Volume 11 Issue 1
April 2013
Growing With Us
We’ve Moved! Did you ever wish we were closer and more convenient? Well, now we are. Whether you commute on the Appalachian Highway every day, or venture toward Adams County to shop the Amish stores every so often, you’ll see our new garden center from Route 32. We’re just off the Appalachian Highway where it crosses Route 62, just west of Winchester. Our new location is behind Hilltop Designs on Tri-County Road (across the street from the Winchester Carpet Outlet). Hilltop Designs is the home of the annual Appalachian Artisan’s Fest each October, and we’ll be open until midOctober each season so you can get your mums when you come for the festival. At our new place, we’re 15 miles east of Mt. Orab, 20 miles south of Hillsboro, 16 miles from Georgetown, and 18 miles west of our old location near Peebles. That’s less than a halfhour drive from any of those places, and a hour round trip closer for most of you. Does this mean we’ll see you more often? We hope so…
GoodSeed Nursery Spring Hours: Spring Shopping Hours Monday through Saturday, rain or shine .............................. 9 AM to 6 PM Sunday................................................................................................Noon to 5PM
Maps, Directions & Schedules at www.goodseedfarm.com
Start Your Garden: •Boston Ferns, Pansies •Seeds, Onion Sets •Soils and Mulch •Fruit Trees
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“Steve’s Soapbox:” In With the New... I finished grieving for Does it look like a garden center yet? An early March snapshot... our lovely garden center sometime last summer. After fifteen years of toil, we were as close to perfection as we were likely to get, but if we’d learned anything in fifteen years, it was that our retail store would never make a profit as long as we kept it here on the farm. Never mind the pressure from the State of Ohio code officials. Our location was just too far from most of our customers. It was time for a coin flip. Either give up our retail “destination store” dreams and focus on our thriving landscape business, or move to a better location, location, location. If you’re reading this, you are the reason we decided to relocate. We’ve become friends over the years, part of each other’s lives. We’d like to see you more often. So we looked up and down the Appalachian Highway for a new home, closer and more convenient for you. Jo Hall at Hilltop Designs rolled out the welcome mat for us, and that made our decision easy. Jo is now our landlady, and we couldn’t have hoped for a better partner. So here’s what’s new: for most of you, we’re a half-hour closer and easier to find. That’s an hour’s round trip, a drive we’ll be making every day to save you that hour each time you come. We’ve also designed a garden center that’s simple and efficient; easier to shop with less walking, quicker to find what you need and be on your way. Call it “GoodSeed Farm Express”. We’re now an HGTV Plant Partner; one of the first garden centers to offer the exciting brand-new HGTV line of specialty plants. This is going to be BIG, and we’re an “early adopter”. You can be, too. Another new adventure is ratcheting up the “barn quilt” craze by offering ready-made or made-to-order barn quilt panels. When Donna Sue Groves pioneered the Adams County barn quilt trail idea back in 2001, we embraced what has since become a national craze, with barn quilt trails now in 47 states. We’ll now make it easy for anyone to decorate with a colorful barn quilt, any size from one foot to eight feet square. This is instant color and charm for naked barns, garages, or even an empty wall inside your home. Bet you can’t buy just one… You might say we’re starting over, after fifteen years, but we have two very important things we lacked when we started GoodSeed Farm in 1998. The first is fifteen years of experience in running a garden center. The second is an amazing group of loyal customers who are willing to support our local, family-owned business, and take pleasure in watching us grow. We thank you, and look forward to serving you in our new place.
ENJOY OUR PHILADELPHIA TOURS! We have two tours scheduled for this fall, and we’d like you to join us: PHILADELPHIA GARDEN TOUR September 14-17: Longwood Gardens, Winterthur Museum & Gardens, the Wyeth museum and N.C. Wyeth studio at Brandywine, plus great meals! PHILADELPHIA FOOD & HISTORY TOUR October 14-17: Old City Philadelphia history destinations plus local food landmarks & fine dining. See goodseedfarm.com “Bus Tours” page for details, or call 937-587-7021
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Marjorie’s
Perennial Pick “Happy Returns” Daylily Re-blooming daylilies give you constant color for the entire season, unlike regular daylilies. “Happy Returns” starts with a full, compact, emerald green plant that looks like ornamental grass. By mid-May it’s covered with frilly, bright lemon-yellow blooms. In fertile soil it will bloom until frost. Fertilize with Espoma Bulb-Tone when planting and again during the summer. A mid-season haircut, cutting the entire plant off at ground level, makes Happy Returns bounce back with all new foliage and heavier bloom.
PULVERIZED TOPSOIL, COMPOST, SOIL BLENDS, MULCH, SAND & GRAVEL
..for pickup or “next business day” delivery: call 937937-587587-7021
GoodSeed Nursery is the BARN QUILT Place!
