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Gift Certificates!! | | | |
Looking for a Unique Gift Idea? We have Gift Certificates available for any occaision. Give a gift that keeps growing!!
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Greetings!
Summer-like March brings April Flowers?
A mild winter, and March temperatures (that were summer-like to say the least) have pushed most plant materials ahead of where they should be by almost 4 weeks. All of our employees have been so very busy getting all of our plant material dug from the field and into our coolers and our holding areas. We are one of the few bare root nurseries left anymore. Bare root plants are dug without any soil on the roots, and then kept dormant in our coolers until we ship them to our customers. They are lightweight and easy to handle and plant, and your cost is low. We also have huge numbers of balled and burlapped plants dug and ready to go, as well as acres of container grown plants with incredible quality. |
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Low maintenance and High Impact landscaping is all the rage today! | |
The trend certainly is outdoor living spaces without getting all bogged down with work to do. Outdoor living areas, outdoor kitchens and entertaining, water features (whether it is a dripping birdbath, small fountain, or large flowing stream and pond), and lighting are all in demand. Another trend is updating older and tired landscapes with new plants. Design trends change with landscapes just like everything else. The key? Great design by your local McKay Professional is where you should start...the best first step you can make! Anyone can go to a big box store and pick up plants that may have been grown down south or on the west coast. If you really want to save yourself some money - you really should call your local McKay design professional, and have a customer driven, one-of-a-kind design prepared and purchase plants grown locally. Plants grown right here in Wisconsin that need no acclimation. You get great design, great plants, and do-it-yourself savings. If you don't want to plant, let the professionals plant it for you. We now also offer maintenance for your lawn and landscape in many areas. Don't let some lawn care company shear your plants into meatballs, but let us help you to keep your plants healthy, flowering, and pruned correctly. McKay has been around for 115 years! We will help you do it right.
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| | Ediscape - Easy to do and so good! |
 | | Edible Landscape |
Newspapers and magazine articles are promoting green and sustainable and many are "returning to the garden". This trend will continue, and not just during a slower economy. Have your local McKay Design Pro help turn your yard into an "Ediscape" by incorporating small fruits and veggies in your shrub and perennial borders. An easily accessible kitchen garden close to the patio is a great place to plug in a few easy to grow herbs and a tomato plant or three. Maybe you want a much larger garden. You can start to plant cool season crops as soon as the soil can be worked. Tomato seeds can be started indoors in another week or so if you are so inclined. Small fruits and fruit trees are still very popular. Have our design pros include in your design an area that will best suit these plants for the best fruit production. Blueberry plants make great landscape plants. Strawberries make excellent groundcovers in the landscape and with the ever-bearing varieties that offer fruit for long periods all season (and bare root plants are only a buck a piece). Grape vines offer shade trained on pergolas and vertical interest in the landscape as well as fresh eating, juice and wine making. Raspberries are so expensive in the stores so why not grow your own? Asparagus is one of the healthiest vegetables. Open sunny areas at the back of a perennial border will make a great ferny green backdrop to the colorful flowers that perennials offer.Remember, planning is the key to any great landscape. Anyone can pick up a few plants and stick them in around the foundation, but creating an incredible design with hardy plants, sited properly, to perform for years to come - you really need to call your local McKay design professional. Are you ready to update your home? We are ready to help. Whether it is just an addition of a perennial color border, a few fruit trees, or perhaps a new outdoor kitchen -- or maybe a complete renovation by removing old plants arranged in an old fashioned design. Let us create for you a new complete updated design that you can enjoy for years to come. We come right to your home, meet with you to find out your needs and likes, have the plants delivered for you to install -- or let us come and do the work for you -- whatever your budget allows. We have local design professionals throughout the Midwest to help you - 800-236-4242. |
| | The green, green grass of home! |
 Lawns have gone from brown to green and growing already. It's rare to have grass out of dormancy so soon, but the warm temps have made it active much earlier this year. Rake your lawn to remove leaves and debris, and to remove thick and thatchy areas, or areas of snow mold that was killed off. The first or second mowing should be a bit shorter to eliminate all of the brown dead grass blades from last season and remove some of the thatch, but then set your mower height to 2" or a bit higher for the rest of the summer. New lawns love to have a shot in the arm with a starter fertilizer. Older established lawns can be fertilized this month too unless you did a late fall application. If you did a late fall application you may want to wait until Memorial Day. If you have broadleaved weeds, use a weed and feed product NOW as the weeds are up and growing. If you had crabgrass last summer, you will need to put down a pre-emergent herbicide (about the time the Lilacs bloom; late April or early May in our area - earlier this year). Don't put it down too early or it may not work when the seeds begin to sprout. Just before the common lilacs bloom is an excellent timing note to remember when you want to prevent crabgrass. We have been hearing radio ads from the big box stores always suggesting to put it down first thing, but wait until just before those seeds will sprout for great results.
