I had a difficult time putting together the Friday fun quiz last week with all those hyperlinks and all so I thought we could exercise our brains a different way by learning some facts about plants we use everyday. Today we'll do Boxwood, A plant that we sell a real lot of.

Various medicaments have been extracted from the leaves of Boxwood. These potions where employed mostly by quacks and physician wanna-bees and almost always had a negative result. As late as the 19th century a concoction derived from boxwood leaves was recomended for leprosies. (I thought they just shipped them all to an island someplace and let nature take it's course) The leaves in fact yield an extract called buxine which was used during WWII as a narcotic, sedative, and to get someone to puke.

One of the Quacks from the ignorant ages suggested that if you boil boxwood leaves and dust from the wood in lye, the rusulting potion will grow hair. There is a story about a young woman who lost all of her hair due to "milignant Dysentary" (whatever the hell that is) She washed her head in the stuff and grew "a fine mane of chestnut locks". Unfortunately for her, but fortunate for us, cause this parts funny. She lacked the foresight to protect her face and neck and ended up looking like an ape. (Ha!)

Boxwood are poisonous to camels (that's good to know) and the stupid creatures love them, and in parts of persia where boxwood are abundent the caravans have to be restricted to horese, mules, or oxen. (or so it is said)

Here at Rushton Farms we sell more than 20,000 boxwood every year.

Have a nice weekend

--Frank
                                                                                  

It's Friday! and I'm so excited I can barely contain myself. To celebrate the end of the second week of August, I thought it would be fun to play a game. Okay, here's how it's going to work. I ask a question and give a few possible answers. Click on the answer you think is correct, if you chose wrong, you'll see this...

                                                                         

If you chose the correct answer you'll see something else. So here we go... (ignore the smiley faces, I can't get them to go away)

A professional landscape contractor comes into the nursery and asks for some cookies. He is (finish this sentence)

A) Confused, he thought Rushton Farms was the same Pepperidge Farms.

Not pronouncing Stella D' Oro properly

C) Lost and Hungry

D) Suffering from a severe case of the munchies

What's going on in this picture?



A) We are initiating the world's first chicken rodeo

Our field prduction guy is walking his pet rooster

C) We are experimenting with super fresh take out food

D) We are toiling with the idea of organic fertilizer and pest control all in one neat little package.


What the hell is this??



A) These folks figured that they paid for the expensive alluminum edging, they are going to show it ALL off.

One of the worse landscaping faux pas one can commit

C) Not the work of a true professional

D) all of the above

Well that was almost as much fun as a Saturday afternoon at Chuck E. Cheese's

In other news...

Yesterday I went to the MNLA summer field day with a couple of coworkers. There was a guy there that talked to us about tree spades for something like an hour without any of us saying a single word to him. All the while I was contemplating different ways to kill myself. I thought maybe if I sallowed my watch I would start to choke and (hopefully) someone would rush over and preform the hymlick on me thus ending the lecture on tree spades. I also thought that I could just fall over and lay on the ground until someone carried me away. But finnaly I just walked away without saying a word. One coworker followed my lead, the other, I fear is still there. We also witnessed one of our customers defy the laws of physics by mounding, what I would estimate to be, 7-8 pounds of food onto a paper plate, and then he carried it through a crowd of people with one hand while carrying a cup of iced tea in the other all the way to his seat. It was truly an amazing, and perhaps, a once in a life time spectacle.

If you've never been to Hidden Lake Gardens, that's where the MNLA field day was held this year, you owe it to yourself to go. The Hosta hillside, and the dwarf conifer collection are remarkable. It's a nice hours drive from the nursery here and it's inexpensive to get in. If you've got any interest in plants I highly recommend it. I would have pictures to post but the wife took the USB cord for the camera to work with her today.

Have a fun, safe weekend
--Frank

                                                            

According to Ben Bailey, the weather guy on chanel 2, it is officially the dog days of summer. And what does a nurseryman do when the temperatures rise and sales slow down? Well he goes on vacation of course. Unfortunately, I can't tell you where I'm going, because if I do then everyone will want to go there, and they'll also bring with them their sundry bacterias and viruses and crass midwestern folkways, thus destroying the delicate cultural and ecological balance I will be fortunate enough to enjoy. I will tell you this though, I wont be at the top of the food chain,and the prospect of becomming dinner for a large predaciuos carnivore is a bit unnerving. 