Have you ever wondered where you can get one of those colorful quilt murals for your barn? The barn quilt craze has gone national, but it started right here in southern Ohio. It’s easy to decorate your own building with a colorful quilt square; GoodSeed Nursery has a big selection of different murals in stock or we can have one custom-made for you in your choice of colors. Most barn quilts are based on traditional quilt blocks. We stock the most popular ones like the Ohio Star and Grandma’s Fan. Perhaps you have a family quilt you’d like to memorialize on your barn. Show us your photo and let us help. Whether you’re looking for a one-square-foot panel or a giant 8x8 or even 10x10 mural, together we can create the perfect barn quilt for your particular home place.
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RAINY DAY Certificate $10 Value!
Garden shopping in wet weather can be fun! This coupon should help. If it’s raining while you’re shopping at GoodSeed Farm, present this coupon for $10 off any purchase over $20. Valid until October 15, 2013. Not to be combined with any other discount or offer. Limit one per customer.
Mother’s Day 3-Day
PARTY! Friday, May 10th through Sunday, May 12th 9AM-6PM It’s time again for the annual gathering of mothers and daughters, grandmothers and grandkids, mothers-in-law and mothers-to-be, at GoodSeed Farm for the Country Garden Mothers Day Party. After fifteen years this has become an annual ritual, including a FREE gift plant for every mother; this year it’s OldFashioned Lilac! There’s one for you. COME HUNGRY! Our menu includes Papa’s Kettle Korn, pulled pork sandwiches, chicken salad croissants, lemonade, homemade cheesecake and more. We’ll be giving away 1200 cute little Old Fashioned Lilac bushes, one for every mother, no strings attached. We’ll have plenty of unadvertised specials of 30%, 40% and even 50% off on plants at their peak, perfect for Mom! If this is your first year in the GoodSeed Farm community, it can be the beginning of a wonderful family Mother’s Day tradition for you and your family.
SAVE $20 OFF DELIVERY CHARGE for any mulch order (minimum 6 scoops) delivered now through April 30th! GIV CO E T HI U S OU PON T RD ON RIV O DE LIV ER ER Y!
“Jet Black”, “Black Gold”, Red-dyed, or “Pine Magic” !
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BOSTON FERN HANGING BASKET SALE! Save $8 on two (Net cost $15.99 each) No Coupon Required. Sale Dates: Monday, April 1 through Tuesday April 30, 2013
APRIL TREE & SHRUB SALE! 25% Off Specially Marked Shrubs, Trees and Evergreens! Early season savings on flowering trees and shrubs, shade trees, windbreak evergreens and more. These are all carryover stock from 2012; one year older and larger than incoming stock for less money. money. While supplies last; come early for the best selection.
- EARLY BIRD CERTIFICATE! SAVE $10Bring this voucher to GoodSeed Farm for an instant $10 discount on any purchase over $20 in our garden center.
For the Month of April Only!
Valid: Monday, April 1st through Tuesday, April 30th One coupon per family. Not to be combined with other discounts. Expires April 30, 2013
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The Real Legacy of Johnny Appleseed John Chapman could be described as a successful real estate speculator with a good understanding of how to increase your wealth through compound interest. He is also one of the most misrepresented and misunderstood figures in American history. His biggest contribution to life on the American frontier was to create a renewable supply of hard cider and “applejack”, the favorite liquors of the expanding American population of his time. He was a religious zealot, a wild-eyed Swedenborgian missionary with the flinty toughness of Daniel Boone and the gentleness of a Hindu. Oh, and by the way, he planted millions of apple trees from seed. Later reinvented as the cartoonish “Johnny Appleseed”, John Chapman was a pioneer who made a huge impact on America’s frontier, particularly in Ohio. He started a chain of nurseries reaching from western Pennsylvania through central Ohio and into Indiana. With the canny shrewdness of a real estate developer, staying just ahead of the westward migration, Chapman planted nurseries near remote settlements. When he died in 1845, his estate included 22 properties totaling over 1200 acres of prime waterfront real estate. To discourage speculation and encourage stability, land grant deeds in the Northwest Territory required homesteaders to plant apple and pear orchards. Grafted apple trees with edible fruit were already available in Ohio, but Chapman grew his from seed. Apples don’t sprout “true to type” from seed, so fruit from Chapman’s trees was mostly bitter, useful only for making hard cider, which could be distilled into applejack. Safer, tastier and much easier to make than wine or grain liquors, apple cider was the alcoholic drink of choice on the American frontier. In fact, there was little else to drink. In rural areas, cider replaced wine, beer, coffee, tea and even water. Young apple trees were essential supplies for any settler headed for the frontier, and John Chapman offered two and three year old saplings for about six cents each. He had a sixth sense for where the next wave of development would be, and by the time the demand was there he had a well-located nursery in full production, run by a local manager. In addition to apples, Chapman introduced many medicinal herbs to Ohio, and also stinking fennel. This annoying weed was once believed to prevent malaria; today it’s commonly called “Johnnyweed” by Ohioans. Johnny Appleseed’s legacy became a target during Prohibition, when Carrie Nation’s axe was used to chop down apple trees along with saloons. Because of their popularity and for religious reasons, hard cider and applejack enjoyed some immunity from the early prohibitionists, but by 1900 they were attacked along with wine, beer and grain spirits. Johnny’s legend was reinvented, his image sanitized for political correctness. In his excellent book The Botany of Desire, author Michael Pollan explores the Johnny Appleseed legend in detail. He concludes that John Chapman was “the American Dionysus”. Where Dionysus brought civilization the gift of wine, Chapman offered easier access to the pleasures of alcohol. Pollen views both men as bridges between nature and culture, harnessing the magic of fermentation to create social change. The take-home message for gardeners is that apple trees grown from seed will not produce the same fruit as the original apple. Only grafting will produce dependable offspring with the qualities of the parent apple tree.
