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March Container Gardening Recipe 2023

March Container Gardening Recipe 2023

 

Spring Flowers are Here!
Pick Your Favorite Color and Go All Out!
From lavender and mauve to aubergine and deep purple, the unique flower shapes, sizes, and greenery patterns combine for a planter of purple pizzazz! Don’t care for purple? You’re sure to find plenty of choices in your favorite shades among our overflowing tables full of flowers!
  1. Angelonia Angelface Blue® has deep blue-purple flowers and grape-scented fragrant foliage. They are heat-loving and grow and bloom best when the heat is on—heat and drought-tolerant when established. Also deer-resistant and make great, long-lasting cut flowers.
  2. Cleome Senorita Rosalita® is heat tolerant and grows to 48″ tall. It is perfect for adding some foliage drama to containers and beds. There’s no limit to what you can do with this cleome – it looks fantastic in combinations, mass plantings, and on its own!
  3. Salvia Mysty An outstanding perennial for heat-tolerant gardens, this compact plant produces an abundance of large, showy blue flower spikes. Excellent in a container, garden bed, or as a cut flower. Great for our pollinators!
  4. Osteospermum Also known as African daisies, it is a cool weather annual that will give you beautiful blooms from winter through spring. Although a full-sun plant, afternoon shade will help colors last their longest.
  5. Superbeanea® Sparkling Amethyst has lilac and white flowers all season. With a mounding-trailing habit, they function as spillers and fillers in planters and are best planted at the front of landscape beds. They are heat tolerant, resist deer, and attract butterflies.
  6. Brachyscome is covered in stunning violet daisy flowers with gold eyes at the ends of the stems from late winter to late fall. Its attractive tiny ferny leaves remain green in color throughout the season. It makes a great filler in containers.
Purple Power Container Garden Recipe

Services

  • Landscape Design & Installation
  • Paver Patios, Paver Walkways, Paver Driveways
  • Firepits, Retaining Walls , Seat Walls,
  • Landscape Lighting, Drainage design & Installation,
  • Lawn Care Services, Lawn Maintenance, Lawn Fertilization
  • Lawn Pest Control, Lawn Weed Control
  • Aeration and Top Dressing
  • Water Features, Koi Ponds,
  • Waterfalls, Bubbling Fountains
  • Garden Center & Pond Supply Store

General Services Areas

Jacksonville (Jax), Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach, Atlantic Beach, Ponte Vedra Beach, Ponte Vedra, Fernandina Beach, Amelia Island, Orange Park, St. Johns, Nocatee

Location

GARDEN CENTER
12501 Beach Blvd
Jacksonville, FL 32246

LANDSCAPE OPERATIONS
(not open to the public)
St. Johns Bluff
1057 St. Johns Bluff Rd. N.
Jacksonville, FL 32225

Hours

Monday-Saturday 9-5
Sunday 10-5

HOLIDAY CLOSINGS
New Year’s Day • Easter • Memorial Day
July 4th • Labor Day • Thanksgiving Day
Christmas Eve • Christmas Day

Pond Water Recycling As Fish Fertilizer

There are pros and cons to pond water recycling this nutrient-rich water as a home brew of fish fertilizer. Unlike commercially available fish emulsion and hydrolysate fertilizers, your recycled pond and aquarium water has not gone through a process to preserve nutrients while removing impurities and contaminants. ‘Pond water is less than ideal for vegetable gardens,” according to Simplify Gardening. ‘The water can host microbes and potentially harmful pests that can make your plants sick, so it is imperative to check it before watering your plants. There are some advantages of using pond water, including nitrogen high water.’
The safest way to recycle pond water is to avoid using it on fruits and vegetables intended for consumption and use it instead on non-fruit-bearing trees, tropicals, ornamentals, and flowering annuals and perennials.
Commercially available Fish emulsion is an older process that relies on heat and creates a smelly product. In contrast, Fish Hydrolysate is a newer process involving the cold processing of fresh fish and fish byproducts.
‘Our unique cold process protects heat sensitive nutrients naturally found in fish, providing you with the best fertilizer available,’ according to Neptune’s Harvest. ‘Unlike fish emulsions, Neptune’s Harvest doesn’t remove the proteins or oils during processing and has no unpleasant odor.’ Earth Works Gardens shop stocks Neptunes’ Harvest Hydrolyzed Fertilizer.

