New Greenhouse!

So this is kind of old news now for those of you who have been following our Facebook page, but I have been keeping super busy as you will see.  We finally have a real greenhouse!  What a relief!  It was really down to the wire getting it up before the big freeze, too. Before saying any more, I must stop to thank family and friends, without whose help this wouldn’t have been finished before the big freeze.  So… thanks, family and friends! Especially my mom.

Last winter (2008-09) was a bit of a disaster. We had just moved to Sequim, and we built a small greenhouse, but it wasn’t really big enough to hold all the plants I needed to protect, nor did I manage to get everything in there before the big freeze hit in December 2008. I had so many damaged and dead plants that I had trouble finding much that I could bring to plant sales in the spring of 2009. What a bummer – I knew I MUSTN’T let that happen again!!! This year, we had to do better.

After I decided I wasn’t going to worry about it until late August, because the plants, and my customers, were more important; it took me until mid-October to figure out how I could get hold of a tractor with an auger to dig post holes in our rocky ground. Apparently this service is difficult to get on the Peninsula. I eventually found a place where I could rent one myself, but it wasn’t cheap.  Finally on a cold and foggy October day, I did it. I about killed the auger on those rocks. At one point I snapped a bolt, and then I went and bought a replacement bolt.  Digging in the rocks was not easy and for the most part, I couldn’t get the holes deep enough, and they had to be picked at by hand.  At the very left side of the picture you can see some of the holes with rocks around them. And then setting the posts was a tedious process as well.  The picture above shows our progress as of October 28. The posts are all in and we have started spreading gravel (also not cheap!) so that the plants will have adequate drainage.

Then November was a race against time. We were already having some frosts down to the 27-29 degree range, and with no greenhouse, I had all the really tender plants as protected as possible in the shade house and other places under overhead canopy… just hoping nothing worse would come until the greenhouse was finished. We were also getting tons of rain, which greatly limited available outdoor work time without getting my tools all wet/rusty. (We ended up with about three times our average rainfall amount for the period Oct 15 – Nov 30!) I spent many hours late at night under the moonlight and in freezing weather assembling the wood frame and aluminum hoops and other braces. On Thanksgiving my parents and brother stayed after dinner to help stretch and staple down the groundcover cloth. (Who wants to watch football when you could staple groundcover cloth?)

Finally on Dec 1 the plastic went on. That wasn’t easy either, as it could only be done during the brief hours the sun was hitting it, because it would tighten up as soon as it got too cold. So it ended up taking two days and it still isn’t on perfectly, so it will have to be touched up in the spring. No big deal; it doesn’t look perfect but it’s on there securely enough that the recent windstorms haven’t managed to blow it off. We only put a single layer of plastic on it. We may add another sheet in the future, but we didn’t have time to deal with it just then. I was so busy on this greenhouse during November that I didn’t really stop to take pictures… so we jump to Dec 2 for the next picture:

It’s done! Time to breathe a quick sigh of relief. But not time to rest yet, because the weather forecast now looks ominous.  It might get cold. But how cold? They don’t know. But it’s not a time to take any chances.  I’ve got to start moving plants!

Look at all this space! Or so it seems right now. It’s 20′ x 84′ or 1,680 square feet – bigger than our house!  I had a few tables from earlier projects that I dragged in there. Then I started moving plants.

December 6 and the Arctic blast has struck! Those tracks are from me moving plants… back and forth… back and forth. I successfully prioritized and got all the really tender stuff in there before this picture was taken.  However I kept working a couple days into the freeze since I didn’t know just how much colder it would get, and felt I should just keep going until the greenhouse was totally packed out, to do the best possible thing for my plants. (That structure to the right is the 2008 greenhouse, which has had its plastic removed and is now the shade house.)

Greenhouse filling progress as of Dec 6. My mom is to be thanked for babysitting my little boy while I moved all these plants.  It took a long time!!

December 10 and I’m done moving plants. At the end, the plants I moved in were frozen solid of course – but those last plants were species that could tolerate a couple days of that.  Now it’s really full… and it’s really cold outside! Still, I opened up the doors while it was sunny so the air could circulate through it.

