Garden Zone
May 11th
If you feed them, they will come, but if you want them to stay I recommend planting bird specific plants to give them a place to eat and play. It helps to have shelter and natural foods to keep our feathered friends happy. And as you may have guessed different plants attract different birds so here are my recommendations for plants for a few types of birds common in the area.
Cardinals get a majority of their diet from eating seeds and fruits so planting shrubs that produce fruits and seeds will certainly keep them in your yard. Shrubs such as dogwoods or viburnums will serve these purposes as well; a dense protective shelter to hide and play within along with fruit to eat. Purple coneflowers are perfect for goldfinches if left standing throughout the winter. Plants with long skinny flowers with plenty of nectar are great for attracting humming birds. One of the easiest to grow plants would have to be Monarda and will also give a long lasting burst of color in the garden for you to enjoy. Orioles enjoy any type of fruit bearing plant but elderberries and raspberries are among their favorites. If you are lucky they may leave a few berries for you to eat!
Something else many people don’t think of is making a second use of our annuals for the purpose of birding. For example, most people will just throw away their pumpkin seeds after they are done carving and baking but this year take the seeds and place them on an open tray birdfeeder for the cardinals. Another instinct is to automatically pull out all annuals in the fall once they are done blooming and compost them. This year try saving some of the zinnia, cosmos and mum seed heads before you do your plant pulling. These seed heads are great additions to the tray bird feeder in the winter and it is also fun to watch the finches rip them apart looking for the seeds inside.
Happy birding!
April 29th
Our azaleas and rhododendrons are on their way and should be here by the first week of May. Once they do arrive is about the same time the “What is the difference?” question starts coming up. Well, the short answer is not much, but the biggest difference concerning the home gardener comes down to bloom color and leaf retention in the winter. The Rhododendrons that grow in our area are fairly limited as far as flower color but they do hold on to their leaves all winter. The azaleas lose their leaves in the winter but their flowers come in all sorts of colors from creamy white to yellows and pinks. While I think the dark green foliage is too impressive to pass up, I don’t necessarily think you should give up your favorite colors just see leaves in the winter. The blooms of the azalea are colorful enough to be worth the trade off.
PJM in full bloom in the spring.
PJM with its bronzy winter color.
Northern Hilites azalea.
Mandrin lites azalea.
Orchid lites azalea.
April 22nd – Earth day Special –Trees
Earth Day is always fresh on my mind in the spring because our tree planting days at Thomsen’s always land within a few days of earth’s special day. There are many good reasons to plant a tree but I’m sure you’ve heard all of them in the last week so I’ll actually give you some advice on HOW to select the tree you’ve been told to get.
Things to remember when finding a new tree:
Don’t Fit a Square Tree in a Round Hole – Don’t try to make a tree fit in your landscape if it wasn’t designed for it. I know you always wanted a Japanese maple at the top of that dry sandy hill exposed to strong northwest winter winds but I just don’t think it will work. The tree will be there for many years and a healthy second choice is better than a sickly first. Consider a native or a near relative of a native. These plants have been here much longer than us and have had more than enough time to adapt to the climate. We have some exceptionally beautiful natives and cultivars of these natives. For example: Redmond Linden – It’s a large upright oval shade tree with big deep green leaves. But wait, there’s more! In midsummer the tree blooms and gives off a very sweet scent.
Diversity is very Important – At one point most American streets were lined with American Elm but now it is very rare to see an old Elm standing. After the demise of the American Elm we realized the comparable resilience and beauty of the Ash tree. Now we have a new friend: The ash borer. It is inevitable that our streets will become bare once again. The new trend that makes me a bit worried is the huge maple craze. One out of three trees we sell at Thomsen’s ends up being a maple of some sort. It seems as if we are now replacing ashes and elms with maples and I hope I’m not around when a maple disease of some sort devastates our urban forests. Try picking a unique tree for your yard because chances are that this unique tree will be the last to suffer from a fatal disease. My first choice is the Kentucky Coffee Tree. It grows fast, blooms in the spring and has a very interesting branching habit.
Get More Bang for your buck - Why are you planting a tree? Even if you are just filling a bare spot in the yard consider getting extra value. If you want a shade tree, why not get one that blooms as well! Try a catalpa or horse chestnut. If you want a more compact flowering tree, try a flowering pear. We carry an especially hardy and compact flowering pear called ‘Korean Sun’. It is very similar to the flowering crab but it has a striking red and purple fall color that can definitely make yard far more colorful without sacrificing the flowering and wildlife attracting qualities of the crab.
Northern Catalpa in full bloom.
Double flowering horsechestnut with its huge spike of blooms in early summer.
Redmond linden showing off its near perfect pyramidal shape as a young tree. Eventually it will mature to a huge upright oval.
The beautiful fall color of the Korean sun pear is only a third of its beauty.
April 19th
April doesn’t have to just be a month of showers for flowers in May. There are flowers that work just fine in the cool late April weather. Pulsitilla, Pansy, Kale and petunias are all good plants to start with. Even if nights are still too frosty in mid April, a beautiful spring arrangement is worth the little bit of moving involved in moving it to a safer place.
