Knecht’s

We will be having over 25 varieties of our trees, shrubs and perennials on sale - with prices at least 50% off if not more!

One of the best buys for Crazy Days will be on our flowering crabapple trees. All of our container flowering crabapple trees on our Sales Decks, Pot in Pot section and our B&B (balled and burlapped) will be 50% off for the day. This special is only available on Thursday - July 28th. No advance sales prior to or after Thursday. Crabapple trees in our production blocks will not be on sale.

There will be some great buys on Thursday!

We will be open at 7:00 am!

The weather forecast for Thursday looks wonderful! Partly sunny and 82 degrees!
Stop in early and then visit Downtown Northfield for all the sales happening there!

Northfield celebrates their Crazy Daze celebration on July 28th! Businesses open up at 7:00 am and offer CRAZY prices. We will be offering some outstanding values on many shrubs, trees and perennials for the day! Watch our ads in the Northfield News and Shopper and on the web blog!

We had a spruce tree in our yard that had to be replaced so we took it out and decided on a Royal Frost Birch. The birch tree is my favorite deciduous tree and the Royal Frost is an absolutely stunning tree. With the very white bark and the purple leaves - it is awesome. So this morning we had one tree spaded in! Trees can be safely moved in the summer with a little extra precautions. We water each tree with a special solution a day or two ahead of moving that helps the tree to retain moisture. This makes the move a little easier on the tree. As soon as this tree was planted this morning - the tree spade operator was still filling in dirt and I was watering it in.

Our next step for this part of the landscape is to add a few Endless Summer Hydrangeas. Stay tuned!

I recorded this short videoclip earlier this afternoon of Leif waxing eloquent about purple coneflowers.

The weather for the last several days has been hot and breezy. This makes the perfect combination for drying out plants. Even plants that have been established for several years can be facing a stressful time if we don’t get rain the next day or two. Watch your plants - are the leaves on your birch trees turning yellow? Are your plants drooping? If so - start a watering program. The rains that we got in the Northfield area in the last 2-3 weeks haven’t amounted to enough to water any plant enough. A tenth of an inch of rain doesn’t even soak down enough to do any good. Take a few minutes and help your plants! They’ll reward you with their beauty, shade, color, etc.

Last week we installed a new perennial garden at the Northfield Hospital outside of the long term care unit. Ron and Nancy Pieri of Northfield had it installed in memory of Nancy’s parents, Elvin & Dorie Oveson. They loved flowers and we definitely planted flowers. There are drifts of Purple Coneflower, Shasta Daisy, Goldsturm Rudebekia, Sedums, Russian Sage, and the list goes on. Nancy will be planting tulip and daffodil bulbs this fall. In memory of Leif’s parents, Loring & Suzanne Knecht, we donated and planted in the middle of the bed, a Dakota Pinacle Birch.

Pictured above are Ron and Nancy Pieri, Leif Knecht, and our landscaping crew - Jim Westlund, Derek Chicos and Jacob Kohn. If you are at the hospital, walk into the courtyard of the long term care unit and take a look. It is a beautiful addition to a beautiful space! Thank you to Ron and Nancy Pieri!

One of our display gardens sets on the site of the old farm house that was part of this land years ago. There is a wonderful bed of hollyhocks that were here originally and not planted by us.

All of us have memories of our grandmother’s house, or an aunt and uncle - or even Mom and Dad’s house sporting these old fashioned perennial flowers. Hollyhocks now come in a wide assortment of colors and there are some varieties that are relatives to the hollyhock which are shorter in stature than the old fashioned plant.

The beauty of this treasured flower is hard
to beat! We have several varieties of
Hollyhock - stop in and browse our perennial
decks!

Another update on our Endless Summer Hydrangea here at the nursery…. They are just starting to turn their lovely blue color. They stand about two feet tall and are covered with the blossom balls now turning blue! We water them once a month with a hose end feeder filled with Miracid water-soluble fertilizer. This is in addition to them being planted in a soil that was amended with a 50% peat mixture.

The vine to the left on the wall is our Porcelain Vine, a pot of double impatiens stands behind our Endless Summer and Sweet Potato Vine with pink snapdragons edge the wall.

We are in the midst of a wonderful summer of color in our gardens and enjoying all the plants that will be “sleeping” during the long Minnesota winter. The secret of having your Endless Summer perform like these are doing is to heavily mulch them in right before Thanksgiving. As I have written before, these plants were essentially buried with about 1 1/2 feet of mulch. In the early spring, you pull the mulch away, but it will protect these wonderful plants in the winter. Plan ahead now and buy a couple of bags of landscape mulch and place it in your garage. Take it out and cover these plants in November and in April - your Endless Summer will take off and please you next summer again!