We will finish planting our second planting of poinsettias today. We have started pinching the first crop this week and should finish up next week. Overall we are off to a good start on the poinsettias with a good crop of cuttings and everything on schedule. With poinsettias if you fall a day behind early that will cascade into being several days behind on the end.
The mums are getting a good drink today. I bet its rained at least 2” today, maybe more. We are also starting to see some disease show up here and there. We will get another fungicide drench on them soon to keep that in check as well as some lime and fertilizer to give them a boost before we start shipping. Due to the weather, I think we will have a couple of colors of mums that will start cracking some color within the next 7-10 days. So if you want to start a little earlier with the mums, keep an eye out here for our first fall availability.
The pansies and other fall annuals are doing well. We initially planted a lot of our fall annuals in our open house with the retractable shade. A week after we planted we got a thunderstorm that dumped a couple of inches (we only had a 20% chance of rain) then a week later another 20% chance dumped a couple more inches. After that we decided that we needed to get those plants inside. So we moved them into a greenhouse, and I am so glad we did. Even after we moved them the plants were just too wet, and we had water mold go through and wipe out our first plantings of wave petunia and calibrachoa baskets so we will be a little short on those initially.
On a personal note, I am giving a talk at the Arkansas Green Industry’s Landscape Contractor’s Day on August 27 at the Botanical Garden of the Ozarks in Fayetteville, AR . My talk is title “The Best New Annuals For Arkansas Landscapes.” If you would like more information or would like to attend this event check out the AGIA website www.argia.org.
The weather looks great for this weekend. I hope you all have as nice a weekend as I plan on having. See you next week.