Visited: Michael Bros. Nursery in Russelton, PA

Yesterday, I decided to visit Michael Bros. Nursery in Russelton, PA. If you are in the Pittsburgh area and you have no idea where this is, it's more or less located just northeast of the Route 910 corridor out of Harmar Twp and Cheswick borough. You can hit (47) Michael Rd from Saxonburg Blvd or Rich Hill Rd. It's set in a mostly still-rural area dotted with farms and small towns, but also has new high-end housing plans popping up. You can't miss the property, as their large annual greenhouses come right up to the roadway. Their sign is a painted wooden one that stands about 8' tall. From the road, there is a packed gravel drive that leads to a sizeable gravel lot that can hold about 20 cars. From the lot looking north, the annuals, veggies and herbs are to the left along with the shop. Directly ahead is the perennials greenhouse (about 50x150' in size). And to the right is mainly the tree and shrub area. There are also some perennials in long hoophouses (about eight in total) of the tree and shrub area.

I'd like to start by saying that for the pot sizes they carry, their prices on plants blows lots of other nurseries' prices out of the water! The selection is what you'd call traditional or "expected", but is also very large, with large quantities of a wide range of specimens that are hardy to PA. For these reasons, both novices and experts can easily find things to suit their needs.

Most 3-gallon shrubs run around $24, which is an excellent price and is competitive with even the big box stores. I got a Wine & Roses Weigela at this price, which was three times as tall as the same plant at Lowe's, which have all been pruned down to 12" and go for $27. Some other noteworthy things I saw included 5-gallon magnolia trees, for which they charge $40-60, where most other places charge from $80-120.

I'd recommend Michael Bros. to anyone who doesn't mind making the short trip. Their staff is friendly, knowledgeable and present, just as advertised on their website. You can learn more about them at www.michaelbrosnursery.com

Patching Bare Spots on Your Lawn the Economical Way

When you shop around or read tutorials, you always see either oversimplified or somewhat complicated methods of patching bare spots in your lawn. What I'm about to share is my simple and easy way of getting this done! Now keep in mind, you may have to do at least a little bit of this at the start of each Spring, but by properly fertilizing your lawn with weed and crabgrass preventers at regular intervals, you won't need to patch bare spots quite as much.

Here is my procedure:

1. Have a bag of mid-grade potting soil handy, e.g. Scott's Hyponex. Fill a 5gal pot with it and loosen it up with your hands to the finest possible consistency.

2. Get a decent size bag of grass seed. I used Pennington "Ultimate" seed, "grows anywhere". $9 treats 750 square feet, which amounts to a lot when you are patching bare or thin spots. This seed is lightly coated with starter fertilizer, so you don't need to add any third party products.

3. Locate bare spots by where there is little to no grass, which can be bare soil but in PA this is often substituted with other matter such as dead grass, weeds,  seed pods, leaves, etc. Grab a hand rake and get this loose material out of there, while at the same time loosening just the surface of the soil beneath.

4. Grab and sprinkle small amounts of seed with your first four fingers at about 5 seeds per square inch.

5. Grab handfuls of the potting soil and work an even coating of soil up to 3/8 of an inch over the bare spots containing the seed you sprinkled. Flatten it down with your hand. This is now the mulch that the seed will begin to grow in. A decent enough quality soil (such as Hyponex) will have plenty of nutrients to get the grass growing.

6. Lightly shower water until the patches are completely moist and appear flat. This should only take a second or two for each area you work. Do not overwater! You don't want to wash away the products you just laid down. You should see little if no seed at the surface.

You should see new light green shoots appear in just a few days, with thick grass coming in full within a week! I find that my method works much faster than products like "patch mixes" and certainly faster than trying to rake seed into the soil after you've laid it. Remember, you should only patch your lawn in early Spring or mid-Fall. There simply is not enough coolness or moisture to do this in the Summer.

This Blog is Now Live!

After over a year and a half writing in MS Word, my blog is now live! Older posts have been backdated, and range in simplicity since they written mainly to document doings in my garden. I hope to even go to the extent of backfilling the posts with pictures to more clearly explain the work I have done.

Once again, I hope to use my own experiences to help others negotiate common issues found in southwestern PA's environments.

Spring Freezes Stink

We’re stuck in a trough in the jet stream right now, which is unfortunate because most of the US is above freezing, whereas the central Atlantic region has been under freeze watches and warnings every few days or so. We had one hard freeze about a week ago, that thwarted much new growth on the macrophylla hydrangeas as well as butterfly bushes, to name a few. We’ve yet to see if the flower buds will survive, as some leaves have dried to a crisp.