Alan: Well, a popular item for Mother’s Day are hanging baskets.

Kevin: Butterfly bush.

Alan: Butterfly bush? Maybe. Depends on your mom. But most normal moms are going to really appreciate a beautiful hanging basket or a container combination pot. These things are already grown. They’re already beautiful when you buy them.

And at Dill’s Greenhouse, we have a huge selection of many different sizes. We have eight inch, we have 10 inch, 12 inch, 14 inch, we have moss baskets, a big container with a spagnum moss around the edge of it and much more soil volume so you can have different plants in there that end up with a huge basket that can actually be grown because there’s enough soil to grow it.
Taking care of hanging baskets.

Now, when we sell a basket we put, as you’re carrying it out the door, will put a slow release fertilizer on it. That helps fertilize the plant through the summer months. The fertilizers that we use is a five to seven month fertilizer. It doesn’t take care of all the fertilizer needs. You’re going to want a couple of times a month at least to put some Miracle Gro or some kind of water soluble fertilizer on that. And especially some plants that are heavier feeders like petunias.

Petunias, they like a lot of fertilizer, so you want to take care to make sure to put those things on there because if you don’t, it could start looking straggly, not the beautiful plant that you bought. And then you’ll think what’s wrong with this.

Another thing to consider is, as the plants get really big and start to hang down too low, just prune it. If you prune a basket, well, one time through the growing season, it’s going to make that basket stay beautiful throughout the whole summer.

And the other thing to remember with a hanging basket is to water. You have this ball of soil up in the air with the plant growing in it. It doesn’t have the ground to protect it. It’s going to dry out a lot more than the ground is. So you want to make sure that you keep adequate water on it. You don’t want to keep it soaking wet. But let it dry down to where the plant has not started to wilt yet, but that you can be picked up that basket and feel that it’s lighter. If you can feel that, it’s time to water. Then water until it takes up all the water it can, it’ll start to run out of the bottom of the basket. Then don’t water it again until it’s dry again. So you don’t wanna keep it wet.

But now there are times in the summer, you’ll have to water every day, especially the smaller the basket, the more often you’ll have to water it. And there are several plants that you can buy that vinca, portulaca, they do a lot better if you’re one who neglects watering, and get home from work and notices, oh, no, it’s already wilting. Those things can recover really fast and they just don’t need as much water as other plants.

So if you’re really good at watering, then go ahead and buy a fuchsia. Fuchsias are beautiful, but they will dry out on you. And if you let that happen too many times they’ll recover but they lose their blooms. So you don’t want to lose all your blooms. That’s why you have the basket.

Alan: Spring is sprung, it’s finally May. This is what we’ve all been waiting for. The time where you can actually get out in the yard and plant all the beautiful flowers and vegetables that was just too cold to do earlier. So this is the time to put in vegetables and herbs and all the tender annuals, a virtually unlimited list of things that you can plant in May.

Kevin: We’re still receiving trucks on a very regular basis. Trees and shrubs are really in full swing right now. As well as perennials. In our nursery, we might carry a particular item in four or five different price points. I’d like to say from from very small, somebody that just wants to be very budget conscious and has the time and energy, and wants to watch it grow and mature. To something that looks very mature, when somebody needs something very instant. We have three or four price points in between on some of the more popular things. So really something for everybody’s budget.

Alan: Okay, you keep taking the conversation back to the nursery. You’ve had your chance in late March and April. This is the time. This is May. This is when you want to get the stuff that I produce that I’m the grower.The vegetables and the herbs. This is what we’re looking at for May.

Kevin: People like to plant it once and be done.

Alan: Hanging baskets. No one’s going to buy their Mom a perennial. That’s already done blooming.

Kevin: They might buy a rose bush for Mother’s Day! A butterfly bush.

Alan: This is the time to buy hanging baskets

Kevin: Hydrangeas.

Alan: This is the time to buy potted plants. It’s the time to buy…

Kevin: Camellias.

Alan: A lot of things you can do now that you couldn’t do earlier when the nursery people had their chance. Yes, it’s still good time to plant nursery products but

Kevin: Tomato, tomahto.

Alan: Just as long as they come to Dill’s Greenhouse to buy it.

Alan: Another good thing in April is to think about your herb garden. Herbs are one of my favorite things.
I love to grow herbs. I love to to use herbs.

And there’s two kinds of herbs in a sense. There are perennial herbs such as sage and thyme. Most of the mints those are perennial. And then you have annual herbs that are tender. Basil and cilantro, dill, parsley. Parsley is actually kind of hardy. I’ve even seen it live over. But it’s still classified as more of a tender herb.

In April, it’s still too early to put out basil. Now if it’s late April in Ohio, we’re past the frost free date, you have people can get away with it. But I don’t know how much advantage you’re going to have because the ground is still cold, even after the air temperatures warmed up.

In April, go through your herb garden. Look at all of your perennial herbs. What are coming up? You can divide some of those if you get they’re getting too big for that spot.

But the perennial herbs are great because you can just keep harvesting them every year. You don’t have to replant. And we even have one variety of rosemary that I’ve had success with year after year. It came back three years in a row. And rosemary is a very tender perennial here. It’s zone seven is the best one. And sometimes zone seven, if you have a cold winter, it won’t make it. Also if you have a dog that likes rosemary like mine does, and rips the whole plant out of the ground and runs through the yard with it, you’ll have to replant.

But there are quite a few herbs that will make it through winter. It’s good time in April to tidy those up. Divide them that just to have more room to plant the annuals, even in between when it’s time to do that. Which would not be in April. You probably want to wait till the frost free date which considered to be around May 15 in central Ohio.

Kevin: So now that we’re into April, any of you guys that were late getting things cleaned up, April is definitely the month you kind of want to have that checked off your list. It’s time to really take a thorough walk through the yard.

Examine anything that needs cleaned up. Whether it be old hostas, or maybe you’ve got just some old perennials, day lilies or asters, or something like that, that just the tops need cleaned off. You definitely want to get that done.

It’d be the time of year that you could do some pruning on your roses. Roses would be a plant that you’d want to go ahead and clean up. First examine your rose. Take out any decaying tissue, any brown tissue, that would be the first thing is get all that old wood out of there. And then take whatever top growth you have, depending on the type of rose. But for the most part, it’s safe to probably safely take off half of whatever growth you have there.

Now if it’s a climber that might be an exception, but most of the teas and shrubs, that would be a safe assumption.

When it comes to shrubs, is it going to be a spring flowering shrub or summer or even late summer or fall? And the answer is if it’s a spring flowering shrub, you’re going to want to wait till after that shrub is flowered, that coming spring. Even if it’s just unruly, and it’s just encroaching on your patio or sidewalk. If you want that color, you’re just going to have to be patient and wait till after the flower.

Once flowering is done, you can go ahead and trim that back. Just note it in your garden notes that would be something that you trim in the summer going into fall. You could most likely still trim it in fall and still get that spring color for most of those shrubs.

Kevin: It’s a fun time in the nursery at Dill’s Greenhouse, because our nursery is as full as it probably will ever be, in the month of April.

We receive trucks daily, sometimes multiple trucks daily. In addition to the stuff that we grow on site. If you’re kind of walking around and see some spots in your yard, and you’d like to kind of see a tree there, or a shrub, or maybe a screen (you got one of those neighbors that you’d rather not have), we can give you a number of suggestions. It’s all there on site to see. You can window shop.

If it’s something you don’t see, we work with at least a half dozen or more local nurseries that I can source material in and turn it around. Because of the time of year we can get those trucks in very regularly and probably turn your order around in a week, at the most.