The coldest temperature we had during the big freeze was 16°F on the morning of Dec 9. With the heater running full blast it didn’t drop below 38°F inside the greenhouse. Pretty much all the plants I left outside had already survived the previous winter – which was colder – outside, so I knew they would be fine. These plants were also helped by the fact that the temperature outside rose to 32°F or warmer every day, unlike the previous winter when we had many highs below freezing.

The greenhouse is heated (only when it’s below freezing outside) with a portable forced air heater than runs on either diesel fuel or kerosene.  I’ve been using diesel because it’s easier to get. I used it last year as well and it has been wonderfully reliable. Unfortunately on the super cold nights (below about 26-27) I have to go out there at 4:30 am and fill it back up with fuel – a small price to pay for keeping my plants alive. In the future I hope to install some solar heat capturers to reduce the need to run the heater for all those 25-32 degree frosts.

Here’s a view from the other end.

Looks great, right? But even with all those plants safely tucked inside, there’s still plenty to keep me busy. I moved all the plants that I had packed into the center aisle – the hardiest ones – back outside, since they are sort of in the way. Experience has shown that if I can’t easily see or reach the plants, I kill them. I went through and top-dressed everything as I moved it out. Now I’m doing the same for the plants that will remain in the greenhouse. January has been so warm that I’ve had to do quite a bit of watering and soon I’ll be potting up seedlings and cuttings.  Since the New Year I’ve only had to run the heater once.

Two or three plants were accidentally left out in the cold and died.  I’ll have to try to get a replacement Ochagavia carnea – oops.  But it wasn’t nearly a disaster on the scale of the previous winter, when many of my plants were damaged to the point of needing all of summer 2009 to recover, and some died outright.  All in all the greenhouse is a major success story for the business, and a great way to start 2010 off on the right foot!  Hope you enjoyed the documentary.

New plant list and other news

I have two major announcements really. The first is that the plant list found here is actually now up to date, and lists plants that I have for sale now.  Fancy that.  I know, that took me a long time and now it’s winter, but hopefully it’s another step towards getting the nursery organized and enabling me to be more on top of things next year. Please have a look at the new plant list which contains some exciting things not offered before!  Descriptions are lacking so feel free to ask me about any of the plants.

Please note that the descriptive catalog is still not updated, though I am working on it.

The second announcement is that I have launched a Facebook page for the Desert Northwest.  I think this is a great way for me to provide more frequent updates about what I’m doing in a more casual setting.  I wouldn’t want to clutter up this blog with so much stuff that no one can keep up. So if you’re more interested in the day-to-day of all my nursery projects, please consider “becoming a fan” (as they say in Facebook) of The Desert Northwest on Facebook. (Now I’m not really positive the above link will work, but if it doesn’t, go to “pages” once you have logged on and search for it.)

These announcements, though noteworthy, still isn’t exciting enough to warrant an official newsletter, so if you signed up for newsletters and didn’t get any, it’s because I haven’t sent one in a really long time.  But I will. I’m just waiting until I have something really exciting to announce, like a huge number of cool new plants.

In other news, I’m almost done building a large greenhouse, which should hopefully alleviate the sort of disaster we had last winter with too many plants and not enough greenhouse space during the big freeze – what a setback that was to the nursery.  More on that coming soon.

Attention all fans of GREVILLEA

I’ve been working on this for YEARS.  And finally, it’s done!!! Now I have to try not to learn anything new so I don’t have to update it again… just kidding.

What am I talking about?  It’s so late at night, I’m not sure either.  Oh yeah.  It was my Grevillea article, which I first wrote several years ago, before many of the plants I wrote about could be tested by a real winter. Well now we’ve had a couple of those, and the instructive quality of the article has drastically improved as a result.  It is also far longer and more comprehensive in general. In fact, it is probably the most extensive treatise of its kind in existence. Enough about that… have a look!

I didn’t get around to announcing here that we were participating in the Northwest Horticultural Society fall plant sale, which was a week ago. It went well, although I always find it kind of a let down that the second day of the sale is so much slower than the first. The first day is when all the serious plant freaks come out. I should really get used to that.

Our next sale away from the nursery will be the Sequim Soroptomist Garden Show in March.  Other than that we will continue to be open by appointment through the winter.

Will an updated plant catalog ever be ready?? Stay tuned…the Grevillea article is one more thing off my list!…

Nice Sequim xeriscape garden

First of all Fronderosa was a hit.  We did really well, and it was a lot of fun, so thank you!

