Well…so far we are having a “typical” spring which is a variation from our usual “normal” spring. A typical spring is when the weather can’t decide if it’s spring or not and you get 70 degrees on Monday and 45 degrees on Tuesday. A normal spring is when it goes all in for warm, cold, wet or dry depending on where you live.
We were going full speed by this time last year and the year before. Consumers seem anxious to plant, but they are being smart and asking if it is time yet. Social media is having a HUGE impact on this. With social media there are a lot of ways for consumers to ask questions about their gardening and for growers and garden centers to give them advice and tips. As long as we keep educating and being available to answer questions, our industry should make good in roads into getting folks back to gardening.
In a perfect world all my IGC customers would have Facebook pages and Twitter accounts for their stores. Then they would post pictures of each new delivery and send out tweets announcing the arrival of fresh plants. What kind of buzz would the pictures of a rack of zinnias in full color generate? What would happen if IGC’s had the same kind of online relationship with their customers that restaurants do with theirs when they tweet a lunch special each day?
No matter what we do with social media, it all comes back to the weather. I talk about the weather a lot but that’s just because our lives revolve around it. I track weather forecasts in about a dozen cities. I don’t do this because I am an arm chair forecaster. The weather makes or breaks us. I can pretty much predict how much an area will order each week based on their weather forecast. OK, that might be a little bit of an exaggeration. What ever we do with the information we get in the forecast, weather rules the season.
We have had a lot of cloudy days this year which has slowed down some of our crops. The plants that like high light levels are running a little behind which is OK because I think it’s a little early for them based on the weather around here.
More color is popping out each day. Here is a quick look at some of next week’s items.
More J6 and 1204 on the availability this week. A lot of them are light on color today (Friday) but they should be coloring up better by Tues/Wed.
1204 Cole crops are out in the shade house with no heat to toughen them up. The herbs are looking good too.
Kong Coleus is colorful but the Geraniums are just starting to pop some color. The geraniums should have more color by next week.
Added Autumn Ferns and the Shaggy Shield Ferns are very nice.
Sweet Potato Vine (Ipomoea) for those of you in warmer climates. The Confetti Gardens are starting to bloom. I kept the Calibrachoa Confetti off the list until I can look at them again on Monday. I am not sure that they will grow enough between today and Monday. I will keep you posted.
Wave Decos and Confetti Garden Decos – not all of these are on the list. We are picking out the bigger, more colorful pots for you.
Yellow squash looking good. Makes me hungry just thinking about squash.
Hanging Baskets
We will be transitioning from this crop of Wave Petunia baskets (below) to a new crop sometime next week. The will be a noticeable difference between the two crops. I will be inputting the new crop numbers as they get ready next week.
