Planting time

I have been remiss.
Planting time here at the farm is a wild time. 7 days a week and no let up. Everybody here, almost anyway, is putting in extra hours and working really hard to get everything done.
We do plant a lot of boxes and pots and containers and we like them all done by the Forth of July. We are almost finished.
This year seems different.
We have no excuse about rain days and lost work days. Still, we are not caught up. Not because of tons of huge jobs but because I think the weather and early spring has made it July in June and June in May. The weeds are spectacular! The gardens are requiring more maintainence, the trees more pruning and the plants more watering. We go to a garden and within a few days it really needs us again.
Even here at the farm, lettuce is going by faster, the weeds are already up in the potted plants that we sell, the perennials and shrubs. We are watering every day even if it rains. The heat just makes it harder to manage.
My crew is awesome. We have some new people and they are doing such a good job of learning and asking all the RIGHT questions. They are careful and personable and things get done because of the team work that goes on at Blackrock.
People keep asking if there will be anything left in bloom in August and I keep telling them to cut back everything and we will probably have a wonderful August filled with second blooms on perennials. Keep dead heading the annuals. They will continue to bloom so long as they never get to go to seed.