Fall is the time to plant spring blooming bulbs for that wonderful first show of spring that we all love! When you think of spring, daffodils (Narcissus) or maybe crocus come to mind, but there are many other bulbs for fall planting to bring gorgeous color to your spring garden. Some of these even have bloom times that extend into the early summer. These bulbs are originally from all parts of the world. Aren't we lucky that we can grow them here, too!

Preparing your soil for bulb planting is simple. Use a good soil amendment like Black Forest, Paydirt or Bumper Crop where you intend to plant your bulbs. As you dig each hole for the bulbs, add Master Nursery Bulb Food. Each bulb, corm, rhizome or tuber requires a different planting depth. Follow the packaging instructions or ask one of us for help.

To make your bulb planting even easier, we have tools available to help you, such as bulb planters (long- and short-handled) and bulb auger bits.

Following this preparation and giving your bulbs the sun/shade and watering that they require will bring you a vividly colorful spring garden.

Click here to see a gallery of some of our spring-blooming bulbs.

Do all of your garden plants look like statues or mounds? If your garden looks somewhat mundane and doesn't excite you anymore, it might be time to add a little motion to your garden. Plants that sway in the breeze not only soften the look of one's landscape, they also add movement that helps remove the stiffness of many background and foundation plants.

There are a number of ways that flexible plants can soften up the landscape. Some perennials like buddleia, daylilies and penstemon offer flowers on long stems that move in the wind. With other plants, such as grasses and fine-foliaged plants, the entire plant sways. Some trees also have foliage that not only moves but even shimmers in the wind.

The key to softening up your landscape is to strategically place these swaying beauties where their movement can be seen and enjoyed from many angles. The idea is to break up your landscape and use these plants as focal points to draw attention. Unless they are trees, never use these in the background, because their softening effect will be lost to the eye.

Even if you have shady areas you can still add character to your garden with plants such as ferns and heuchera when they bloom in spring and summer. We have many great plants that will add movement to your garden. Just click on this link to see pictures of some of our favorites. Gardens don't have to be boring, so add a little excitement to your landscape today!

Now is a great time to get started on your cool season vegetable garden. First, pull up and throw out any summer vegetable plants that have finished producing. A thorough cleaning now really pays off in fewer bugs and diseases later.

Dig up the soil deeply with a spade, turning it over, aerating it, and breaking up the clods as you go. Then use a garden fork to mix in some Bumper Crop. Add some Dr. Earth Tomato, Vegetable & Herb Fertilizer according to package directions.

Then use a garden rake to level the ground. Plant tall crops to the north, and short crops to the south. Full sun is best for all winter vegetables.

Winter vegetables include "flower" type plants such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cauliflower, "leaf" type vegetables such as cabbage, kale, lettuce, and spinach, and "root" vegetables like beets, carrots, parsnips, and radishes. It's also a great time to plant peas.

Come on in and get a head start on your winter garden today!

One of the great things about the fall season is that it presents the opportunity to enjoy the vivid color of chrysanthemums, helping gardeners to achieve four-season interest in their gardens. Chrysanthemum flowers are also a favorite of florists for arrangements, due to the longevity of their blooms.

Chrysanthemums were cultivated in China as a flowering herb as far back as the 15th century BC. The flower was introduced into Japan in the 8th century AD, and the Emperor adopted the flower as his official seal. Today there is still a "Festival of Happiness" in Japan celebrating the flower. Mums were brought to Europe in the 17th century and the rest of the world has enjoyed them ever since.

Modern chrysanthemums are much more showy than their wild relatives. The flowers occur in many flower forms, and can be daisy-like, decorative, pompons or buttons. Chrysanthemums come in a wide variety of colors, including white, off-white, yellow, gold, bronze, red, burgundy, pink, lavender and purple.

Chrysanthemum plants can grow to be 2-3 feet high, depending on the cultivar and growing conditions. There are "hardy mums" and "florist mums." Hardy mums put out stolons. Florist mums put out few or no stolons, which makes them less likely to over-winter in cold regions.

Mums look best planted in a mass--but for good health don't overcrowd them, since good air circulation reduces the chance of disease.

Plant chrysanthemum flowers in full sun and well-drained soil, enriched with a soil conditioner. Chrysanthemums are "photoperiodic," meaning they bloom in response to the shorter days and longer nights experienced in fall. Therefore, do not plant chrysanthemum flowers near street lights or night lights: the artificial lighting may wreak havoc with the chrysanthemums' cycle.

We invite you to visit us and bring some hardy mums home for your garden to brighten up your autumn garden. Chrysanthemums also make great housewarming gifts--and your friends will thank you for thinking about them. So remember, mum's the word!

Although ponds need little routine maintenance, there are a few end-of-season tasks that are essential if you want to keep your plants and fish in good condition.

