Pearl Farmer's Market Opening

Yesterday was the Grand Opening of the Pearl Farmer’s Market with all the booth’s cutting their red ribbons and it was a fantastic day. Lots and lots and lots of people. We did end up closing a little early because of the rain – yippee for the rain! (We ended up getting  just under 2 inches here at the ranch.) I sold out of the 4″ Peacock Orchids/Absyyinian Glads and out of my bare root daylilies, Hyperion and Mixed. I will plan to bring extra bare root daylilies next week. Many of the vendors sold out of product early. It was great to see lots of families with small and large kids going through the market, and several of the kids were already gardeners buying different small plants. 

Next week, Marty will be manning the booth at the Pearl Farmer’s Market, since I will be giving the daylily seminar at the Festival of Flowers (10:30 am at the Alzafar Auditorium on 1604). Please be kind to Marty, he is just getting into the knowledge base of gardening. He will have orders ready for pickup for people who have ordered through our website for ”Pearl Brewery” shipping/pick up. If you have a special request of a daylily or bearded iris for us to bring to the market, just send me an e-mail at jonelle@jd2ranch.com and we will see that we bring it with us that next Saturday.

Peacock Orchid/Absyyinian Glad

At the Pearl Farmer’s Market this last Saturday a lot of people were interested in our Peacock Orchids. Peacock Orchids, otherwise known as Absyyinian Glads, are really gladioli. The flowers look like they should be an orchid, hence one of the common names. These are a perennial glad in south Texas. They are also a very easy plant. Plant them in full sun to part shade (as low as 1 – 2 hours of sun). You can also plant them in large containers with other plants. They will come up in the spring, and the scapes should come up in the beginning of summer just like a regular glad. The scape will come up and then the flowers will open one by one. After it has flowered, you let it die back naturally over the summer. You can pull the foliage away to clean up the area when you can gently tug at the leaves and they pull away easily. Leave them alone and next spring they will reemerge with some new babies. Over the years they will continue to grow and you will have more blooms. If you want you can divide them, by simply digging them up, separating the corms, and replanting them. If you want to fertilize them – use a long term, slow release fertilizer, bone meal, or compost in the fall, in early spring, and/or just after they have finished blooming. You can also use liquid fertilizer (Hasta Gro, Miracle Gro, or Peters 20-20-20) or compost tea in the early spring and summer before they have bloomed. I think you will agree that Peacoc Orchids are an easy, carefree, and beautiful addition to your gardens.

hello darkness bearded iris

Yesterday I had a couple of different bearded iris that were beginning to bloom. The first was Hello Darkness, a tall bearded, which as you can see is a dark beauty as the name implies. The second and quite a surprise was YoYo which is a dwarf. I had just looked at my potted bearded iris the day before and I had not noticed any scapes (flower stalks), and then yesterday I saw color in the pots.

YoYo, bearded iris

 There were 2 different pots of YoYo blooming. This is a great iris for the front of your border since it is a dwarf (about 8 inches tall).

This afternoon I saw another couple of scapes starting on some other iris. It looks like the iris may be a bit late this year, but they are about to start blooming – yippee!

JD2 Ranch, Inc.
grower specializing in daylilies, iris, and seasonal cut flowers

Pearl Farmer’s Market
May 2, 2009 These are some of the items we will be bringing to the market on May 2nd. If you have any specific requests, please e-mail me at jonelle@jd2ranch.com or call me at 830 393-5233. Please check out our website: www.jd2ranch.com to see photos of our plants. Our gardening blog will also have additional information on the farmer’s market and on gardening topics.

