Proven Winners

Proven Winners

We grow lots of Proven Winners flowers. Proven Winners is just a brand, by the way, and if you are into gardening, you likely have heard of PW. Of all the flower brands there are, PW probably is the best at branding, "Wave" petunias being the only other well known flower brand.
PW has a great website, with tons of information, photos, it even has little audio files with the correct pronunciation of all their flowers. I was looking up something the other day and discovered that you can now order plants online from them! I'm not sure if we can get them here in Canada -their website says something like plants ship to US only, $40 extra for shipping to Canada. huh?
What really caught my eye was the price! $7.45 or a 4.24" pot. Taxes and shipping extra. Wow. Of course the price is in $USD, so it's not like the almighty Canadian dollar.

We grow our plants in 4.5" pots so, I guess we win the pot size contest.

Hutchinson Farm News Vol. 14 No. 2

Here is our latest email newsletter:

April 17, 2010

Spring is running about three weeks ahead of time here in North Burlington, our grass needs mowing already, the forsythia is so full and 'yellowy' that it's almost painful to look at, the spring peepers give a beautiful concert each evening, and the cardinal....hmmm, actually we can't exactly say we're enjoying the cardinal this year. We've had this beautiful red male cardinal around our house for maybe a month and a half. Each morning he wakes us up with, now I know you're probably thinking the songs of the cardinal are lovely, but that's not how he wakes us up. Every day, just a few minutes after sunrise, that cardinal flies straight towards our bedroom window, and BONK, crashes beak first into the window. You'd think that might hurt. Apparently not. He does it about a dozen times at the bedroom window, then he flies off to do something else for a while, then he attacks our dining room window, then moves on to the playroom window, and throughout the day we'll hear him periodically crashing into our windows. Needless to say they are very dirty right now, but there is no point in cleaning them!
Alexander posted a video of him on YouTube: Crazy Cardinal

• 2nd Annual Open House...(open greenhouse) Come for a sneak peak at what's available this year in terms of our spring annuals. It's too early to plant, but it's not too early to plan. All of our greenhouses will be open for viewing Sunday April 25th in the afternoon, and just about everything will be blooming. We'll be on hand between 1:00 - 4:00pm for a chance to chat and show off the new stuff (such as Raspberry Blast SuperTunia, which you can see in the photo that I took earlier today in our greenhouse).
  
  
• Remember, no wagering
  We are quite excited about all the new flowers we have this year, and there is great speculation among us as to what we will sell out of first. Rafael's thinking it will be the Calliope Dark Red Geraniums, Wendy is thinking it will be our new 12" mixed hanging baskets, and Deb is leaning towards the new crazy petunia Pretty Much Picasso. These are all worthy contenders, and there are lots more that I haven't mentioned. Now, as the newsletter writer I have an unfair advantage in our little contest. All I really need to do is mention a certain flower in the newsletter, say Raspberry Blast SuperTunia, talk about how beautiful it is (a terrific deep pink with a light pink striped picotee effect, on a great shaped plant), maybe include a picture (like the one above), and casually mention that because this is the first year for them, I didn't grow very many (after all, they may not grow very well -I could have planted them at the wrong time! or used the wrong fertilizer! or grown them at the wrong temperature!). If I said stuff like that, then all you newsletter readers would start thinking about it, and maybe start wanting it, and I would win our contest. That's not fair to the other contestants, so I'm just going to keep quiet and not mention the wonders of Raspberry Blast SuperTunia.
  
  
• Flower Trays  In our continuing effort to reduce garbage we have been trying over the past few years to use less of our "Hutchinson Farm" flower trays, or rather, encourage our customers to use them less. The thing is, they are shockingly expensive, non-recyclable, and they may hold green things, they are definitely not 'green'. Our earlier efforts have helped a bit, but they were complicated, so we're going to do something different this year. We are thinking about charging for the trays separately ($38 for the flowers, $2 for the tray), instead of including the tray with your flowers ($40). We hope a lot of people will start using their own boxes, bins, etc. What do you think? Vote on our blog.
  
  
• Facebook  I'm not into facebook (is this a sign I'm getting old?), but I know lots of people are, so we have a facebook page: Hutchinson Farm on Facebook. We've actually been on Facebook for over a year, but I completely forgot about it!

Before I go, let me say a few more words about our "which flower will sell out first" contest. I mentioned a few other contenders, and they deserve some press space too:
Calliope Dark Red - it is indeed the greatest red geranium of all time, and we have over a thousand of them, that should be enough for everyone. Maybe.
Pretty Much Picasso with its green edged bloom (that's right, this petunia flower has green in it) is an oddball, and some may even call it ugly.
12" mixed hanging baskets These are our newest introduction, and we've never done anything like them before, so potentially it could be a big disaster. They were planted over the March break, are looking very good right now as they come into bloom, and we have a feeling they will look fabulous by early May.