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| | Maintanence! Should be done now that spring is here? (Lots of info here!) |  Early April is a great time to divide established fall blooming perennials (spring bloomers are best left until later in summer). The more aggressive perennial plants need to have the clump size reduced to maintain good healthy plants - and that includes ornamental grasses. Now is a great time to dig a portion to share with a friend or neighbor. Prune back any brown dead top growth on all perennials, and then divide if necessary, blow or rake out any of last year's foliage from those plants in case it is diseased. They grow fast as the sun warms the soil so the sooner the better.
Freshen up mulch beds by lightly raking or scratching up the mulch and spread out evenly around your plants. Where necessary, add additional mulch to help preserve soil moisture and reduce weed growth and disease. Some people like to use pre-emergent herbicides in the beds, and others will prefer not to. Pre-emergent will prevent weeds from growing up through the mulch. Be careful not to use it around plants it is not labeled for use on.
If you haven't done so already, prune back all ornamental grasses. The grasses have performed their winter duty, so cut last year's foliage down to just several inches without cutting deep into the crowns. Cool season grasses will begin growing now in warmer sunnier microclimates. The Warm season grasses also need to have last years foliage removed, but they will not start to grow until the soil temperatures have warmed up considerably - sometimes not until early June in some areas, this year even some of the warm season grasses have started during the March warm spell.
We get so many calls each spring that go something like this: "My roses are all dead!" You should know that most all roses will die back to the mulch line in many cases. Rose canes that are exposed to winter will die back, but remember that our own root roses will re-grow from the base. Prune back roses that will bloom on new wood down to 6" or so, and pull back the mulch away from the plants if you had prepared them properly last fall. For climbing roses and for roses that bloom on last year's canes, you can still shorten up or remove any broken branches.
Prune back Clematis vines down to 12-18" or so. Clematis wood is very brittle and splinters easily so wear heavy gloves to prevent getting splinters in your hands. This year, the clematis are already growing so hurry and remove the dead tops and still cut them back to about 2' if there is a lot of green foliage on them. They will flower better by removing much of the old vines above the 2' point.
Finish up renewal pruning any older Aronia, Dogwoods, Honeysuckles, Privets, or Viburnums by removing the thickest and oldest stems down to the ground and allow the nice young stems to remain. The young stems you leave can be shortened up as well.
Repeat blooming Spiraea varieties can be cut back to a nice tight mound of stems as they respond with much vigor and violent amounts of bloom - even if they already show new foliage - there is still time to tighten them up for nice uniform growth and flowering. (Deadhead the first set of blooms to give way to another set later in summer and sometimes again in fall.)
Prune Hydrangea Annabelle and arborescens types down to just a few inches (if you haven't already) and then don't touch with the shears for the rest of the year. Prune back All Summer Beauty, Cherry Bomb, and Endless Summer (and all other Hydrangea macrophylla types) just enough to remove the dead portions of the stems, but allowing the green parts to remain and then don't touch after that. Prune back all Hydrangea paniculata types (like PeeGee -both tree and shrub form, Limelight, Phantom, Silver Dollar, Mega Pearl, Pink Diamond, Tardiva -both shrub and tree form), Vanilla Strawberry, and Unique. All of these woodier types can be pruned back to any size, but once they start to leaf out do not touch them anymore as the blooms come from the new growth. Hurry as they have already started to grow - but it's still time to reduce last year's size. The woodier Hydrangeas will grow about 3' then flower above the cut.
Oak trees should not be pruned anymore this year until they go dormant again.
Prune evergreen shrubs like Japanese Yews and Junipers if necessary, but not any Pine trees (Pines will be trimmed by candle pruning in May). There was very little winter burn on evergreens this year. Sometimes, newly planted evergreens show some burn but the foliage on these stems that has turned brown will not remain on the plant, but the stem that holds those brown needles should produce new buds which will make new growth - so just be patient.
Our pruning DVD outlines exactly how to approach pruning, an excellent resource. You can also depend upon your McKay professionals to answer your questions or call our office if you have questions.
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| | Garden Center Opens April 16th | |
If you live near McKay (Waterloo, WI), we do have a small "color garden"outlet store where we offer many colorful container grown shrubs, roses, perennials, and small patio trees for you to come and pick out. We also have added a few outstanding varieties of Tomato and Pepper plants and a few other surprises. We are not doing flats of annuals or annual hanging baskets, but we will have lots of really incredible perennials, and combination perennial pots too. We will have a bargain corner for plants that we have a lot of or that need to be put in the ground right away. The outlet store will open on April 16th and be open Monday through Friday from 11:00 am until 6 pm, and on Saturday and Sunday from 9:00am until Noon for your shopping convenience.
Hot new plants are always fun to try. We have new plants to offer every year.
Check out our new website, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter! Why not McKay?
Call us 800-236-4242
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| | Emerald Ash Borer Initiative! | |
The "Don't Move Firewood" campaign is a major initiative! Firewood being moved around is how the dreaded Emerald Ash borer gets it's legs. Burn the firewood where you buy or cut it to prevent it from being moved in the cut logs.
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We thank you for your business, and wish you good luck with your new plants from McKay Nursery Company. Please tell your friends about our monthly newsletter and have them sign up. Follow McKay on Facebook and Twitter for timely and pertinent information every day!
Think Spring!
Sincerely,
Your Friends at McKay Nursery Company |
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