Spring Preview Open House

Saturday April 23rd, 2011, 1PM at the nursery – Things should be growing on nicely by the second half of April, and we’d love to show you some of our new wares.  Exciting new plants and products abound this spring.  Staff will be on hand to help answer your spring gardening questions.

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Tasks for early spring:

1. Apply HollyTone fertilizer to your landscape around April 1st.

HollyTone is a mildly acidifying complete fertilizer well suited for use on alkalyne soils, such as those found in Washtenaw County.  We recommend it as a  twice-annual maintenance feed for perennials, shrubs and trees.  To help folks remember timing, Fraleighs recommends applying HollyTone (per label rates) around April Fools Day and Halloween.

2. Cut back your ornamental grasses and dead head your perennial beds.

It is time to make ready for this year’s flush of growth,  Out with the old and in with the new!  If common sense and local ordinances allow, consider burning your ornamental grasses.  In their natural habitats, most grasses are regenerated by fires; the process reintroduces nutrients used in the preceding year’s foliage back into the soil.  If you are using a propane torch for ignition, be sure not to aim the torch’s flame at the crown of the plant.  We don’t want to cook anybody!

3. Don’t retreat, REMULCH!

I’ve been waiting to use that line.  Seriously, though, once your beds are dead-headed, remulching doesn’t get any easier.  Shoot for a 3″ layer of mulch in total (including any existing mulch).  See our Mulch page on the menu bar above for more info.