Bye for now, hope to see you next Sunday (the 25th),
David

To receive this newsletter by email, please email us.
This newsletter is also posted on Facebook

These trays aren't cheap

You know those waxed trays that hold a dozen of our geraniums? The last time we bought them they were just under a dollar each, that was 4 years ago (that would be the empty tray, with no flowers ;-) ). The next time we buy them, they will be about $1.50 per tray (this doesn't include handling or assembling them, etc.) We have always encouraged our customers to return the trays, re-use them, or use their own boxes. Lots of our customers do just that, but most of them don't. Last year we gave a discount off the price of the flowers if you used your own trays, and kind of had a deposit thing going when people brought them back. It was too complicated, so this year we're trying something different.

The price of our flowers is going to be $38.00 per dozen, including all the taxes.
Should we:
1) Charge $38.00 for each dozen, and then charge $2.00 for each of our trays? (customers could use their own trays, and wouldn't have to use ours)
or
2) Charge $40.00 for each dozen, with the tray included in the price?

What do you think? Vote on our poll.

SunPatiens

Another exciting new release for your garden this year is Sunpatiens, or to be precise SunPatiens®. It is possible you may have heard of these already, because last year they were available exclusively from a certain big box hardware store (aka Home Depot). I'm not sure if they were available in Canada, so it may have been only in the States, it doesn't matter, because they're available to all growers this year. Since this our first year to grow them, we won't have very many, but I suspect they are going to disappear in a hurry. The photo is taken by yours truely, last summer at the JVK trial gardens in St. Catherines, Ontario.

Here's our description:

Winter Hardiness: Annual
Light Requirements: Full sun - part sun

Where to plant: Large Containers or Beds
Height: 24 - 48"

Width: 18" - 48"

Spacing: 16 - 20"



They're the flower we've been waiting years for: a true sunshine impatiens. SunPatiens® are the first Impatiens to thrive in full hot sun, all summer long. Their ability withstand the heat of summer is truly extraordinary, and amazingly they also are happy in shade -even indoors! 



Garden Performance
SunPatiens® are easy to grow, and will thrive until frost. They're available in three habits: Compact, Vigorous, and Spreading, but watch out, even the 'compact' ones are big (24” - 36”) so they'll do best in the ground, or in very large containers. We have eight varieties this year, and even more coming next year.


Growing Guide
Lots of room and lots of sun! SunPatiens® are new, so we've never grown them, but it sounds like a easy flower to grow and keep in bloom.

Fertilizer: Moderate feeder, any all purpose, compost, etc


Colours and Varieties

There are three series with a total of 15 cultivars. We are growing 8 varieties in 2010 (marked as*)


Vigorous SunPatiens® Series
Garden Height: 36 - 48"
Garden Width: 36 - 48"
Container Height: 24 - 36"
Container Width: 24 - 36"
Colours: Variegated Coral*, Lavender*, Magenta*, Orange, Red, White*

Compact SunPatiens® Series
Garden Height: 24 - 36"
Garden Width: 24 - 36"
Container Height: 18 - 24"
Container Width: 18 - 24"
Colours: Blush Pink*, Deep Rose, Light Coral, Lilac*, Magenta*, Orange, White 

Spreading SunPatiens® Series
Garden Height: 36 - 48"
Garden Width: 36 - 48"
Container Height: 24 - 36"
Container Width: 24 - 36"
Colours: Variegated Salmon, Variegated White*

Further Information (links)
:
SunPatiens are developed by Sakata

Even better, there's an exclusive website: SunPatiens®

Lob-U-What?

Lobularia
Snow Princess Lobularia is a new release for 2010. I bet you've never heard of Lobularia before, and I bet you think in the picture it looks an awful lot like alyssum. You're absolutely right. Lobularia is Alyssum. Seems the botany taxonomers have decided that from now on Alyssum should be known as Lobularia, so Snow Princess is indeed an Alyssum,  and I don't mind if you call it alyssum, we won't tell the botanists. We saw it for the first time last summer where we took this picture at the Proven Winners® trial gardens.
We thought it looked pretty good, so we're growing them this year.

Our Description of Snow Princess:
Annual
Full sun - part sun

Large Containers or 
Beds

6 - 8" Tall

12" - 24" Cascade

Snow Princess is a new release from Proven Winners® for 2010, best described as a trailing alyssum. The mounding white blooms have great staying power, require little maintenance, and have a beautiful fragrance. 



Garden Performance: Snow Princess will put on a great show all season. It's more heat tolerant than regular alyssum, but watch out, it's a hearty drinker, so we don't recommend growing it in small containers. It is a vigorous grower, so be careful with your combinations, as it will outgrow its neighbours!

Flower Update Week 6

March 8th, 2010

Here we are in greenhouse #1, the second greenhouse to be filled with plants. Mostly what you can see are the seed geraniums.

Flower Update Week 5

March 1st, 2010
Our first greenhouse is open! For the past few days we have been planting up our ivy geranium hanging baskets. We've had some beautiful sunny days, just what geraniums love. The Mini-cascade geraniums are bigger than ever, we can't wait to see them in May.