Knecht’s

The development of affordable housing options in the Northfield area has been a priority for the City of Northfield and the Housing and Redevelopment Authority for a number of years. Today marked a milestone in these efforts with the dedication of a tree planting project at the center island park of the Maple Hills affordable housing development on the south side of Northfield.

Pictured participating in the ceremonial tree planting are (L to R) Dana Graham, Larry DeBoer, Mayor Keith Covey, Dixon Bond, Howard Miriam, Don Tarr and Kris Vohs, who are variously members of the City Council, City Staff, Planning Commission and HRA.

Some of our crew members who helped plant are pictured here with the public officials: (L to R) Leif Knecht, Larry DeBoer, Don Tarr, Mayor Keith Covey, Kris Vohs, Dana Graham, John Porterfield, Sergio Roas, Kristian Bjornard and Dixon Bond.

One of the happy features of incorporating some nice sized and high quality shade trees in an affordable housing development is that it will add greatly to the quality of life for all residents. The point of affordable housing is not just to provide inexpensive housing but to also improve the sense of community and well-being of all residents. Nice landscaping certainly goes a long ways to achieving this goal and we are pleased to having been able to participate in providing trees to this project at a discounted rate.

This is actually a whole family of lilacs. Plant breeders over the centuries have come up with dozens of good variations of common lilacs. Members of the common lilac family tend to grow larger — in the 6 to 12 foot size range. Some of my favorites are “Sensation”, “Charles Joly”, “Albert Holden”, “Common White”, and “Montaigne”. Check out the many other varieties available as well listed on our Shrubs page. As always, plant lilacs in well-drained soil.

Common White lilac

For more info, see the lilacs page and related variety links on William Hoch’s Landscape Plants of the Upper Midwest website hosted by the UW Madison Horticulture Department.

Leif has a new article posted in the library. Here’s the first paragraph:

Flowering shrubs make up an important part of the design in most landscapes. Besides putting on show stopping displays of massive mounds of color, flowering shrubs can also provide balance and the proper scale in some parts of the landscape, privacy or windscreen hedging in other areas, and focal points where needed.

Leif’s articles appear in the Wednesday edition of the Northfield News, in the Farm and Garden section, just behind the sports page. All his previous articles are archived in our web library, going back to 2001.

The question that we have had the most around the nursery the last week or so goes something like this…”My perennials must have died, they’re not coming up, what am I to do?”

The answer on this is that it is only the end of April. Even though the weather for the most part has seemed like the end of May, the plants are still programmed for end of April.

Leif and I live in the woods, so we have some areas of the yard that are sunnier than others, but alot of the area is shaded. Yesterday I walked through all of our gardens and checked out our perennials.

After brushing away the mulch that I tucked them in with last December, the perennials that were new last year in the sunnier areas are barely starting to peek out of the ground. The perennials that were established for a couple of years or more, are up anywhere from an inch or two to three or four inches. The shady areas where the springtime sun hasn’t yet warmed the ground, there isn’t a lot of activity yet. In fact, when brushing away the mulch, the ground was still quite cold.

We have an extensive hosta garden and I found the same thing true here. The established hosta are starting their spring arrival, but the newer hosta are just barely sending their pips up.

My son is getting married at our house in June as they wanted to have a garden wedding. We are probably the most impatient gardeners ourselves right now because we want to have everything looking great.
We all need to be patient. Our plants will come.

The nursery is now fully stocked with trees, shrubs, perennials and a very nice selection of annuals and hanging baskets. While most gardeners will be holding off on planting annuals except for cool season varieties, the planting of shrubs and trees can now move forward at full speed since this is a wonderful time of the season for getting woody plants established in the landscape.

Our next two week e-coupon is featured below — a Shrub Special.

We noticed on Rep. Ray Cox’s weblog that a state-wide ban on phosphorous in lawn fertilziers has been passed by the State House of Representatives. Ray was supportive of this bill with the goal in mind of improving water quality in our State’s lakes and streams. At this time we are not sure when this legislation will actually become law and take effect. There’s a good article on this in the Star Tribune. Stay tuned for updates.

Keep in mind that lawns that are healthy really require very modest rates of fertilization. When you are applying take care to never exceed recommended rates printed on the package. When I fertilize my own lawn I usually use about 1/2 the rate recommended on the package and seem to get very nice results. The happy outcome of this approach is less expense and less fertilizer run-off into our treasured waterways.

Leif has a new article posted in the library. Here’s the first paragraph:

In Minnesota, May is traditionally thought of as the month for dazzling displays by flowering trees such as flowering crabapples, Serviceberry, tree form lilacs and fruit trees that come into bloom. A closer look reveals that many trees flower during the month of April. While tree Magnolias and shrub Forsythias have been in full bloom the past week or two, there are many other trees that bloom during April, but most of us don’t recognize their flowering because the blossoms are different from what we normally think of as flowers.

Leif’s articles appear in the Wednesday edition of the Northfield News, in the Farm and Garden section, just behind the sports page. All his previous articles are archived in our web library, going back to 2001.

