The arrival of longer days herald the first real sign that spring is on the way! Your Community Greenhouse staff of Green Team professionals are busy preparing for what will certainly be another great growing and gardening experience.
Greenhouse Preparation
The planting season at Creek Side begins by preparing the greenhouses. Clean up the floors, turn on the heat and water. The containers to be planted are filled with soil down in the barn. Then the containers are placed on carts and hauled up to the greenhouse to be planted. Using the Thriller/ Filler/ Spiller technique, the planting crew follow recipes that were prepared last summer and fall, and place the starter plants in the freshly filled pots. Watering and fertilizing begin immediately after planting to make sure everything gets off to a great start!
Planting Begins
Next week several hundred geranium and fuchsia hanging baskets will be planted in the greenhouse. Then the perennials will be planted over the next few weeks. After that, the planting for the Container Gardens and Hanging Baskets follows in mid-February. We will begin with the larger sizes and move through the list finishing with the small pots in April. This is the time of the year that we are especially excited to be in the greenhouse. If it’s snowing, it is nice and toasty. If it’s sunny, soaking in the sun, breathing in the nice humid air. It feels like spring already….
The big colorful combinations of Grown Fresh™ annual flowers are a Creek Side Gardens specialty. A lot of study and research goes into selecting the best varieties and combinations of flowers so that everything grows together just exactly perfect. You will see what I am talking about when you come to visit this spring.
ProGreen Expo
Some of that study and research will take place in February during the ProGreen Expo, which will be held virtually this year. ProGreen Expo is a sponsored by the Garden Centers of Colorado, the Colorado Nursery and Greenhouse Association and the Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado. These are the three leading Colorado professional industry organizations to which Creek Side is affiliated with.
Educational Sessions
The educational sessions offer all types of classes from how to prune trees and shrubs, to recommended insect pest control strategies, to what flowers were the stars of the show at the CSU Trial Gardens in Ft. Collins last summer. Because Creek Side strives to provide the best gardening advice to their customers, several Creek Side Green Team will be attending the educational sessions this year to brush up on what they already know and learn something new about what they don’t know!
We’re excited and you can begin getting excited too now that spring is on the way!