                                                                   

So I need to ask all you landscapers a favor. I'm concerned that my absence will go unnoticed by my coworkers, and equally or maybe even more importantly, my boss. (who, by the way bares a slight resemblance to the predaciuos carnivore depicted above. Good thing he doesn't read this blog.) So I need everybody to come to the nursery next week and buy as many plants as you can. If work is a little hard to come by you could always re-landscape your own home. This way, they'll be so busy they'll just keep saying, "gosh, I wish Frankie where here" and they will be very happy to see me when I return.          GENIUS! 

Thanks for reading,

--Frank   

As you may or may not know, my wife does this Q & A article for the Landsculpter. The Landsculpter is the trade publication (magazine) published by the Michigan Green Industry Asscociation (MGIA). I look forward to reading her article each month, well at least the beginning part, I kind of fade when she starts talking about plants.

As the guy who usually answers the phone around here, I get asked a lot of questions too. I thought it'd be fun to do my own little Q & A but the Landsculpter wants nothing to do with me...... Good thing I've got this blog.

These are actual questions that I've recently received;

Q: "What size globes do you guys got ?"

Now I've been doing this plant buying and selling thing for a long time so I was pretty sure he was either referring to yews or arborvitae. Thanks to my years of experience and knack for dipolmacy, I was actually able to answer his question after asking a couple of questions myself. Do ya think this same person would call the hardware store and ask, "What size pipes you guys got?"

A: 24" (he was looking for Woodward globe arborvitae)

Q: "Where is the nearest laundry mat?"

You may be wondering, what does this have to do with the nursery/landscape business? My answer to that would be a lot actually. This customer obviously feels comfortable enough to call us for this information (I'm flattered). Think about it, this question is akin to calling your favorite Chinese restaurant to ask them where the nearest bowling alley is. I like to think we maintain a good relationship with our customers, this question confirms it.

A: Pontiac trail and Reynolds Sweet, right next to Hungry Howie's

Q: "Do you have the same Japanese maples as Christensen's?"

Where this question seams simple and benign, it actually is a bit complex and has more layers then a giant vidalia onion.
First off, this is Christensen's, Christensen's inc. is the legal name of Rushton Farms, Rushton Farms is our DBA (doing business as). That's why, here at the farm, we refer to "Christensen's" as "the Plant Center" and at the Plant Center, they refer to Rushton Farms as "the farm".       I told ya          I don't even want to go into the differences in Japanese maple varieties, different sizes, and vendors. Like I said at the beginning of this post, I kind of fade when the talk turns to plants. So I answerd thusly....

A: No

Well, that was kind of fun, and, I don't mind saying so myself, I think I did a pretty good job. (Look out Kim) 

So I'm sitting at my desk eating my lunch (home made pizza with mushrooms and black olives) and I hear the following conversation taking place at the write up counter....

Customer: "You know those little henry itea you have out there?"

CRF sales person: "Yeah"

Customer: "Are they like a Spirea?"

CRF sales person: "Ahhhhh,    they're not a spirea."

Customer: "Do they like full sun?"

CRF sales person: "Are you a landscape contractor?"

At that point I had to take a look, so I got up from my desk, walked around the corner, and pretended I needed something off the counter. (I think it was a pencil.)  As soon as I saw the, so called, customer he was dealing with, I knew this wasn't a landscaper. A well dressed woman in her sixties who looked like she just came from her hair dresser. I am suprised she got three questions before she was asked if she was  landscaper, and it just goes to show how much patience our sales guys have. 

It turned out that she is the Mom of one of our customers and her son just did not have time to come in with her. (understandable) She had already gatherd up some plants, so we told her that we would sell them to her this time but in the future she will have to have her son accompany her.

So, what's the moral to this story? Well there's two actually.

1) We are wholesale only! Some examples of a wholesale customer are; Landscape contractor, Nursery or Garden center, University, Municipality.

2) If you are one of our customers, and you're at our nursery and see some activity that looks "retail", it may not be. It's probaly just someone's Mom, the owners dentist, or the daughter of the guy that owns the big landscape arcitechture firm in town.

We are diligent about keeping "home owners" out of the nursery. So if you're a new customer visiting the nursery for the first time, you can expect a few questions from us about your business. We are just trying to protect you.

If you're a home owner looking to save some money on your own landscaping.......don't bother

Well alright! It's finally spring!

We've been busy getting trees dug and collected up out of the fields.  potting the bare root plants, and getting the irrigation up and running. Plants came through the winter well and we've got a lot of inventory right now. Frost laws should be comming off next week so things should really start happening. We are open for business and are keeping regular spring hours, Hope to see ya soon.