Daylilies

Potted:  Winsome Lady, Strawberry Candy, Bitsy, Chorus Line, Royal Palace Prince
Mulberry Connection – specialty
Marked By Lydia – specialty
In Style -specialty
Coronal Light – specialty
Bare root: Hyperion
Mixed

Misc Plants

Bearded Iris – 1 gal pots – various
Gladiolus – 1gal pots
Freesias – 4″ pots
Crocosmia Lucifer – 4″ pots
sedums – 4″ pots
ranunculus – 4″ pots
elephant plant – 4″ pots
peacock orchids (absynian glads) – 4″ pots
Dahlias – Bishops Children 4″ pots

Cut Flowers

Shasta Daisies

Coming Attractions

 cut flowers: Sunflowers, Zinnias, Rudebeckias, Gladiolus -

JD2 Ranch Booth at Pearl Brewery Farmer's Market

Well, the day has finally arrived, and we had our first Pearl Brewery Farmer’s Market Soft Opening. It went off without a hitch – even the occassional raindrops didn’t hinder us (now the rain can come pouring down). I made Marty come with me and help me with the canopy and unloading the plants. He then took the kids out for the morning.

We had lots of people come through for just starting out and a number of the vendors sold out of their products. There were lots of vendors. There are vegetable farmers, an herb farmer, fresh tilapia, a lavender booth, fresh beef, fresh goat meat, and fresh bison too. There was a shrimp vendor, nut vendors, and a coffee vendor (peaches and blackberries will come in May). We had lots of sales not only of daylilies and iris, but of our other plants as well. We sold out of the bare root daylilies that I had brought and a couple of other types of plants. Since this is a new

Different vendors just before the opening bell of the Farmer's Market.

adventure for us, I wasn’t quite sure how much plant material and what combinations of plants to bring. People had lots of questions about daylilies, bearded iris, and other plants. Everyone seemed very positive about the experience and they loved seeing the photos and the cut flowers (daylilies Way Out There, Fiery Temper, and Choral Fantasy).

Many of the customers were happy to hear that they can go online and pre-order from us with delivery at the Pearl Brewery for the next week. We will have dug their bare root daylilies and have them washed, trimmed and ready to go for them the next Saturday. Many were also excited to hear about our Spring Garden Day at the Ranch on June 6th as well.

The grand opening of the Pearl Brewery Farmer’s Market will be on May 16th, and the grand opening of the Riverwalk expansion (to the Pearl Brewery) is currently scheduled for May 30th. These should both be very exciting and fun filled days.

I want to Thank all of our friends who stopped by to see us and enjoyed the morning at the Pearl Brewery, and I’d like to thank all the new friends we made today (and more in the future) for stopping by and seeing all the great plants you can grow in the San Antonio area. Good job to Tatum and the rest of the gang at the Pearl Brewery for working out all the kinks and having things run so smoothly.

H. Jerry Pate Williams

Last night I did a seminar for the Men’s Garden Club of San Antonio at the San Antonio Garden Center (next to the Botanical Gardens on Funston). What a great group of gardeners and fun people! I spoke on both daylilies and bearded iris, and just a tad on cannas. Lots of great questions on both daylilies and bearded iris. Over the next week I’ll address those questions on the blog, because if one person has the question, then others will too. As the title suggests, the Men’s Garden Club is open to women – in fact about half the members were women. They meet the first Thursday of each month at the Garden Center at 7 PM. If you live nearby and want to know about gardening, it is a great place to pick up information and meet fellow gardeners. I know that they will also have booths at the Festival of Flowers on May 23rd, and also at the Folklife Festival.

H. Forbidden Fantasy

For the seminar I brought two different daylily scapes with me so people could see one blooming and realize that not all daylilies are simple yellows or old oranges. The first daylily was Jerry Pate Williams which is a melon colored double. It doubles 100% of the time. It is a great soft color and flower. It is good for the front of the border, as a specimen plant, or in a large container by your front door. The second daylily scape was of Forbidden Fantasy. It is a single round dark purple with a yellow ruffled edge and a yellow throat. Great as a specimen plant. Looks good with yellow flowering plants. It also would look good next to some lighter lavenders, as well as some red flowering plants.

Let’s talk a moment about double flowering daylilies. You saw that I said Jerry Pate Williams was 100% double. That means every time it blooms it will be a double. Some other daylilies are only 90% or 70% of the time. That means you could have single flowers on them some of the time, and then some double blooms. These percentages are approximate. When you read the descriptions on the doubles – especially the new hybrids, they usually list what the percentage is from the person who hybridized them.