It is easy to dig a hole!!

We have touched on the subject before, but I wanted to take a minute and reiterate my opinion and experience on when to transplant most plants.  This may or may not apply to the extreme cold climates because the ground temperature gets so cold, but this works extremely well for zones 5 and up.  If you don’t know what zone you are in, check out this link.

Typically following a good frost, plants begin going into their winter dormancy period.  How do they go into dormancy you might be asking.  Well, the sap that is their ‘blood’ begins to leave the top of the plant and the branches prepare themselves for the cold weather.  This is why Deciduous trees loose their leaves in the winter.

Once the plants go dormant, they are not actively growing and will begin to concentrate on strengthening their root systems during the winter.  This means that if you want to move a plant, do it anytime after the first hard freeze.    With the plant going into dormancy, they will not realize they got moved and will repair its root system before the growing season in the spring.

This is a very simple concept that if carefully utilized, can save you from having to replace plants after transplanting.  Anything I can do to help us in the recession to save money!!

Happy Transplanting

Does this look familiar?

It is fun to watch the commercials on TV of the advertisements from people like Scotts.  They always have the most perfect lawns in the background.  I wonder how much camera trickery there really is…but that is beside the point.  For the last month or so, they have been advertising their winter guard product, saying that it protects the roots and does this and does that.  They also said to put it down now.  That is where I have always heard differently.  And I learned some of my turf knowledge on the back of the Scotts bags!

As I have talked about in my monthly checklist blogs, September and October are for overseeding and lawn starter fertilizer.  (If you live up North, it is earlier than that, but you get my drift).  So for Scotts to be advertising their “Winterizer” product in October is counterintuitive in my opinion.  According to their bags, the  winterizer fertilizer is step 5 and is to be done closer to Christmas.  To me, December makes more sense because I have just gotten done putting down grass seed and lawn starter fertilizer.  I have experienced too much fertilizer before…and it does not make the yard prettier!

Now, I have nothing against Scotts.  They, in my opinion, have the best product on the market for turf maintenance.  I just don’t understand their marketing department.  I would love to hear from some people from up North as too when it becomes pointless to work in the turf because of snow and freezing.  In Nashville, the ground ‘never fully freezes’.  It will freeze for a day or two and then thaw out again.  Which is good, because all winter long we are getting natural aeration.

Happy Grass

Kevin and Mitzi, Evan 5, Kirsten 3

Today I want to share with you where I developed a passion for and learned all about plants so I can share this ‘oinkment’ with all of my friends.  Let’s begin…

It all started when I was 8 years old.  My dad was able to convince my 12 year old brother and I that mowing grass for the neighbors was fun.  We had a push mower and an electric weedeater.  It wasn’t long before my grandfather’s neighbor decided he was too old to cut his yard, and traded us his little 30 inch rear engine riding mower for two years of grass cutting.  That is where we became a business.  We bought a gas weedeater and a gas blower with our earnings.  Over the next couple of years, we were able to get the chamber of commerce yard to mow, and that opened doors that we could not have had otherwise.  Obviously, we could not drive ourselves, so my grandfather and my dad would drive the trailer to the yard, drop us off, and we would call them when we were done.  We were so excited to work 4 hours on one yard to make $25.   (I don’t work anymore 4 hours for $12.50!!)  Now remember this was the early 90’s when a cell phone was the size of a briefcase and 100 min per month cost a lot of money.

Now, my brother turned 16 and he bought a truck with his money and now we were off to the races.  We were mowing about 25 yards per week at this point.  I had rigged all the equipment with lights.  Car fog lights on the riding mower, and large flash lights on the weedeater and blower.  We would literally get out of school at 3 o’clock, run home, change, load up the trailer and head out to mow.  Mow until about 7 or 8, come home and eat supper and do homework.  We didn’t have time to get in trouble or do extracurricular activities.  When we weren’t mowing, we were out on the boat waterskiing!!  (We never worked on Sundays, so in between church was lake time!)

1994, my brother went off to college, and I started high school, but he commuted home every weekend.  I started hiring friends and people to help me mow during the week, and my brother would help me on Friday and Saturday.  During this time, we mowed to a new house that had a next door neighbor that had almost tilled up a half acre of her backyard to plant all kinds of random flowers.  I would spend any free time over there walking and talking with her learning the flowers, when they bloom, how tall they get, how they multiply, etc.  It was very intriguing.  It also helped that she had two pretty daughters!!   Anyway, in 1997, I joined the FFA at the high school and got involved in the Nursery and Landscape CDE event.  I had to identify 100 plants by any part of the plant that they laid on the table.  I had to be able to identify over 125 weeds, diseases, or insects that effect plants.  The contest had a landscape design to be evaluated and a 100 answer test on ‘General Knowledge’.  That means it could be any question about any topic, about any subject.  What a contest!!  That alone kicked off my Landscaping career.  I graduated high school in 1998 and began to grow the business as fast as I knew how.  Tried comm. College for a semester and a half and decided to work instead.

I got married in 2001 and was my own contractor and built a house in Mt. Juliet, TN.  I started working part time with a home repair company to learn about home maintenance issues and ended up doing an 800 sq ft. addition on my in-laws house and remodeled another home that I purchased when I sold the first house I built.  In 2007, I bought a 3 acre Garden Center because I just wanted to play with plants all day long.  In 2009, I started teaching anyone that would listen about what I know about plants etc. and because of the economy, shut down the retail garden center location in August ’09, and now work from my farm selling and growing plants wholesale.  I have all the chemicals that I am shipping across country for anyone that needs them.

Now that I have some free time again, I have joined a tech company and am taking their education called “Surviving Business” and teaching it to all kinds of groups all over the area.  Survivebusiness.com is the website if you want to check it out.

Well, there’s me in a nutshell.  This is why I feel qualified to offer “Oinkment” for the yard and garden.  Tell all your friends and relatives that all the answers can be found here at ThePiggPin.com.

Happy Days

Black Walnut Tree

This blog is me asking for your help.  I am doing some heavy research on the effects of Black Walnut trees effecting the growth of other plants in the same area.

I am looking for stories of good and bad efforts to grow gardens or landscapes around Black Walnut trees.  Thanks for your help on this research.