Knecht’s

In September we sell more trees than any other month of the year! This customer had a development starting behind his house and wanted an instant fence. We tree-spaded eight evergreens to his backyard and look at the difference. A wooden fence would have blocked the view of the development, but what a much nicer looking visual barricade! We have trees of all sizes and price ranges. These larger trees do the job quicly, but if your budget says a smaller tree is in order - we have that to. Stop in at the nursery and check out all of the great values you’ll find!

Our orchard produces a bountiful apple crop every other year. This was the year for lots of apples. On Wednesday, I made 16 apple pies. I put a dozen in the freezer for homemade apple pie this winter when the snow’s a-blowing. The retail staff enjoyed warm apple pie, my little grandson’s got a pie, and Leif had pie for dessert as well!

I make them “assembly-line” fashion - add lots of raisins - and freeze them raw. When we want pie, I simply take it out of the freezer - pop it in the oven and in almost an hour - hot apple pie!

Beginning in late August the tree sales start to pick up, and in September the trees leave here in large numbers! Heidi Gervais - our retail manager - helps a customer wrap his tree for traveling back to Elko. We have all of our balled and burlapped trees now on sale - starting today - at 30% off. There are selected container trees on sale as well. If you want a maple that turns a stunning red in the fall - a crabapple with its beautiful fruit - or an evergreen to give you “green” in the winter - you’ll find the tree for you! We will continue to landscape and plant trees through mid-November so this is an excellent time to continue (or start) your planting projects. When you purchase a tree - we will give you a special handout on Fall Planting Guidelines to make sure you have successful planting results!

The spring time flowers of the various flowering crabs is always an exciting time at the nursery. After a long winter - to see the trees dressed in such beautiful flowers is always a treat - however - the fall and winter seasons are when the flowering crabs really shine. This picture shows the David Flowering Crab with its orange/red fruit shining in the sun. David is a smaller, Zone 4 crabapple. Reaching a mature height and width of 12′, it has a compact, rounded shape. The foliage is lighter green and glossy. Flowering white in the spring - it’s fruit is persistant. It has good to excellent disease resistant and is absolutely a gorgeous tree.

It’s been two weeks since I first posted the first pictures of the Autumn Joy Sedum and the Miscanthus Flame Grass located here at the nursery in our display beds. The Autumn Joy is bursting out in it’s fall color - and by the next picture - should be a very brillant rosy/red color. The flame grass is fully headed out and soon the plumes will begin to change into fluffy cotton-like flowers. In another two weeks, the stems of the grass should be changing into their fall color display.

Our tulip and daffodil bulbs are here! Plan now for that early splash of spring color with crocus bulbs or the wide array of colors with tulips! My favorite spring bulb is the daffodil. The daffodil has to be the most perfect flower Mother Nature has produced. In yellows, whites, and oranges this beauty is sure to please and seems to last much longer than the tulips! I don’t like the foliage that you need to keep for so long after the flowers are gone so I now plant my summer perennials in front of my tulips so by the time the tulips are done - the summer perennials are up and hide the not so pretty foliage.

Spring bulbs are best planted in late September and early October. With good luck, you should be able to get several seasons of flowers in the spring!

This is my favorite time of year! The tomatoes are ready and I can a couple dozen quarts of tomatoes for use this winter in chili, spaghetti, etc. The tomatoes this year are plentiful, except we didn’t keep the garden watered as much as we should have and the tomatoes are smaller than normal. I just picked another five gallon bucket full of these red jewells. Salsa, Greek salad and BLT’s are on the menu for this week!

Black clouds, plenty of thunder and lightning, wind and rain made their appearance on Saturday night and stayed well into Sunday morning. At the nursery here we received about 3 inches of rain and didn’t appear to have had much wind. Areas to the west of Northfield received much more rain than we did, and in Faribault they apparently suffered some damage with a little more wind! The timing wasn’t very good for the many people who were at the State Fair, or planned evening activities or even gardening on Sunday, but the moisture was good to start to replenish our soil after such a hot and dry summer!