Secondly of all, if you bought an Osteospermum baberiae from me at Fronderosa and it died, let me know.

I’ve got an increasing number of pictures of gardens and plants I like in the Sequim and Port Angeles area.  (I need to get over to Port Townsend more and check out the gardens over there.)  Here’s a Sequim garden that is particularly appealing.  These plant combinations look superb, and this garden must use very little water.  Perhaps I’ll have the privilege of meeting the owners sometime.

Fronderosa time again!

Is it August already?  Great Scott. (Just wanted an excuse to use the expression “Great Scott”) That means it’s time once again for the Fronderosa Frolic. What the heck is that, you ask? It’s a two-day, multi-nursery plant sale featuring the most special of all specialty nurseries (i.e. no boring plants) in Gold Bar, Washington. And it’s coming up this weekend! For more details, see http://www.fancyfronds.com/frolic.cfm.  I will be there selling plants for my second year.  See below for some pictures of last year’s event.

This year my plant selection will be focused on two things. I will be selling a majority of plants that are cold hardy, since last winter reminded us that we’re not actually in zone 12 or whatever. I will also be emphasizing drought tolerant plants, since this year’s summer drought and hot spell seem to have us all complaining about how much we have to water and how our plants’ leaves are getting scorched.  Well with the right plants, we needn’t put up with any of that!  I’ll be bringing a healthy selection of genera such as Arctostaphylos, Olearia, Oputnia, Kniphofia, Callistemon, Leptospermum, Hebe, Quercus, and a few other fun things like Tamarix parviflora, Myrtus communis, Aeonium arboreum, and Luma apiculata.

I’ll also be glad to honor any special requests (availability permitting of course). The deadline for these is 10 pm Thursday (tomorrow!) – you can reply here or e-mail me at mail@desertnorthwest.com

I hope to see you there!

Ian botches it again

Another day, another goof-up.  And of course it’s my fault.  If you have recently tried to contact us to no avail, please try again.  I’ve just figured out that the zip code provided on the web page was incorrect.  I have corrected it now. If it’s not one thing it’s another!!! Just to clarify, our contact information is as follows:

e-mail: mail@desertnorthwest.com

snail-mail and orders: The Desert Northwest, PO Box 3475, Sequim, WA 98382

Apologies for the mistake!

How to prune your Tam Juniper

The picture pretty much says it all.

Pardon the blurry picture.  I’m not sure why that happened.  Our new place in Sequim came with many plants that will not be part of our final design for the garden.  We’ll certainly have a few other Junipers – especially those native to the West – but we have other plans for this spot near the entry to our residence.

Really exciting car shelf

Pardon me if I sound shelfish, but I’m just so proud of myshelf.

Travelling to multi nursery plant sales means I have to transport a relatively small number of plants over a long distance.  I also have to take the ferry more often than not, which would be an additional expense if I used a really large vehicle or trailer.  With that in mind, efficient use of space in a fuel efficient vehicle seems like the sensible way to go.  So I have built a shelf to hold plants, that fits in the back of both our Subaru Forester and our 93 Honda station wagon.  Most importantly it fits in the Honda even with the rear seats still in their normal upright position if desired.   It holds six standard-sized nursery flats (approx 11×22 in.) with an optional top shelf that holds three more flats.  We’ve already used it several times.

I also built this little table which has room for 2 nursery flats on top and underneath (alternatively 9 #2 pots can just fit on top).

Of course the tables can also be used to help display the plants once I get to the sale, which is also nice.

At some point though, when I have more plants, I think I’ll need a trailer.

Web update and other news

Is spring here yet?  It’s getting increasingly sunny but it’s still cool.  I guess that beats cool and wet.  It finally rained Tuesday morning after being virtually dry for a month.  That was nice for the plants.  Rain always does a better job watering than irrigation, for some reason.

As far as I’m concerned it’s springy enough to start potting up plants in earnest.  Then I will have many new and exciting plants to sell this summer.  Honestly I am almost out of probably more than half of the plants on the mail order list now.  That’s not good since I know folks are still ordering from that list.  But don’t despair because a new list will be out just as soon as some of the stuff I’m potting up now reaches a salable size (mid June? let’s hope so.)