If this doesn’t ease the urge to get out in the yard there is still plenty of stuff to do at this time of year. As soon as the frost comes out of the ground it is time to start gardening. If you have fruit trees, this is a good time to apply your dormant spray oils for coddling moth and scales (just make sure the air temp is above 40F). The tree guards can come off at this time of year too. There is plenty of other food for mice and deer now that the snow is gone so they usually don’t touch young trees at this time of year. Your lawn will benefit from a good raking, a bit of aeration and some reseeding. Make sure the ground isn’t too wet which, in Minnesota, is often the case through the middle part of April. Anyway, if you can hold on just a bit longer, summer will be here before you know it!
Pansies provide some vivid early spring color.
While nothing else is even considering blooming, the forsythia is in full bloom.
Pulsitilla are probably the first blooming perennials you will see in the spring garden.
04/01/10
Scientists Successfully Grow the World’s first Meatball Tree
Geneticists in Turkey have successfully bred a tree that produces 2-3 oz balls of meat. Omar Mantlak, one of the scientist involved in the development, says the balls of meat are “as tasty as tasty can be.” The next great step will be to graft the cheese bearing tree to the meatball tree. With these stunning new developments future generations can look forward to orchards of moss covered meatball trees. Upon the eventual release of the crop the scientists are planning to make sure the public covers their meatballs whenever they sneeze to prevent the spread of the tree into the wild. The meatball tree can easily be propagated by seed and as Mantlak warns, “if a single meatball were to roll into the garden it would rapidly turn to mush and sprout a tree. So if you could imagine an entire tree filled with delicious meatballs ready to roll into the garden, we have a potential ecological catastrophe on our hands”
03/20/10
 
Hello again! I’m back again and ready for another season at Thomsens. I’d like to let you know about some of the new ways to stay in touch with Thomsens. At the beginning of the year we launched our Facebook fan page so if you want to keep current on all things Thomsens, I recommend becoming a fan. Our website will be undergoing some changes too. We are adding more pictures, videos, information and expanding our plant library. We just finished up another great three days at the CMBA home show for the season, giving away over 700 tomatoes and 300 other plants at our booth.
At Thomsens most of our greenhouses are heated and quickly filling up with plants happily soaking up the sunny spring weather. We are also preparing for the basket party coming up on the 27th and 28th of March and hope you join us there. Just remember to sign up early so we can accommodate you and all your friends.
That’s all I’ve got for this week but you can look forward to more news from the greenhouses and some gardening tips coming up as the season rolls along. If you have any questions or comments feel free to contact me at steve@tgreenhouses.com. I'd also love to hear about your garden so if you have a gardening success story you would like to share on the Garden Zone site, send me some pictures along with a short description and I'll get it posted for you.
Cheers,
Steve Ruprecht
02/01/2010
Every year we end up getting a number of newly released plants or bring in plants and décor unique to our area. Most people don’t get to see these items until they show up at the greenhouse in the spring but thanks to the wonders of the internet I can now let our biggest fans get a sneak preview of the new releases well before the frost has lifted and all the garden planning has been completed. So, without further ado here’s the first annual WHAT’S NEW AT THOMSEN’S blog!
Plants-
Beauregard and Centennial Sweet Potatoes – Yes, you heard me. We will be one of the few greenhouses actually growing Sweet Potato Transplants. Sometimes you can find unrooted cuttings around here but rarely will you find these plants ready to be potted right into the ground. This shortens the growing season allowing for higher yields and less loss for you!
Trollhaugen Seedless Grape – We finally did it! We found a hardy seedless grape perfect for northern gardens. Trollhaugen is a blue seedless grape with a concord like taste without the surprising crunch of concord seeds. We are hoping to add another great variety of seedless grapes to our line up next year too!
Invincibelle Spirit Hydrangea – This is another great surprise for 2010: a pink Annabelle hydrangea! The Annabelle type hydrangeas are some of the most versatile landscape plants so an introduction such as this is really exciting. For every Invincibelle purchased the breeder of this plant donates a percentage of the sale to Breast Cancer research.
Shockwave denim petunia – This is a great spreading petunia with slightly smaller blooms than other spreaders but the blooms refresh continually giving a more consistent splash of blue in your mixed containers.
Taishan marigolds – These marigolds are amazing! They have large flowers with great color and a good balance of dark green foliage. Their flower heads contain so many pedals that the water runs off the flower. Why is that important? Well, because the water doesn’t sit on the top of the plant for extended periods of time, they last way longer! This specific plant was used in mass plantings at the 2008 Olympics in China and received rave reviews.
New Garden decor -
New line of Pottery – When our retail manager came back from Atlanta this summer she brought a whole new line of pottery with her. New shapes, sizes and colors of pottery, bird baths and other decorations that match all combinations of Thomsen’s plants.
Bird seed – We have always carried some bird related items but this year we went a bit wild. We found a ton of different bird feeders, houses and bird baths ready to be used by your feathered buddies. If that isn’t enough, we also have a lineup of gourmet birdseed to go with our feeders.
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The inside scoop from the people who know. |
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Notes from the Master Gardener
Try a hardy aster or mum this year! If you haven't seen the beautiful yellow blooms of the Yellow Quill Mum or the giant daisy-like blooms of Mammoth Pink mums we recommend checking them out. Not only will you impress your neighbors with the incredible colors in your fall displays, but you can plant them in your garden afterwards and enjoy them in your garden the following year as well!
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