If you’ve ever wondered what goes on at the nursery before the first snowflakes fly I can tell you that putting the nursery to bed properly takes a little more than a warm glass of milk, and a favorite bedtime story, although some of our plants do get their favorite blinky! The earth insulates the roots of plants grown in the ground but as a container nursery our plants are grown and stored above ground so we use insulation blanket to protect them from extreme low temps once they’ve gone dormant.
Because hardiness varies greatly among species our team of experts spend the majority of October and all of November relocating nursery stock to just the right “room” for their long winter’s nap. Prior to moving day we’re busy replacing shade cloth with overwintering poly on our 47 hoop houses, as well as watering, weeding and pruning the nursery stock. I get a lot of questions about pruning, mostly (insert exasperated tone here) “why did you prune them”?! Well, there are a couple of very good reasons. First, many of our shrubs (hydrangeas, physocarpus, weigela) really benefit from a fall haircut. It helps them to fill out the following year and grow into broader, beefier shrubs. Without pruning they would be tall and skinny, which is awesome for super models but not so much for Vanilla Strawberry Hydrangea, even though she is a super model among hydrangeas! Secondly, shrubs are stored either in a poly house or in the field. They are stacked and covered with winter protection blankets and white overwintering film. The stacking helps to insulate and keep cold air from filling open space between pots, which can damage roots, and proper fall pruning helps lessen potential structural damage to the plants as they are stacked. While I never cut back perennials in my own garden or in our display gardens, it’s a must in the nursery to control disease and rodent damage.
It’s almost Miller time! The only thing left to do is year-end inventory, cover the field wintered stock, close up the poly houses, load up the greenhouses, and distribute a well-deserved “atta girl and atta boy” to all of the amazing people that make this happen year after year in all kinds of crummy weather and never complain. For an operations dork like me, putting the nursery to bed is one of my favorite things. It’s like that feeling I get once I’ve put my own garden to bed, and stored my tools, pots, assorted gnomes, and patio furniture, but way, way bigger.
Melisa Bell
Because hardiness varies greatly among species our team of experts spend the majority of October and all of November relocating nursery stock to just the right “room” for their long winter’s nap. Prior to moving day we’re busy replacing shade cloth with overwintering poly on our 47 hoop houses, as well as watering, weeding and pruning the nursery stock. I get a lot of questions about pruning, mostly (insert exasperated tone here) “why did you prune them”?! Well, there are a couple of very good reasons. First, many of our shrubs (hydrangeas, physocarpus, weigela) really benefit from a fall haircut. It helps them to fill out the following year and grow into broader, beefier shrubs. Without pruning they would be tall and skinny, which is awesome for super models but not so much for Vanilla Strawberry Hydrangea, even though she is a super model among hydrangeas! Secondly, shrubs are stored either in a poly house or in the field. They are stacked and covered with winter protection blankets and white overwintering film. The stacking helps to insulate and keep cold air from filling open space between pots, which can damage roots, and proper fall pruning helps lessen potential structural damage to the plants as they are stacked. While I never cut back perennials in my own garden or in our display gardens, it’s a must in the nursery to control disease and rodent damage.
It’s almost Miller time! The only thing left to do is year-end inventory, cover the field wintered stock, close up the poly houses, load up the greenhouses, and distribute a well-deserved “atta girl and atta boy” to all of the amazing people that make this happen year after year in all kinds of crummy weather and never complain. For an operations dork like me, putting the nursery to bed is one of my favorite things. It’s like that feeling I get once I’ve put my own garden to bed, and stored my tools, pots, assorted gnomes, and patio furniture, but way, way bigger.
Melisa Bell
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