Additional advantages of the hydrolyzed fish fertilizer over recycled water or fish emulsion, according to Laid Back Gardener include:
– It quickly corrects nutrient deficiencies;
– It encourages the proliferation of bacteria that are beneficial to the ecosystem;
– It stimulates rooting and flowering;
– It nourishes the soil with its rich nutrients;
– It increases the Brix (amount of sugar) in fruits and vegetables.

liquid fish fertilizer benefits
liquid fish fertilizer benefits

Earth Works constructed ponds are designed with sufficient filtration not to require water changes when the fish load is ideal. However, this can change as clients’ fish grow in number and size. The amount of waste a koi releases as it ages from small fry to full-grown fish is not a linear increase based on length but exponential based on fish weight. The circumference, more so than the length of your koi, accounts for this dramatic increase in fish waste. Pond water recycling affords you some fertilization benefits that we recommend supplementing with Neptune’s Harvest Fish Hydrolysate.

Earth Works operates a retail Garden Center/Plant Nursery in Jacksonville and provides landscaping, hardscaping, water features, lawn care service, lawn spraying, and drainage solutions. Stop by our retail center or contact us online or by phone at 904-996-0712.

Earth Works proudly serves clients in Northeast Florida, including Jacksonville, Ponte Vedra Beach, Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, Jacksonville Beach, Nocatee, St. Johns, Fleming Island, Orange Park, Middleburg, Green Cove Springs, Amelia Island, Fernandina, and St. Augustine.

Pond Care Essentials

Detoxifier

Pond detoxifer packages

Aquascape Pond Detoxifier makes pond water safe for fish and plants, allowing you to spend more time enjoying your fish and less time worrying about them. Source water, including tap and well water, often contains chlorine, chloramines, and heavy metals. It is essential to eliminate any toxins in your pond water to ensure the health of your ecosystem. Pond Detoxifier removes and detoxifies chlorine, neutralizes ammonia, and detoxifies and chelates copper and heavy metals that can harm pond fish and aquatic plants. Pond Detoxifier also allows some metals, like iron, to be used as a fertilizer, helping your plants to thrive.

Detoxifer chart

Staple Fish Food

Staple Fish food

If you want happy and healthy pond fish, you need to feed them high-quality fish food. Aquascape Premium Staple Fish Food Pellets are formulated for everyday use and provide your pond fish with the nutrition they need to thrive at an affordable price. The mixed pellet sizes include small, medium, and large pellets, ideal for ponds containing a variety of fish sizes. All Aquascape fish foods contain probiotics that aid in digestion and reduce fish waste, while the included high-quality protein helps optimize growth rates. The floating pellets contain stabilized vitamin C and other quality ingredients and are scientifically formulated for all pond fish, including koi and goldfish. Aquascape fish food will not break apart during feeding, helping to maintain clear Premium water conditions.

Beneficial Bacteria

Beneficial bacteria packages

Aquascape Beneficial Bacteria in concentrated power formula or liquid water treatment helps to provide clean, clear, and healthy water conditions, significantly reducing pond maintenance. Each bottle of Beneficial Bacteria is packed full of eight pure strains of concentrated beneficial bacteria and is completely safe for fish, plants, pets, and wildlife. Our Beneficial Bacteria effectively reduce fish waste, organic plant material, sludge, and excess nutrients in your pond, allowing you to spend more time enjoying your water feature and less time maintaining it. Our bacteria contains a 1.5 billion CFU per ounce potency, ensuring consistently effective treatment. The included marigold and vitamin B help bring out your fish’s natural colors while maintaining proper fish health.

Beneficial Bacteria chart

Keys to a Clean Clear Healthy Pond

Pond Plants

Adding marginal pond plants helps to reduce algae growth by competing with the algae for nutrients. Popular choices include bloody dock, pennywort, aquatic mint, corkscrew rush, pickerel, water iris, canna lily, and more.  Providing shade on the pond’s surface by adding water lilies will help diminish the possibility of green water.

Maintain

Maintain bottles

Aquascape Maintain for Ponds combines our most effective pond water treatments into one powerful formulation to successfully keep ponds clean, clear, healthy, and maintenance-free. This easy-to-use water treatment contains a powerful blend of beneficial bacteria, phosphate binder, flocculant, and pond detoxifier. The bacteria blend includes lithotrophic, heterotrophic, and photosynthetic bacteria strains, keeping pond water healthy, beautiful, and safe for pond fish. The included phosphate binder locks up excess nutrients that could otherwise cause issues with water quality, and the flocculant quickly clears cloudy water by clumping suspended debris. A pond water detoxifier is added to the formulation to remove and detoxify chlorine, chloramine, heavy metals, and other toxins, making your pond water safe for fish and plants. The easy-to-use pump top accurately measures 100 gallons of treatment per pump. Maintain for Ponds is safe for fish, plants, pets, and wildlife.

