One of the most important things you need to learn as a gardener is that there is a digging or transplanting season that has a beginning and an end. Digging season starts in the fall, usually around Thanksgiving, after deciduous plants have lost their leaves. Digging season continues through early spring. Once plants start to leaf out, you have to stop digging and transplanting.
I do all of my spring digging as early as possible, often beginning in February. Because I don’t want the burlap to rot before the selling season even begins I dig the trees, then heel them into my compost pile. Then right before we start selling I pull them out and “build” a root ball on them. See the video on this page to see how that is done.
Questions, comments, mean things to say? Post them below and I will respond. Until then, by any and all means stay inspired!
Hi Mike, it doesn’t look like you reply to YouTube video so I thought I would ask here. I was wondering what size is mikes Plant Farm in Perry? And how is the acreage divided? How much do you have for sales and staging? How much do you have for growing in propagation? Any information is super helpful. I love your site and I’ve been learning a lot for several years now
John,
The property is 4.5 acres but the nursery is less than one acre. Probably about 1/10th of an acre. Over the years we’ve actually made it smaller but doing so hasn’t affected sales that much. I really don’t have different growing and sales areas. The only area where customers can’t shop is the propagation area.
Nice Tutorial, Mike.
Hey–when you mention products I take you seriously because you’ve been doing this for so long. Also, I can tell by the way you handle the trees and plants and tools that you’re the real deal, so again I take your recommendations seriously. For example, in the last two weeks, I bought your recommended bypass pruners, the sharpening tool, and some Dip ‘N’ Grow. But I don’t think you got credit for my purchases because I didn’t find links for them in the articles I read or anywhere on the website. I’d love to see you get more for your efforts. You probably have affiliate links somewhere, but if you tune up your site you’ll probably make a little more money. Just my two cents’ worth!
Mickey,
You are absolutely right, we are so bad about that. We have a couple of affiliate links on the site, but not many.