July 27, 2015

Plant of the Week: Sugar Mountain Blue sweetberry honeysuckle


Edibles are hot, or so we're told. Consumers want to grow their own tomatoes and have fresh basil for their grilled pizzas. I can't blame them, but why should veggies and herbs get all the love?

Sugar Mountain® Blue sweetberry honeysuckle is an especially nice selection of Lonicera caerulea. It has big, juicy berries that are very tasty as a fresh crop or processed into jam. We've even been know to infuse vodka with them...

Our native Lonicera caerulea produces sweet, juicy berries that are somewhere between a raspberry and a blueberry in flavor. Maybe a little plum-like, too. Anyway, they're delicious. And easy to grow, too. Unlike blueberries, these tough plants do not need special soil. They are very hardy - going all the way into USDA Zone 3! Really, they grow sweetberries in Siberia.

They will grow in partial shade but like most fruit-bearing plants you will get better fruit set in full sun. Give them a couple years to establish, and then the fruit production is very reliable and easy, with berries typically appearing a little before strawberries come into season.

Lonicera caerulea is native to the boreal zones of North America, Europe, and Asia. It has been a popular fruit for centuries in Japan and parts of Eastern Europe and is now finally catching on here in North America.

Sugar Mountain Blue sweetberry honeysuckle forms a 5-6' shrub.
Sugar Mountain® Blue sweetberry honeysuckle will fruit without a nearby pollinator but you will get better fruit production when it is planted near one of the other Sugar Mountain® varieties. Balalaika™, Eisbär™, and Kalinka™ are all great choices.

What's with those names, you may ask? Well, Eisbär is German for polar bear - alluding to the wonderful hardiness of these plants. Balalaika and Kalinka are similarly cold-tolerant. A balalaika is a stringed instrument popular in Russia - check out this awesome Russian folk music group showing off two different sizes of balalaikas. Kalinka is a Russian folksong (horticultural trivia: kalinka is actually the common name for Viburnum opulus.) My point is that these are very cold-hardy plants that enable gardeners in northern climates to grow their own fruit!

Thanks to our grower Brian Maher for sharing that link of the balalaika trio with us. Brian's lovely wife is from St. Petersburg and our expert on all things Russian.


Plant of the Week is written by Jane Beggs-Joles

July 22, 2015

Garden Writers Association Region III Meeting

 
Greetings everyone!  It has been an incredibly busy season here at the nursery with no end in sight.  We’ve been fortunate to have cooler temperatures so far this spring and summer and as a result, I’ve been really productive with gardening and landscaping projects at home.  I hope you’ve had the same luck!
Garden Writers Association Region III Meeting
The Garden Writers Association (GWA) Region III Meeting was held in Michigan this year.  Attendees toured three sites throughout Michigan:  Lake Cliff Garden, Walters Garden and Spring Meadow Nursery.  It was a beautiful day filled with beautiful gardens and good company!  Here at Spring Meadow Nursery, attendees enjoyed our garden center featuring many of our newer plant introductions, a Hydrangeas Demystified presentation by Tim Wood, a tour of our extensive trial gardens, and dinner.




I hope everyone is enjoying their summer!

Best, Mark 

July 20, 2015

Plant of the Week: Lo & Behold 'Ice Chip' Buddleia

Lo & Behold 'Ice Chip' Buddleia (butterfly bush)

We were with our friends from Prides Corner Farms earlier this summer and gave them some grief about the horrible winter they had been through. Hey, it's not often that folks in West Michigan get to watch winter storms on the news and think, "Wow, they're getting it worse than us!"

Anyway, this week the last pile of snow in Boston was officially declared to be melted. For real - piles of snow in July. I've seen snow in July above the snow line, and in the U.P. (which is kind of one big snow line), but that's pretty crazy for a coastal city.

To celebrate this happy day I bring you a much nicer bit of summer iciness: Lo & Behold® 'Ice Chip' Buddleia (butterfly bush). It's a little plant - just 18-24" inches tall - and flowers earlier than some of the other Lo & Behold® varieties. Sometimes white flowers don't get a lot of love, but I think 'Ice Chip' is a great choice for pairing with brightly colored annuals or the dark foliage of a plant like Spilled Wine® Weigela.

The Lo & Behold® butterfly bushes are wonderful little plants that bring color and fragrance to summer gardens without littering the landscape with unwanted seedlings. They will bloom from midsummer to frost without deadheading. What's really fun about them is that they challenge us to think about Buddleia in a whole new way. Most of us are used to thinking of butterfly bush as a really big, kind of awkward plant to be stashed in the back of a mixed border. You want the fragrance and the butterflies, but the plant itself was often not much to look at.

These plants are different - cute little mounds of blooms that stay tidy and totally deserve placement at the front of the border. Unlike older varieties, they make a great mass planting. Face it, no one needs a mass planting of 'Pink Delight'.

We do recommend that they be planted as early in the season as possible in northern climates so they have time to establish before winter. Also, pay extra attention to the soil: it really needs to be well-drained. Putting it where the plow truck is going to drop a ton of heavy Boston snow in winter isn't a good idea, either.

Proven Winners' Lo & Behold 'Ice Chip' Buddleia (butterfly bush)

Plant of the Week is written by Jane Beggs-Joles

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