In the meantime I’ve made the exciting determination that mail-order plants will be available all year this year.  This makes sense because every year I have so much stuff available in the summer and there’s no point in missing out on that business during what is a (relatively) slower time of the year as far as my tasks here are concerned.

Before the season gets too crazy I have accomplished a subtle, but significant web site update.  Partly this was in response to some complaints I received early on about the web site.  How do I get to the home page?  And how to I contact you?  Well, it wasn’t that hard before, but now it’s even easier.  Please also note our new postal and email address on the “Contact Us” page.  That’s right, we’re finally doing all business out of Sequim.  And hopefully it will be easier for me to keep up with e-mails since all business e-mail will be going to a separate address.  The web site also includes some new features including a specimen plant list (not ready yet, but at least I have the web page set up for it), and some updates to the links and articles (including a Sequim webcam and current weather at the bottom of the links page). Most importantly, it no longer says “the Pacific Northwest and beyondle” on the home page. Where’s Beyondle?  Doesn’t sound like a place I’d to visit.  Anyhoo, I’m especially pleased with how useful the links page has become; I find that I actually use it myself all the time.  If you find any errors on the web page, don’t hesitate to let me know.  I’m aware of two broken links–one on the ‘articles’ page and one on the mail order plant list (it’s not yet available in .doc format)–which I hope to fix later.

Despite being pretty much moved to Sequim now, amazingly I still don’t have all my nursery supplies moved out of Poulsbo yet.  We gave it our best shot on Tuesday with some much appreciated help from the family and a big box truck.  But not everything fit on the truck, nor did we have time to finish loading it, so it will still take one more trip to finish the job.  That’s unfortunate because the Hood Canal Bridge will be closing for six weeks starting tomorrow, cutting off my access from Poulsbo.  That’s part of the reason for me doing the Sequim PO Box and web update just now (though perhaps I should have done it much earlier).  I have to get my mail somehow!!

While other businesses around here are freaking out over the closure of the Hood Canal Bridge (which will temporarily cut off almost all traffic and therefore tourist money from Kitsap and the Seattle area), this really couldn’t come at a better time for us.  It’s a lull between crops and we have the lowest selection of plants in years, until all the new stuff comes along.  There will be much potting up to be done and mail-order shipments to be filled, and with few visitors we have a good shot at actually accomplishing everything.  We’re hoping to host an open house of some sort in mid July, but we have yet to announce this officially.

If you’re coming this way though, please do stop by, and don’t forget to visit Far Reaches Farm; I’m sure they’d really love to have visitors during the bridge closure as well.

If you’re looking for something to do this weekend, please visit us on Saturday, May 2 for a multi-nursery plant sale hosted by the Snohomish County Master Gardeners.  It will be at the Snohomish County Extension Office, at 600 128th St. SE in Everett, between the hours of 9:00 am and 2:00 pm.  With the Hood Canal Bridge being closed, we’re taking the Port Towsnend/Keystone Ferry and then driving up Whidbey Island to get out there – that will be quite the drive.  But at least it’s scenic.

Well that’s not quite exciting enough to be a newsletter, but it’s my way of staying in touch with anyone who might be interested in my doings.  Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to check back later this summer for the new plant list!!  Until then I’ll continue to post more interesting tidbits here as well.

2008 Orders

A quick note from Desert-Northwest-land, which will be followed soon by a newsletter announcing the general state of affairs here and the 2009 mail order season.

Most importantly, if you placed an order in 2008, and are owed plants or correspondence from us, please write me at deus_vobiscum “at” hotmail.com I have contacted almost all of you I believe, but a few orders were lost in our move or otherwise, so please write me if this is you.  Please know that you have not been deliberately ignored.  2008 was for us a year fraught with numerous disasters, of which more shall be told here soon.  Regardless of the cause of such disasters, I wish to offer a sincere apology to those who may have been disappointed in the level of customer service offered by the Desert Northwest in 2008.

2009 is going better, but just barely.  The future of this place looks bright as soon as we can get a few more things set up here (a permanent packing/shipping station being one).  My goal for the next couple of weeks is to get all caught up on orders before I announce something about a 2009 shipping season.

Finally, I’d like to note that the nursery has moved to Sequim.  (Techinically, we’re still not done with that – what an ordeal.)  But we’re still using the Poulsbo PO box for now.  We are open by appointment.

More details to come!