• Protect the pond from the worst of the leaf fall with a fine-mesh net. Anchor it just above the surface of the pond. This is not practical for a large pond, but it is useful for a small one. Remove the leaves regularly, and eventually take the netting off.
• If you are not able to cover your pond with a net, or don't like the appearance of one, use a fish net or rake to remove leaves regularly--not only from the surface, but from below the surface as well. Too many leaves in the water can pollute the pond.
• Submerged oxygenating plants, such as elodea and rampant growers like myriophyllum, will eventually clog the pond unless you net or rake them out periodically. This is a good time to thin them simply by raking out the excess.
• Trim back dead or dying plants from around the edge of the pond, especially where the vegetation is likely to fall into the water.
• To divide overgrown water plants, first remove the plants from their containers. It may be necessary to cut some roots to do so.
• Some plants can simply be pulled apart by hand, but others will have such a tight mass of entangled roots that you need to chop them into smaller pieces with a spade.
• Discard any pieces you don't want for replanting, then pot up the others in planting baskets. Cover the top of the baskets with gravel to prevent soil disturbance.

See our pond care guide for more seasonal care tips.

Holiday cacti are not hard to take care of, if you remember not to overwater them; getting them to bloom on time is a bit more complex.

Here's how to do it:
In order for these plants to form flower buds for holiday blooms, they need extended darkness for at least four weeks.

Place the plant in a dark room or keep it covered (under a box or bag works fine) for at least 12 hours a day.

When buds appear (it usually takes around four weeks), the darkening schedule can stop.

As the buds get larger, move the plant gradually to where it will be displayed for the holiday, avoiding extreme temperature or lighting changes.

Continue to water and feed while the plant is budding and blooming. Water only when the soil is completely dry--these plants do not like soggy roots.

RESERVE YOUR SPOT for David Ruf's annual workshop "Landscape Design for the Homeowner," starting January 12, 2008. Spaces are limited to 16 participants.

David Ruf is also offering a "Pond Installation Workshop for the Homeowner," starting January 20, 2008. For that workshop, spaces are limited to 20 participants.

To reserve your spot and for details call Greenhouse Garden Center at 882-8600.

Do we really need a blue rose?

A topic we haven't addressed, or even come close to addressing, is that of transgenic ornamental plants. Or, as some people refer to them, "Franken-flowers." These are plants with genes transferred from plants or animals of another species. If you haven't been keeping up on this, all sorts of strange, wonderful, spooky or fascinating things have been going on, depending on your point of view. There is a variety of wheat that is immune to Roundup. The immunity gene was taken from rice and put into a wheat seed and from this we now have thousands of acres of Roundup resistant wheat. "Why?," you ask. So that you could spray wheat crops with Roundup to kill weeds but not harm the wheat--neat, isn't it?

Next year or the year after, you will find roses with blue flowers. Hundreds of years of cross-breeding and hybridizing and there has never been a blue rose. Genes were taken from a pansy and an iris and introduced into a rose variety. Now, there is a rose with blue flowers! "Why?" Because there was no such thing as a blue rose and people have been trying to breed one the old-fashioned way without result.

Liquidambars have had a sterility gene introduced into their DNA so that their seeds when scattered will not sprout and become invasive. For those of you who have cursed those round, spiky, obnoxious seed pods, this sounds like a worthwhile project.

The most Frankensteinian effort now being conducted is the attempt to transfer the luminescence gene from a species of sea anemone into grass so that when you step on the grass, it will glow. I have no idea what value or interest anyone might have in that project.

But back to the Roundup-resistant wheat. What happens when a field of wheat blows pollen all over the countryside and pollinates wild oats or Italian ryegrass? One or two new plants may emerge from this transgenic cross and we now have weeds immune to Roundup. And the more we spray, the more of the non-immune weeds will survive (Charles Darwin never anticipated such an event.) The problem we were trying to resolve in our original wheat fields has now returned or been made worse.

What if the sterility gene escapes from the liquidambar trees and becomes instilled in fruit or nut trees or even oak trees? What becomes of our fruit and nut crops? What happens to the birds, deer and other animals dependent on seeds and acorns for their survival? And the blue flowers, if that gene escapes and somehow infects normally yellow flowering plants, what becomes of the insects dependent on the yellow flowering plants for nectar and pollen? Take a look at a wildflower field, and see that there are few blue flowers but yellow flowers as far as the eye can see. Insect eyes are different from ours and what is yellow to us is visible to them. What is blue to us, is invisible to many insects and so a field of blue or nearly blue flowers means that a whole range of insects are doomed to starvation and the good work they did for us is gone. Not to mention the birds that ate the bugs which are no longer there.

Carol Hall in the October/November issue of Horticulture quotes John Muir, who said, "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world." Unfortunately, we do things without realizing what the consequences will be. Remember DDT and the following Silent Spring. If you have roundup immune wheat, you can't give or sell it to a neighbor without paying the patent fee to the chemical company holding the patent on the gene. And on and on it goes.

Do we really need a blue rose?