Spring 2017 goodseed newsletter

Volume

Issue

May 2016

May 2017

Growing With Us

Mother’s Day Party!

GoodSeed Farm & Garden is under new management, but our Mother’s Day Party tradition continues! We’ll still host a gathering of mothers and daughters, grandmothers and grandkids, mothers-in-law and mothers-to-be, at GoodSeed Farm for our 19th annual Country Garden Mothers Day Party.

Another GoodSeed Farm tradition is a FREE gift plant for every mom. This year it’s the exciting new “Sparkle & Shine” Rose Bush from Weeks Roses! We’ll be giving away 1200 cute little rose bushes, one for every mother, no strings attached, and our friends from the Waynoka Garden Club will be manning the plant giveaway table.

COME HUNGRY! Our breakfast menu includes sausage & egg sandwiches, hot ham & egg sandwiches, coffee and donuts. Estel Newberry’s “Big E BBQ”, will be serving melt-inyour-mouth ribeye sandwiches, half-pound steak burgers, pulled chicken sandwiches, and an affordable kids menu. We’ll have plenty of unadvertised specials on plants at their peak, perfect for Mom, with specials on stunning combination planters and baskets. Vegetable gardeners will love our healthy Amish-grown local vegetable plants. Ken’s Unique Birdhouses will be back with their handmade “found item” creations.

Our party starts Friday morning May 12th at 9AM, continuing 9AM to 6PM all three days including Mother’s Day Sunday. If you’re new to the GoodSeed Farm community, it can be the start of a wonderful family Mother’s Day tradition for you and your family. Otherwise, welcome back!

GoodSeed Farm Hours: Monday through Saturday Sunday

9AM-7PM 10AM-6PM

Growing With Us

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“Steve’s Soapbox”

People, Pets & Plants One of the joys of life is the calming effect of being around plants and animals. It’s well known that a walk in the woods, or even a stroll around your flower garden, is a wonderful way to lower your stress level. Experts may disagree about why, but there’s no doubt that being around plants and flowers is good for the soul.

The same goes for cats and dogs. Needy, demanding cats (aren’t they?) and friendly, happy dogs are just the thing to take your mind off your troubles. Having them around, touching and talking to them, taking care of their daily needs is very satisfying and fulfilling.

Like pets, gardens reflect their owners. People who nurture plants tend to be kinder, gentler, and more generous. In almost twenty years at the garden center, I’ve marveled at how friendly, generous and mellow most gardeners are, and how few everyday hassles disrupt the calm atmosphere of our garden center.

Perhaps that’s why we’ve rarely had to obsess about shoplifting, credit card fraud, counterfeit bills and other such concerns, the way big-boxes and conveniences stores seem to always do. We’ve had the luxury of assuming our customers are honest and well-meaning, and treating them accordingly. It would be a real drag if we had to treat all our customers like criminals just in case they might be one.

Now that I spend most of my days landscaping, I’ve been thinking a lot about “tough love”. That’s when the best thing you can do for a plant is drastic pruning, or digging up and dividing, or even culling and thinning because things are just too crowded. Most people are afraid to give plants a “tough love haircut” even though it might be just what the plant needs most.

Plants and pets hold a life lesson. When they’re young and growing, they often need guidance and discipline so that they can reach their full potential. It’s no kindness to put off the day of reckoning, for fear of harming them. Every day I see problems that could have been easily fixed, with just a little bit of “tough love” during the formative years.

Giving plants and pets that little bit of well-timed correction, and seeing them grow strong, healthy and happy as a result, is one of the most satisfying aspects of life. It’s your gift to the world around you, and to yourself.

PULVERIZED TOPSOIL, MUSHROOM COMPOST, SOIL BLENDS, MULCH, SAND & GRAVEL ...for pickup or delivery: call 937-695-0350

Growing With Us

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Sarah’s Perennial Pick: “Banana Cream” Shasta Daisy Shasta daisies are some of the most reliable, trouble-free and fast-growing perennials you can add to you garden, and they can provide armloads of cut flowers over a long season! “Banana Cream” from Proven Winners is a new long-blooming Shasta Daisy with flowers that begin bright lemon-yellow and gradually turn ivory cream. The blooms are huge, with an extra row of petals that give a fuller appearance. Flowers can last 2 weeks or more in the vase. Butterflies flock to 'Banana Cream', adding further bright color to the display.

