How to water small pots and other plants in the yard, garden or nursery.

Welcome to this issue of “Mondays with Mike”.  We do this series for our backyard growers but are happy to share them with anybody that has an interest.  Lots and lots of things for you to pay attention to in this video.

1.  Our New Potting Area

I reconfigured our potting area to take advantage of some nearby shade.  In the video, notice the potting benches.  One is considerably lower  because my wife Pam, who is now actively helping me in the nursery was having difficulty with the lower bench, and it’s really better to have one person per bench.  That way you can line up the pots, drop in the plants then fill them with soil.  We’ve also gone back to our old system of fertilizing each plant as we pot them.

Pam says Hi!  Check it out, she rocking her new bright orange gardening hat!

2.  Amber and Gabbie showing the donkeys some love.

In case you haven’t noticed, Amber is creating a lot of content for http://mikesbackyardnursery.com/ now.  I still do content, but I’m always crazy busy and over the years I’ve created enough content to make anybody tired.  I’ll get Amber to post the links to all of the content that we’ve created over the years.  Once you see that list you’ll understand why I get a bit cranky when somebody complains about our content and has a problem with a few typos etc.

But anyway, Amber is spending more time in the office so in this episode of “Mondays with Mike” you can catch Amber bonding with Fergus and Gabbie hugging on Finnegan.

Ya’ll need to know, I couldn’t give less of a hoot about typos.  I do my best, and I know that 99.9% of my subscribers don’t mind.  Recently one lady blasted me about a few typos on a page saying they were so bad she had to leave the page.  Whatever!  Leave the page.

3.  This is just part of the content that we (mostly me) have created over the years.

Directory

4.  My Sunken Container Areas.

Recently I was asked why my container areas are sunken below grade.  First of all, my soil drains really well so I can get away with this.  Most can’t.  But I lower my container areas by 8″ or in some places 12″.  I do this mostly for winter protection, but it also helps in really hot weather as well.  Being below grade the containers are protected from the wind pounding on them day and night.  They don’t dry out as easily and that’s just as important during the winter as it is in the summer.

Being lower that the surrounding grade leaves and snow tend to collect in the container areas during the winter, this helps to insulate my plants.  But most of all, I do this because I do not cover my containers for the winter.  I lower them instead.

5.  Wizhead Sprinklers.

I use Wizhead sprinkler heads to water my containers as do all of the large wholesale growers around here.  In the video I show you how I set them up and how much of an area they cover.

6.  Why I lied to you in this video.

I lied to you because I forget things.  In the video I said that I put the  sprinkler heads 12′ apart and I think I started out doing them that way but now they are 14 apart.  Just want to correct that.

7.  Notice!  Thousands and thousands of plants in $4.97 pots.

I am writing this on June 8th, 2014.  You need to know two things.

1.  In March of 2013 I had not one single plant growing in a container in my nursery.  As a matter of fact, I didn’t even have my container areas built.

2.  We just finished three weekends of selling plants and I promise you, we hit it out of the park!  Selling thousands and thousand of dollars worth of our $4.97 plants.

The question you have to ask yourself is this;  “Would Mike really grow that many plants if he were not 100% that he could sell them.  You also need to know that in 2003 I stopped growing and selling and took ten years off.  So this year was only my second year selling from this location.  I had start completely over from scratch, and that included finding all new customers to buy my plants.

8.  Notice the trees on either side of the container area.

On both sides of this container area I have planted hundreds of Lavender Twist Redbud trees and Harry Lauder’s Walking Sticks trimmed into single stem trees.  In between the trees I am planting hundreds of perennials to use as stock plants.

9.  Impact sprinklers and how I use them.

I wind this video up with a short segment about impact sprinklers and how I use them in the nursery and how I’ve used them in the past.  Also this is how I made those sprinkler stands.

Questions or comments?  Post them below.

If you find any typos in this post print the page, circle them in red and hang the page from your ceiling over your bed.  Because, I’ve spent a lot of time on this post and I’m not done yet.  But there’s a message within the message here if you catch it.

You don’t have to be perfect.  You just have to be productive.