Knecht’s

The weatherman gave us a “reassuring” statistic this morning on the radio - that there has been three days in May 2005 that it has not rained! Yesterday was a strange weather day - it would clear out for a few minutes, blue sky and puffy clouds and then it would rain - over and over again. Last night after it rained for what we thought was the last time - we had a wonderful double rainbow over the nursery - the picture shows only one of the rainbows!

Cooper Nelson, 6, and his brother, Sam, 4 - came shopping for apple trees today with their Grandma and Grandpa and Mom - and came prepared for the rain! Right after we took the picture - it started in again on one of those 2 minute rains! By the time they found their apple trees - the sun was shining again!

Above you see several varieties of Pulmonaria on a mini-berm in front of an arc of hosta - (these hosta revert to green by the end of June!); the middle photo shows the Globe Flower which provides bright yellow blossoms and below the woodland creeping phlox, Tiarella and Vinca Vine grace our Ely Greenstone boulders.

The saying that with perennials - the first year they sleep, the second they creep and the third, they leap - is quite true. The creeping phlox was so small the first year and last year you could tell it had rooted in quite nicely and this spring- it is absolutely gorgeous!

Several years ago we were sitting on our deck and looked back in the woods to see something yellow. Upon investigation we were delighted to find a yellow lady slipper growing just inside the woods. This plant has given us pleasure every spring and is such a delight. We have found one other lady slipper in the woods but it’s a good distance away from this one! The forest floor is blanketed with spring wild flowers and when they have disappeared, the yellow lady slipper makes its arrival! The joy of Mother Nature!

Spring blossoming perennials in the woodland garden -
The bleeding heart is one of those old fashioned perennials that everyone remembers as “Grandma had one”. This beautiful plant starts to emerge as soon as the snow has left and goes strong for almost two months!

We have had a bleeding heart in one of our gardens for several years now. Today I had our grandsons for the morning, and Tyger stood in front of our bleeding heart to put it in perspective. The secret to the vigor in this plant is in the soil. In all of our planting beds, we use our landscape soil mix - a mixture of black dirt, peat, sand and manure. The plants just “explode” - as you can see in the picture with Tyger.

I am putting into our photo gallery an album of shade garden perennials and one with sunny garden plants. I’ll keep adding as the season progresses and hopefully, within a year or so we’ll have a nice selection of plants. These will be of plants taken here at the nursery, at our home, of plants in Northfield, or if you’re a customer and would like to upload a picture of your perennial - please do so and we’ll consider adding it to the album! I want to avoid getting pictures off the internet - I want to have plants grown locally.

The most requested plant for the last year has been the Endless Summer Hydrangea
This wonderful blue hydrangea is hardy in Minnesota, but like alot of plants, it needs winter protection. It may often die back to “crown” or ground level. You may think you have lost your prized plant - but it will soon start to sprout little green leaves at the bottom. The picture here of the gorgeous blue blooms is a plant in our “Bud n’ Bloom” program. This means that these plants were started rather early this winter in the greenhouse - getting a head start!

We have three planted in one of our gardens at home, and all three have little green leaves at ground level peeking through the soil surface. We did not do much for these last year, except for a little mulch.

The Endless Summer we have planted here at the nursery in our display beds were cared for a little better last fall. We literally buried these under about 12 inches of mulch. The mulch was removed about three weeks ago and as you can see by the above pictures - we have leaves on the stems that were completely protected over the winter. Be patient with your plants - they’re probably still there!

The weather has been very good followed by the very bad. The forecast as of today on the National Weather Service Site indicates that we will have decent weather for the balance of May (we’ll see what Mother Nature has in mind). The annuals can now be planted outside to begin their growing season! The last average frost date in Minnesota is May 15th! At our house, we have our planter boxes all planted and will be starting on our flower gardens this weekend.

My vegetable garden which we do here at the nursery will be put in hopefully sometime next week - as soon as it dries out a little bit. We had over 2 inches of rain here yesterday so things are a little wet!

The flowering crabapple trees are blossoming in beautiful shades of white, pink and deep pink.
The Tina Flowering Crabapple graces our display bed by the main gate here at the nursery. The bright show of white flowers will soon be followed by red fruit which will persist through next winter. The Tina is a dwarf - reaching only 6-8′ in height with a spread of about 6 feet as well. As you can see in the picture we have spring flowering bulbs under the tree right now, and we will follow that with bright colored annuals to delight all summer. We have approximately 20 different varieties and all different size ranges.

The pink blossoms here are from the Coralburst Flowering Crab. The Corablburst is another dwarf, though not as small as the Tina.

We have a Red Jewell Flowering Crab at home next to our front steps. The Red Jewell reaches a height of 12′ but only a span of about 8′-10′. With a smaller span, we can keep it closer to the house and perhaps just a gentle pruning once every couple of years. It is gorgeous right now with all of its white blossoms. The fruit of this tree is bright fire engine red - hence the name Red Jewell.