Automatic Dosing system: www.aquascapeinc.com/automatic-dosing-system

 

Maintain table

Automatic Dosing system: www.aquascapeinc.com/automatic-dosing-system

Rapid Clear Fine Filter Pads

80001 RapidClearFineFilterPads3Pack Main

The Aquascape Rapid Clear Fine Filter Pad helps speed up flocculated particles’ filtering. Smaller debris is often tricky to catch and remove from the pond. Therefore, using a finer disposable filter mat will allow you to capture particulate that is too fine for your mechanical filter mats. Place the mat inside the skimmer box and watch the impressive results. The Aquascape Rapid Clear Fine Filter Pad is best used in combination with Rapid Clear Flocculant water treatment to quickly enhance water clarity and quality.

40006 FAMILY 300dpi RapidClear

Check Out This Video for More Great Information

Container Gardening – Planting the Perfect Pot.

Thrill, Fill, and Spill!

A classic recipe for creating a beautiful arrangement uses this theory of combining plants with different heights, textures, and growth patterns.

  • Thriller:  Anything you choose that will act as a focal point. Choose something dramatic and flashy. It could be anything that draws the eye. This is also usually the tallest plant in the mix.
  • Filler: Choose plants that won’t get as tall as the Thriller but will either contrast or complement it and fill in the middle space
  • Spiller: Pick one or several plants that will drape and spill over the container.

Design Possibilities:

Monochromatic design–Pick plants that flower in similar colors.

Monochromatic container design

A centered layout – If your planter is seen from all sides, you should center your tallest plant and fill in around it so it looks beautiful from every angle.

Butterfly attractor pot ­­– Combine several nectar plants

pollinator pot

Salsa Pot ­­­­– Pick a favorite tomato variety, a jalapeno, or even a hotter variety of pepper with a cilantro herb to have all your ingredients for delicious fresh

Salsa Pot

Evergreen collection ­­­­– Try combining three different size planters in a unifying color or texture, each with just one beautiful evergreen shrub plant.

Unified collection of containers

 

Be sure to choose plants with similar water and light needs when combining them. Also, please take into consideration the amount of space each plant will need when they a full-grown

Proper container planting steps:

Pots over 18” deep should have a minimum of 3” of gravel placed in the bottom. (Add 3” of additional stone for every 18” of pot height.)

Fill pots with premium Fox Farm potting soil up to the point of the depth of the plants that are going to be installed.  Image of fox farm

Planting Basics

Learn how to plant anything like a pro.

A few easy steps will ensure your plants have an advantage. Add rich Compost and Bio-charged organic soil amendments.

After selecting the placement of your plants, follow these easy steps:

 

1–7 gallon plants: Water the plant(s) gently.

1. Dig a hole several inches wider and deeper than the size of the pot holding the plant.

Measuring the size of your pot for hole size
Measuring the size of your pot for hole size

2. Remove the plastic pot from the root ball.

3. Inspect to make sure there are no large roots circling around the edges. If so, gently pull roots away.

 

placing plant in the hole
placing plant in the hole

4. Add Wild Earth Mix and Bio-Tone to the hole. Enough so that when the plant is sitting in the hole the top surface of the plant’s soil is a quarter of an inch above ground level.

Adding in Biotone to hole
Adding in Biotone to hole

 

Back filling the hole with soil
Back filling the hole with soil

15-gallon plants and larger

Follow the steps above. (1-4)

5. Then, after back-filling with Wild Earth Mix, use the native soil that was removed to make the hole to create a ring around the tree or shrub. The ring should be on the surface of the soil at the edges of the circumference of the plant’s roots. Pack the soil with the backside of the shovel on the interior and exterior sides of the ring. Adjust hose flow to run at a gentle trickle and fill the ring with water for several minutes. Keep the flow rate slow enough to keep the ring filled with water but not overflowing.

Create a watering bowl around plant 1
Create a watering bowl around plant

Gardening Success Kit

Protect your investment by giving your plants a huge advantage.

Harness the power of nature and Bio-Boost your soil.

Earth Works proven success kit will reduce heat stress, water needs, and transplant shock.

