It’s been a busy week. I’m sorry that I have neglected my blog posts. We started planting the mums in the field this week. I had planned on planting last week and finishing this week but, alas, the mum cuttings were not rooted well enough to start last week. Unfortunately for the mums and the crew it has been about 100 degrees every day this week. Fortunately for me, I have one of the toughest crews around and they have been doing an awesome job.
We are still selling and shipping product. A lot of stuff has grown out of spec and looks kind of rough but the bigger sized pots, deco pots and hanging baskets all look pretty good. We also still have a lot of #4 Begonias left but if we don’t get any interest in them in the next couple of days, we will pull the plug on them.
We’ve met with some of the plant breeders and supplier and are working on a couple of new programs for next spring that I think will be very popular. Our fall production and poinsettia production is scheduled and ready to go as soon as the plants arrive. Our poinsettias will be here the week of July 6. The fall plants will start arriving incrementally after that.
Charley is working in his corn and pea patch. He’s irrigating them now to stay ahead of the heat and dry weather we have forecasted. He has found the best sweet corn around. We started growing and selling it a few years ago and the stuff is like crack. People got that first taste and called back for more the next day. We take orders for the corn, then pick it and call the customers to come pick it up. It’s so popular that we start getting corn orders in January. This year we were late getting the corn planted due to all the rain we had in May and the corn should be ready to pick in about 14 days.
We got our new phone system installed and it has a bug in the software which makes one extension ring randomly throughout the day which is kind of entertaining since it’s not my extension. Now I just have to learn how to use my swanky new metallic blue phone.
Lastly, I spend a lot of time perusing garden and greenhouse blogs and Twitter to see what people are talking about. Here’s one about Summer Blooming Plants for Afternoon Shade. Personally I’ve found that in the summer that most blooming plants that are labeled “full sun” do very well with only 4-6 hours of sun. I have a lot of trees around my house so 4-6 hours is about the best I can hope for.