Texas Nursery and Landscape Expo

Well, we arrived in Houston yesterday, Friday afternoon around 1:00 pm. After grabbing some lunch at a nearby Jack in the Box, we proceeded to the Nursery Expo at the George Brown Convention Center which is right across from Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros. Amazingly enough it was real easy to find and while traffic was heavy, it really wasn't that bad. Registering for the event was real tedious. In the past I would fill out one registration form and list everyone on the one form. This year I had to fill out a complete form for each one of us. Myself, Jody, and four of my five children. (Molly is still in England). Then I had to wait as the woman processing the data entered in all the info from each form with a hunt and peck typing technique. Note to self: next year pre-register online. We finally got registered, got our badges and entered the ginormous event room. This place was huge and the sheer number of vendors and interesting displays was quite impressive. I have a feeling I'm going to exceed my self imposed catalogue limit! My youngest son Jesse, age 2, was a big hit with all the vendors. He had a great time being generally cute and a huge ham. He even got into a game with one of the vendors where they played ball using a lime. It was hilarious. It's Saturday morning now and we are getting ready to head over to the Expo for day 2. We'll finish up this evening and head back to Elgin tonight. Well that's all for now, I've got to wake everyone up and rally the troops for another day of trudging through Plantland.

Awol

Well, it's been a while since I posted and I know this is very bad for blogs. I do have an excuse although it may be considered lame by all you expert bloggers out there. Here's my excuse: it's been too darn hot! It's been consistently in the low 100's temperature wise here in Elgin, Tx. for quite some time now. After baking in the heat all day I don't feel much like doing anything when I get home from work. So please forgive me, I'll try to do better. I haven't been doing much gardening except I did get some fall tomato plants started. The challenge is keeping them from experiencing spontaneous combustion. On Friday I'm heading to the Texas Nursery and Landscape Assoc. annual trade show. The show rotates from Dallas to San Antonio to Houston. This year it's in Houston, my least favorite venue. (Sorry Houstonians). I'm hoping to find a few new suppliers and maybe discover some cool new plants and products for my nursery. I'm taking the family and the kids are very excited as they usually get lots of free candy, gadgets and basically worthless stuff from the vendors. My employees have asked for koozies, pens and free samples. I usually come home with several large bags full of catalogues that end up never getting looked at again. This year I am determined to be a little more discriminating and not grab a catalogue from every single vendor there. (How many tree growers do I need?) I just finished cleaning my office and threw away 4 trash cans of stuff from last years trade show. I'm sorry, I'm kind of a pack rat. I think I get this from my mom. Well that's it for now. My next post will probably be from the hotel in Houston. At least the convention center will be air conditioned!

Hot color

Okay, it's 100 degrees and no relief in sight. What's a gardener to do. Well, fortunately there are some great plants that not only take the heat, but are also real show stoppers when it comes to color. First on the list is one of my personal favorites: Giant Coral Bean. This plant never fails to draw wows at the nursery. Not only is it super heat and drought tolerant, it blooms all summer and attracts hummingbirds! In fact, last year at Bloomers one of our customers who happened to be a "birder" noticed a violet-eared hummingbird on this plant. Apparently this was a rare sighting in our area and soon we had all sorts of bird watchers at the nursery trying to catch a glimpse and get a photo of this elusive bird. The botanical name for this plant is Erythrina x Bidwillii, a cross between native Coral Bean and tropical Coral Bean. This large shrub is root hardy in zone 8 and grows very quickly, exhibiting deep red blossoms all summer. Just give it some space as it can get quite large. Our speciman at Bloomers is about 10' tall and 8' to 9' wide.

The next plant I want to mention is the increasingly popular Pride of Barbados or Red Bird of Paradise as it is sometimes called. The botanical name is Caesalpinia Pulcherrima. This beauty is breathtaking when it is in bloom which is usually the hottest part of the summer. The hotter it gets outside, the better this plant does. Full sun is best and good drainage is necessary as this plant does not prefer wet feet. The fern-like foliage is an excellent backdrop and contrast for the gaudy orange and yellow blossoms. Oh yes, did I mention that it attracts butterflies, bees and Hummingbirds as well? When Pride of Barbados is blooming, it's hard to keep them in the nursery as they readily fly out the door.

Last but certainly not least is the bold and sassy Texas Star Hibiscus. This perennial exhibits very large dark red hibiscus flowers framed by some very interesting foliage. This hardy hibiscus thrives in the heat and does well in poorly drained soils. There's much more to discuss but I'm going to have to pick up those topics at a later date. Right now I need some sleep. So long until next time. Oh yeah, we have all three of these plants and many more at Bloomers Garden Center, 507 hwy 95 N, Elgin, Tx. 78621. Come check us out!