Organic ingredients guaranteed not to burn the plant’s root system

Beneficial bacteria and Fungi come to life in the soil and work to  energize root systems

Slow-release natural fertilizer feeds for months

3 Easy Steps!

1.

Just dig your hole

2.

Coat the inside with Bio-Tone

3.

Backfill with Wild Earth Mix #3

 

Woman pour a water can

Don’t forget that freshly installed plants may need water once a day when temperatures are in the mid-’70s and above. Check Daily if the soil below the surface is dry; hand water as needed. Never water plants if the soil is wet or moist.

 

 

biotone

Bio-Tone

For everything you plant.  Use when planting all flowers, vegetables, trees, and shrubs.

Use at the planting time to help produce large root systems very quickly.  This will help ensure that new plantings get maximum water and nutrients from the soil to minimize transplant loss.

  • Planting Beds:  Mix into the top 4-6″ of the soil before planting.
  • Trees & Shrubs:  Mix into the soil used to backfill the planting hole.
  • Potting Mixes:  Mix thoroughly into the soil mix before planting.

Wild Earth Mix #3

A highly organic growing medium for vegetables, flowers, trees, shrubs. Wild Earth Mix #3 is a blend of wheat straw, chicken litter, cottonseed hulls, gypsum, organic compost, kelp, humates, and pine products. It was amended with an organic nutrition package with macro and minor elements that enrich the soil for a full 26 weeks and more prolonged. Wild Earth Mix #3 has been trusted by competitive Rosarians and commercial and home gardeners for over 20 years.

• Great for gardens, raised beds, containers, new landscape installations, or refreshing older plantings.

• The USDA has approved all the components in Wild Earth Mix #3 for organic crop production.

Jack’s Classic Bloom Booster

Jacks Bloom booster 1

Blossom Booster 10-30-20 is a Professional formula designed to produce more flowers and brighter colors on all indoor and outdoor plants. Feeds through both the roots and the leaves. This is the Original Blossom Booster with the proven 1:3:2 nutrient ratio– the quality is unmatched in the home gardener market. Trusted by many professional growers as a tool to fill out a blooming container. This formula will produce the same GREAT results for you at home.

How it all started

How it all started …in their own words.

Living in Jacksonville at the time, McGregor and Fechtel and their wives met by chance during a wedding in St. Petersburg. “Our good friends said we had to meet Doug and Terri because they are a fun couple,” said Fechtel. “Little did we know that eight months later, we were going to start our own business.”

After graduating from college with finance degrees, McGregor worked as a banker and Fechtel as a financial planner when they decided to make the change. “We loved our jobs until the market crashed in 1987, threatening our positions,” McGregor recalled. “We decided to walk away from our coat-and-tie jobs. We neither had kids nor big mortgages, so we planned our exit strategy and started the company.

“I had worked in a garden center growing up, and Mark mowed grass as the “boy next door.” We knew landscaping was the kind of work we liked,” 

After growing their Lawn Care Business, the pair soon expanded their services to irrigation and landscaping. In 1999, they bought a swath of heavily wooded land bordering Beach Boulevard which became Earth Works Garden Center. 

Jason Duffney, who joined McGregor and Fechtel as a junior business partner in ?, was hired in 2003 as a part-time employee while a freshman at the University of North Florida. “Jason started with us when he was 19 years old. By the time he was 33, he had grown with the company and became one of our business partners,” said Fechtel.

A native of Lecanto, Florida, Duffney had previous experience working in a nursery as a teenager before he moved to Jacksonville to earn a finance degree from UNF. “I came in as a nursery kid pulling weeds and making deliveries,” he said. Jason learned quickly and became well-versed in pond building. He contemplated starting a pond business of his own at one point when McGregor and Fechtel approached him with a proposition.

“They wrangled me in and said, ‘don’t be stupid. Let’s talk about how all of us can grow,” Duffney recalled. In charge of Earth Works’ pond operations, he has built it into the award-winning Water Garden division it is today.

As Earth Works’ third business partner, Duffney’s mission is to update and streamline the company so it can serve customers better.

Working together, we balance each other out, said McGregor. “Mark and I have different personalities” “I’m more Type A, and he’s a laid-back guy. I don’t think we’ve had ten disagreements in over 30 years. We like each other. We’re really good friends, and our families are close.”

In the business, Duffney heads operations, McGregor oversees finances, and Fechtel manages sales. “Mark and Doug are opposites, and I fall somewhere in the middle, which makes for a nice blend,” Duffney said. “If we are dealing with clients or employees, everyone brings a different skill to the table.”

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