The purpose of this blog is reassurance. We do not care about the specifics, only that everyone ends up reassured by the end of it. We have had a full production crew working since early January making liners of perennials, grasses, and carexes. Another full crew has been making Vinca minor 105 plugs and since March 1 sticking pachysandra. And another crew has been potting up gallons of perennials. Therefore, and from anything that we can see, we are not going to run out of Vinca and Pachysandra this year.
The good news is that the perennial plugs are selling as fast as they can be made. The better news is that we are making them as fast as they are selling. And, in conclusion, we do not have a long listing of extras to try to peddle. We should have thought of this perennial liner business sooner—we get half again as much for a liner as a pachysandra pot and stick one-third as many cuttings and hold it one-fourth as long before it is saleable. On that delicate subject I want to thank all the other perennial liner producers who have been busily lowering the level of expectations of the customers who no longer expect vernalized cuttings but will settle for any old thing as long as it is correctly labelled.
Here are a few extra things that will not sell themselves and so they need a little nudge. Here comes the nudge: 500 flats of Acorus gramineus ‘Ogon’, which is some Japanese Sweet Flag yellow water loving plant. These in a 38 liner flat. As a rule something yellow, white, and gaudy is not my favorite plant, however, this Acorus is very easy to produce and I have lots of stock plants and so my aesthetic sense is being overwhelmed by money.
And then there is Liriope spicata—creeping lilyturf—which looks like green grass until it has going through a hard winter and then the tops look like black grass. A little mowing, a little sun, and it turns green again. We have thousands of flats of it in both a 32 flat SVD 2 ½” plastic pot or in a 32 flat plug tray, all for the same price which is 87 cents per plant, pot, or plug. These have been around for a while and when popped into a gallon will make up in a few months. I forget the precise schedule, but then I am forgetting more things these days.
I have never seen sales like this year. I happen to have guessed right about almost everything and so we are positioned to take advantage of a good year. Hope all of you landscapers are working hard installing plants and collecting money from old ladies. Better you than me.