Banana Cream Daisy is a compact grower with disease resistant, dark green foliage. Plants rapidly spread in your garden, becoming a large colony that shrugs off drought and neglect once it’s established. If the first blooms of the season are cut or deadheaded promptly, the sideshoots bud heavily and keep the show going from late spring through autumn. That's an incredible span for any plant, and much longer than most Shastas! Feeding with Flower-Tone helps Banana Cream flower more heavily.

Gardening is for kids!

Have you noticed the huge sandbox we added to our garden center this spring? How about the “Kids Garden”? We want GoodSeed Farm to be fun for the entire family, and here’s a down payment on some of our plans:

We’ve set aside a raised bed garden just for kids. Choose a flower and plant it, then check on it each time you come to GoodSeed Farm. We’ll keep it watered and fed, so you can pick the blooms during future visits. Sound like fun?

And there’s the sandbox. We’ve only had it for a few weeks, and already it’s become a magnet for kids of all ages. Check it out next time you’re here!

Growing With Us

Join Us For the Garden Expo!

On Saturday, June 3rd we’ll present our third annual GoodSeed Garden Expo and you’re invited! Admission is FREE, and so is lunch! Our featured speaker this year will be Danielle Thompson, Education and Wildlife Specialist with the Brown County Soil and Water Conservation District. Danielle is a fountain of knowledge about flower pollination, and she’ll present lots of ideas for home gardeners who want to attract pollinators to your gardens. Martin McAllister from The Nature Conservancy will follow up with a presentation on pollinators in the wild.

We started our Expo to provide a learning experience for our customers and showcase our favorite products.

We’ll have a “mini-trade show”, interesting speakers, product experts, door prizes and garden center specials, plus FREE Nathan’s hot dogs and lemonade served by Estel Newberry’s Big “E” BBQ. Some of our key suppliers will be on hand to display, educate and assist our customers.

We’ll have informative seminars, including sessions on pollination, raised bed gardening and other hot topics.

Our suppliers will be bringing plenty of free samples, plus prizes you’ll have a chance to win. Anyone bringing an empty bucket can get a free sample of GoodSeed Garden Mix, our revolutionary bulk soil for raised beds.

It would be a pleasure to see you on June 3rd. Whether you spend the day with us or just stop in for a few hours; we promise you’ll learn a lot and have a good time!

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Raised Beds Without Carpentry!

You probably already know the benefits of raised bed gardening. Less weeding, less bending over, and no more soil compaction around your plants. Perfect drainage because excess water can seep out the bottom. Healthy plants out of reach of rabbits. Containers that sit on top of the ground, filled with fancy soil, and never mind tilling all the space between boxes.

How can you make this happen quickly and easily? We all fantasize about having a complete “square foot garden” with enough raised beds to provide the perfect environment for all our vegetables, herbs, and fruit plants.

The ugly fact is that it takes a pile of lumber and hardware, and many weekends of time to even make a dent. Spring is upon us and there’s pressure to get our cool weather vegetables (Brussels sprouts, celery, cabbage, lettuce and onions) in the ground NOW. Before you spend and pile of money at the lumberyard, or worse yet, abandon your gardening dreams until next year when you’re “ready”, here’s a quick and easy solution to raised beds instantly: “Smart Pots”.

Smart pots are durable, reusable fabric raised beds you can set up in seconds, fill with just the right soil mix, and create an instant raised bed garden for less than it would cost to build one out of pressure-treated wood. They provide perfect drainage, allow plant roots to breathe, and soak up the sun to warm the soil quickly so plants will thrive.

Think about it. Rather than changing the chemistry and texture of the earth’s crust (your yard), simply unfold these terrific, foot-deep fabric planters, fill with just the right growing mix for the specific plants you’re trying to grow, and then plant. Done.

For acid-loving plants like blueberries and strawberries, fill your Smart Pots with “Pine Magic”, the same stuff that commercial growers use to make custom potting mixes for growing in containers. Herbs just love soilless mixes like ProMix or Miracle Gro potting soil. Vegetables like tomatoes and peppers prefer topsoil enriched with mushroom compost. You can grow huge potatoes and sweet potatoes in well-rotted compost from your pile.