Gone fishing...

After much research and thinking about it, we have decided to add fish to our product line at Bloomers. We have been dabbling in water gardening for years, installing ponds, selling water lilies and other aquatic plants, and water garden supplies. So it seemed only a natural progression to start selling fish. We are starting with 2 tanks, one 200 gal. and one 300 gal. Our 1st shipment of fish consist of 3" to 4" koi and we are waiting for another shipment of more 3" to 4" and some larger select koi in the 6" to 8" range. So far DHL has lost two shipments of our fish. This is very frustrating as well as a real bummer for the fish.(They croaked). The koi are quite beautiful. I especially like the butterfly koi with their exotic fins. In the near future we will be adding more varieties such as Saragosa Comets, Fantails, etc. Here is a couple of pics of the tank setup and a shot of some koi waiting to go to someones pond.

This will be my last post for at least a week as I am leaving for Missouri with my son, Daly, to attend a youth conference on biblical relationships that honour God. We are both excited to see what God has in store for us at this conference. Until I return, happy blogging.

Recently, I was contacted by a client for whom I had installed a water garden some 4 or 5 years ago. Her husband had been the pond tender and since he had passed about 1 year ago, she was getting a bit overwhelmed with pond maintenance. She loved the pond, but just couldn't keep up with it. So we decided to convert the pond to a disappearing fountain as she still wanted a water feature, just without the maintenance of a pond. Here is a picture of the original pond.

The first step was to disassemble the pond. This involved quite a bit of sweat equity, removing plants, rocks, gravel, etc. It was around 98 degrees during the whole project so the water cooler was one thing we made sure to keep stocked with ice and fresh water. Staying well hydrated is crucial when doing labor in high temps. Here's what it looked like after being disassembled.

The soil on this site was deep sand, quite shifty. We were building a fountain using 3 large ceramic pots imported from Asia. These pots were quite heavy and too large for the 4x4 fountain basins that we normally use for these installations so we had to custom build a basin that would be large enough for the pottery and also would maintain level and support the weight of the pots. We started by pouring a 4" thick concrete slab.

After allowing the slab to cure overnight, we built the walls for the basin out of 8x8x16 concrete blocks. We capped the blocks with 2" concrete soaps giving the basin a final depth of about 18 inches. The dimensions for the basin was 6'x6' square. We used construction adhesive to cement the blocks together and lined the basin with 44 mil EPDM pond liner.

The next photo shows the basin and liner. The blocks standing on edge were simply used to hold down the liner after we glued the liner to the top edge of the basin. You can also see the heavy plastic grating supported by concrete blocks. This would support the pottery and gravel. The pottery was supported by additional concrete blocks under each pot.

Below are some photos of the completed job. We built this fountain with a 3 man crew including myself. It took 2 and a half days to complete. The fun and challenging part of this installation was designing the basin, using the existing rock that we got out of the pond, and creating a beautiful and low-maintenance water feature for our client. All she has to do as far as maintenance goes is to occasionally add water that gets lost to evaporation. For more info on disappearing fountains, you can contact me at Bloomers Garden Center, 512-281-2020.

24 years of marital bliss

I took a day off from the nursery to spend time with my beautiful wife of 24 years. Today was our anniversary and we left the kids at home and went out on the town so to speak. Actually we decided to go visit another nursery (I just can't stay away from them). I enjoy visiting other nurseries to get inspiration, ideas and just to relax. It's hard to relax at my own nursery! We went to Hill Country Water Gardens in Cedar Park. The nursery staff was friendly and diligent to see that we were greeted several times during our visit. The large oak trees on the grounds were a welcome respite from the 98 degree temperatures and overall the nursery was very nice with some beautiful water garden displays. Sometimes I'll introduce myself, but this time I just stayed incognito. We took our time and strolled through the whole nursery and enjoyed ourselves immensely. After thanking the staff for letting us look, we left and headed for some air conditioning. We decided to take in a movie and went to see Get Smart. This was one of my favorite shows when I was a kid and we weren't disappointed. The movie was very funny with out a lot of objectionable content except for some foul language. The interesting thing is that the movie would have been just as funny or even more so without the cursing. After the movie we decided to finish the evening off at our favorite restaurant, Pappadeaux. We have eaten there for our last 3 anniversaries. We thought about trying some place new but decided that we would stick with the proven. The restaurant did not let us down. We arrived at 7:15 pm and only had to wait about 5 minutes to get a table(it was a Tuesday evening). Our waitress was pleasant and the food was fantastic. I had grilled salmon with a heavenly sauce over it and Jody had the fried shrimp. We finished the meal off with a very rich and yummy chocolate dessert and headed for the house. All in all it was a very nice evening.