If you love gardening, why waste your time “Googling” to get the solutions you need? Instead, go to www.goodseedfarm.com and click on our “Weekly Blog” for an alphabetical list of helpful topics from “Asparagus Planting” to “Winter Reading for Gardeners”. In simple, plain language we make gardening easy. You can find our weekly gardening column “Let’s Grow” in nine newspapers around southern Ohio. Some of our readers clip and save the column, but there’s no need. Each week we post it on the “weekly blog” page at www.goodseedfarm.com, and you can look up a hundred gardening topics in the online archive. Need gardening advice? Jump in your car and drive out to GoodSeed Nursery for an entertaining shopping trip. We’d love to see you. Or just visit www.goodseedfarm.com for garden answers online.
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“Orange Bliss”
INTRODUCING: The HGTV Plant Collection at GoodSeed Nursery Get Inspired by the style, beauty and color of this exciting new plant collection, HGTV HOME Plants. Want to know more about choosing the right plants? How to care for them? Which plants go together? We take the guesswork out by giving you our expert knowknow-how! It’s what sets us apart.
“Pink Flirt”
“Tropical Bliss”
“Glow Yellow”
“Chic Black & White”
“Purple Genius”
“Red Sparkle”
9736 Tri-County Highway Winchester, Ohio 45697 937-587-7021 www.goodseedfarm.com
PRSTD STD US POSTAGE PAID PERMIT 5400 CINCINNATI OH
WE’VE MOVED OUR STORE!
CALENDAR
GARDEN CENTER & LANDSCAPING
GoodSeed Nursery
We’re now at a more convenient location, just off the Appalachian Highway at Route 62 in Winchester. We’re at Hilltop Designs on Tri-County Highway across the street from the Winchester Carpet Outlet.
PLAN TO VISIT GOODSEED FARM OFTEN THIS SPRING! Mark your calendar so you can enjoy our special events, take advantage of special savings, bring your family or friends for special times! April 1 OPEN FOR SPRING IN OUR NEW LOCATION AT 9736 TRITRI-COUNTY HIGHWAY NEAR WINCHESTER HOURS: Monday-Saturday Hours 9am-6pm, Sunday Noon-5pm Now till April 30 MULCH MADNESS! Save $20 on bulk mulch delivery of 6 to 20 scoops of Black Gold, Jet Black, Pine Bark or Red Dyed. April 11-30 Boston Fern Special $8 off on two Boston Fern Hanging baskets! April 11-30 Early Season Tree & Shrub Sale! Sale 25% off on selected evergreens, shade trees and shrubs! April 27 GRAND OPENING CELEBRATION! Celebrate our new, convenient location with specials on HGTV hanging baskets and combination planters. Food, music and specials all day Saturday! May 1010-1111-12 Country Garden Mother’s Day Party! FREE Lilac Bush for every mother. Specials, food and fun 9AM-6PM Friday, Saturday, and Mother’s Day Sunday June 2626-July 7 Truckload Annual Flower Sale Outrageous savings on a fresh shipment of annual flats, pots and hanging baskets while they last Aug. 2323-Oct. 13 Mum Season Perfect MUMS plus shrubs, trees, fertilizer, mulch and soils! October 11,12,13 Appalachian Artisan’s Fest Three-day craft festival. We’ll be open with our gorgeous hardy mums, barn quilts and a selection of fall color. October 1818-21 End of Season Sale! Friday: everything discounted 30%! Saturday: everything discounted 40%! Sunday: everything discounted 50% or more! come early for the best selection. (Bulk Mulches and soils not included). October 22 CLOSED FOR THE SEASON!