Instead of a “square foot garden”, imagine a “polka-dot garden” with round raised containers of various sizes, sized just right for the plants you’re growing. Smart pots are almost weightless, so you can flip the soil out when you’re done and clean them, eliminating insect eggs and fungus spores.

Sound crazy? Maybe so, but you can start growing vegetables today without tilling, or even waiting another minute for the muck in your yard to finally dry out. Try just one. You’ll be back to us for more before your neighbor even gets his tiller running.

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Time to Call a Professional?

Building walls, patios and walks looks like fun, and stores that sell the materials are very good at making it look easy. Before you take the plunge, ask yourself this question: could an absolute beginner do YOUR job, and get it perfectly right the first time?

GoodSeed Farm landscapes has a crew of certified hardscape installers, a “workshop on wheels” full of specialized tools, our own machinery and trucks, and eighteen years of design-build hardscape experience with hundreds of successful installations. We’ve made all the mistakes, and learned from each one.

Consider having your hardscape project done by professionals...

Steve Boehme Owner/Designer

No, these aren’t hardscapes we built. They’re just a few examples of how things can go horribly wrong. There’s an engineering aspect to every wall job, and mistakes can be costly or even dangerous. Paver patios and walks can be works of art that last for many decades, or they can settle, sag, and rapidly come apart if not installed properly.

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Every GoodSeed Farm hardscape is unique; a work of art you can be proud of and enjoy for a lifetime.

Quality hardscaping is a good investment; amateur work is a liability. Consider improving your outdoor living space with a custom-designed landscape and hardscape from GoodSeed Farm.

Visit our “Before & After Gallery� at www.goodseedfarm.com

FREE DESIGN SERVICE! Our design-build projects begin with a meeting to look at your property and talk about what is important to you. We make a detailed site plan showing your entire property and everything on it. We use these measurements to create a design drawing showing how we think your finished landscape should look, and prepare a detailed spreadsheet estimate of all the costs for everything shown on the design drawing.

We work together with you and your budget to make your plan a reality. Design-build projects can be done in phases according to your budget.

Design packages range from $150 to $950, however if you purchase the project we credit the entire cost of the design phase against the labor cost of your job. If you divide your installation into phases, design credits are proportional to the portion of the job you purchase.

PRSORTED STD US POSTAGE PAID CINCINNATI, OH PERMIT NO #9714

9736 Tri-County Highway Winchester, Ohio 45697 937-695-0350 www.goodseedfarm.com

MOTHER’S DAY PARTY!

CALENDAR

GARDEN CENTER & LANDSCAPING

GoodSeed Farm

It’s time for our 19th annual Country Garden Mothers Day Party. After eighteen years it’s an annual ritual, with a FREE gift plant for every mom.

This year it’s a Weeks Roses “Sparkle & Shine” rose! There’s one for you.

Our party starts Friday morning May 12th, 9AM to 7 PM all three days.

So, load your mothers and daughters, grandmothers and grandkids, mothers-in-law and mothers-to-be, into your car and head for GoodSeed Nursery sometime between Friday morning and Mother’s Day Sunday. We’ll miss you if you don’t come!

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 April 1st-July 17th Spring/Summer Hours: Monday-Saturday 9AM-7PM, Sunday 10AM-6PM May 12-13-14

Country Garden Mother’s Day Party! FREE “Sparkle and Shine” rose plant for every mother. Specials, food and fun 9AM-6PM Friday, Saturday, and Mother’s Day Sunday

June 3

GoodSeed Garden Expo! Spend the day with experts on gardening, plants, landscaping and soils! Meet master gardeners, plant experts, representatives from garden supply manufacturers and The Nature Conservancy. Seminars, workshops, exhibits, door prizes, specials, FREE samples. An outdoor event tailored for home landscapers, vegetable gardeners, lovers of plants & flowers. Rain or shine! Delicious food by Big “E” BBQ” .9AM-6PM

July 1st-17th

End-of-Season End Clearance Sale: All plants deeply discounted. Great deals on all merchandise!