Summer 2019 Update and Nursery Open Days

So here it is, almost summer already, having our usual bit of cool June weather before it really kicks in. And what looked like it would be a great year for our nursery back in January has turned out to be, well, quite different from expectations. I’ll comment a little more on that at the end of this post, but the main thing to discuss for now is how we plan to proceed with summer sales. I’m getting a lot of emails asking are we open, and when? It would have helped to post that on the web site earlier, I know. But I’ll get there. And rest assured we will still be open this weekend (June 21-22) as originally planned. Also if you show up this weekend you’ll get to see some amazing Echinocereus cacti in bloom in our display bed!  (Sorry, none to sell right now.)

I’ll be very up front about the state of the nursery, which right now does not look much like I wanted it to. I can’t pretend it looks spectacular. But it doesn’t make sense to cancel anything, since there are still so many great plants out there! There isn’t everything I was hoping for by now, but there are still a LOT of cool plants. And there are a few new items. If anyone wants little plants of Eucalyptus neglecta or E. gunnii this is your chance! They are small but look perfect, and I’ve had the best success putting them out from little pots.

So the basic plan is, we are open this Friday and Saturday, then on top of that will be open every Saturday through August and perhaps beyond. We will also be open August 9^th and Sept 20-21 which was advertised earlier. But I’m not going to call it an “open house,” nor will I be sending out the usual e-mails in advance either. It’s just, show up on any Saturday you want, and we will be here. We will be potting up, cleaning up, and selling as the occasion arises. We will probably not be providing signage for the plants this time around as we have done in the past; I think there just isn’t going to be time. However, a deep discount is provided for quality-compromised plants, which has been the case for some time.

Speaking of TIME, I suppose that’s the big factor in what’s going on with the nursery. As in, there’s not enough of it to go around, and I’m having a lot of trouble keeping up. This could be attributed to poor planning on my part, but there are also factors beyond my control, such as the weather and me getting sick. I’ve been considering options to solve these problems, and doing some re-thinking on the direction of the nursery for the future. I may produce a longer blog post about that sometime. But at least, I think closing the nursery is not an option. When my greenhouses didn’t collapse in the snow, I took that as a sign that I had best continue. Also, gardeners’ interest in our plants and nursery concept continues to be very high. So I guess this means we’re not giving up!

But with that having been said, perhaps I’ll shoot for a little sympathy here. First, the weather hit us really hard in February. Did I EVER think I would see two feet of snow in Sequim? (Which was mostly in 24 hours.) Well, honestly, I should have, since it happened in 1996. As I was out there knocking snow off greenhouses all night, to the limit of physical exhaustion, I was thinking to myself, let’s suppose two feet of snow at once is a “20-year event.” Do I want to be out here doing this again when I’m 60? As an aside, it’s a good thing I started taking some steps last year to get in better overall physical health, or I certainly would have lost the greenhouses. As it was, I was pushed close to the limit of my physical endurance, and I’m certain the greenhouses were close to collapse. We ended up with 36” inches of snow for the month. Some of you folks back east are probably like “what’s the big deal?” But around here this almost never happens, and you sure as heck don’t see it coming.

Second, did I ever think snow could take so long to melt? The last patch of snow finally fizzled out on St. Patricks Day, which has to be some kind of record. But it’s a real problem when everything stays basically frozen for a month. I need that time to work on the nursery and clean up the plants for spring. I can’t get the weeds out of the plants when the plants are frozen and the potting soil is frozen. And this is one reason I am so far behind.

So in March, I managed to pull together enough plants for the Sequim Garden Show. And then of course I got the flu. It seems to take longer to recover every time I get it. That was just when we had that hot weather in March, and I didn’t feel well enough to adequately keep watered all my exciting cuttings from California the Southwest. Some will be fine but a lot of them died that week, sadly. I’m sure going from winter to summer in a matter of about a week was as much of a shock to the plants as to me.

April was more productive, and the Hortlandia sale may be considered a success given the circumstances. And I’m glad the weather was normal for the whole month.

Then I got the flu again in June and lost a bunch more work time. In fact I didn’t even feel good enough to produce this blog post yesterday or this morning, so here I am doing it in the evening. I think I’m on the mend and should be good enough for this weekend. But sheesh.

Do I have enough material yet for a Shakespearean tragedy? Now, I know there are solutions to any of the above problems. Much has to do simply with preparedness, given that it is impossible to know what the future holds. But it takes time to implement any of those solutions.

Finally, on a broader scale, I have come to a better understanding of reasons the nursery has been in a general state of “decline” (in terms of maintenance, not sales) since 2015. But the reasons for that are personal and complex; and I don’t want to go into detail here except to describe (again, in a future post) what I see as the best solutions going forward.

Before wrapping up this post, I wish to thank my current volunteers, Bob and Susan, for their help this year (and in the past). Sometimes it is easier to deal with someone else’s mess than your own, which seems like the only possible explanation for why they continue to return. I do greatly appreciate them.

Oh, one last announcement, I should mention that wholesale will not be offered in 2019. Last year was very successful, and we hope to do it again when we can. But this year the weather really screwed it all up, at a time when we needed to be potting all that stuff up, everything was frozen solid. Once again, more time, attention and planning could offset such challenges in the future. It’s all part of a learning experience!

So if you read this far, thanks for reading. I guess we’re not like those other businesses that make everything sound like lollipops and rainbows all the time. Apparently we’re all about honesty around here! Rest assured there is still a lot of cool stuff available, and we look forward to seeing you this summer at the nursery.  

(Here’s a scene we’d like to forget.  What happens when there isn’t enough space between the greenhouses for snow to collect?  Well it stacks up to 7′ high, that’s what.  At that point all I can do is try to keep snow off the center of the greenhouses.  Glad I had snowshoes or I wouldn’t have been able to climb up there!)