in Arizona, he was made in Mexico

 

 

 

May 6th

 

H. 'June' 

 

 

May 5th

 

We are now selling perlite pots ($25-$45), these were made by a local craftsman here in Pelham.

 

 

 

May 4th

 

 

May 3rd

 

Creeping Jenny

 

March 28th

 

Our iron butterfly sculpture.  We bought this at Art in the Park in Keene NH last year.  The size is pretty big (picture doesn't do it justice).

 

 

March 27th

 

 

 

March 26th

 

We still have a healthy covering of snow in the backyard.