We love to feed and watch the birds here at the nursery. We have several birdhouses around the nursery including our blue bird houses. Last year we had a pair of nesting bluebirds and hope to have more this spring. Watch for future blog postings on the status of our blue bird population.

One of the first signs of spring almost anywhere is the return of the robins. Here’s a picture of a fat (and happy) robin in search of a worm! (Click on the thumbnail for the full photo.)

Our webmaster, Griff Wigley, is keeping up our library of spring photos that I’ve been taking. Please take time to view it. Who knows, if you stop down, you may find your picture posted among the pics in the photo library!

The spring flowers on the hillside here at the nursery are almost in their full glory right now. The daffodils and tulips are blooming and they are so beautiful. I do believe that the daffodil is the most perfect flower. We’re fortunate in that yesterday’s strong, sustained winds didn’t harm these flowers much. Some are blown over slightly, but they are starting to bounce back.

Spring wildflowers are now in bloom, so take a few minutes to walk through the woods to enjoy the show put on by Blood Root, Hepatica, Dutchman’s Britches and False Rue Anemone. The forest floor soon will be a riot of color!

We have received our first of many shipments of spring annuals! It’s a good time to begin planting cool season annuals and vegetables such as pansies, violas, snapdragons, cauliflower, cabbage, brocolli, etc. We have many hanging baskets, smaller planters of annuals for decks or porches, and some neat new wall hanging planters full of annuals!

It’s spring time in the great State of Minnesota and that means it’s a wonderful time to plant trees and shrubs. Our crews are busy completing the spring harvest of over 800 balled and burlapped (B&B) trees to give you a nice selection of good sized trees for your landscape project. We have a light weight, articulated machine, called a Multi-Trak, that we use on customer planting jobs. It’s lightweight, and since it operates independently on all four wheels, it will not harm the grass or cause ruts in the yard.

Our landscape division manager, Darrin Corbin, pictured here with one of our fresh dug B&B trees, installs most of our trees and heads up our landscape crew!

If slightly smaller trees fit your needs better, we have thousands of northern hardy container grown shade, ornamental and evergreen trees in all sizes from small one gallon to larger 25 gallon containers. These easy to transport and plant trees establish quickly and are quite economical.

Leif has a new article posted in the library. Here’s the first paragraph:

Property owners desiring to plant medium and larger size trees have the two primary options of balled and burlapped trees and tree spaded trees. Evergreen trees, ornamental trees and shade trees can all be planted in balled and burlapped form or by truck mounted tree spades. These trees are generally grown in field soil at a nursery for three to fourteen years until they reach trunk diameters of two to nine inches, and heights of six to twenty feet. At these sizes, when they are planted out in the landscape, they present an appearance that ranges from pleasing and respectable to stunning and mature for larger sizes.

Leif’s articles appear in the Wednesday edition of the Northfield News, in the Farm and Garden section, just behind the sports page. All his previous articles are archived in our web library, going back to 2001.

Google’s search spider has evidently done a full crawling around the site, gathering up the full text of all the Word doc articles in the library.

So now if you use the Google-based Search form, it’ll scour Leif’s articles from the past four years (as well as all the other pages on the site) for the text you use in your search.

For example, search on the word “pruning,” and you’ll see that some of the items Google finds are in the body of the Word docs.

A more obscure example: the phrase (using quotation marks) “landscaping in stages” finds the one article from February 2004 containing that phrase.

It is now April 7th and we have had customers coming in steadily already. With the weather as warm as it has been, it seems like it should be later than the first week of April.

Our tree and shrub sales areas are all ready to go and we are about halfway through getting our perennials organized. In a few days, that will be done as well. We will be continuing to add new plants as they are ready from production and for those that we don’t grow ourselves, we will be getting these in from our suppliers over the next couple of weeks. The pussy willows are beautiful with their soft white catkins now, and the Forsythia’s are just starting to bloom their vibrant yellow. As I sit here at the computer (when the weather is absolutely gorgeous outside), I can see the yellow, purple and white crocus blooming up on the hillside.

The call the we have had the most often right now about plants for this spring, is for the Endless Summer Hydrangea.

We will have an ample supply of this exciting new plant for Minnesota. Our first shipment arrives on April 21st, and we do have several already reserved. If you would like to be sure to get your name on one or more, please give us a call. See today’s Star Tribune Home & Garden article titled Hydrangeas are hot in zone 4.

Our first cyber savings will be on trees.

Leif has a new article posted in the library. Here’s the first paragraph:

Prime time for planting trees is here as frost is mostly gone from the soil structure with the more intense sun of early spring. It is a good time to think carefully about the varieties, packaging, size, cost and location of the trees you choose to plant. Most of us live on a budget, so for discussion purposes, I’ll assume that a decision needs to be made on what to spend money on first where the landscaping of a property is concerned. My suggestion is to first allocate money for good soils for planting beds, and the lawn. Get these higher quality soils placed and sloped for good drainage away from the building.

Leif’s articles appear in the Wednesday edition of the Northfield News, in the Farm and Garden section, just behind the sports page. All his previous articles are archived in our web library, going back to 2001.