Start Substantial: Flowering Shrubs
If you want to add color and texture to your landscape without a lot of fussy upkeep, consider
blooming shrubs. They can give your garden structure and balance and you can even choose species timed to bloom in succession, thus providing color all season long! Bachman’s offers more that 20 varieties of lilacs, 9 hardy azaleas, more than 60 hardy shrub roses, as well as
flowering potentillas, spireas, viburnums and rhododendrons. Plant them now and you’ll be able
to enjoy some blooms this season and look forward to a gorgeous display next year.

Summer Bulbs: Garden Divas
Some of the most impressive summer beauties emerge each year from knotty, wrinkled bulbs.
Packaged in dark bags, these roots are too delicate for our harsh winters and must be dug up each fall and replanted in the spring. High maintenance, indeed! But these blooms are so dramatic we can’t resist…. Summer stunners include cannas, elephant ears, tuberoses, calla lilies, gladiolas and dahlias. (Dahlias alone can range in size from tidy little container mounds to dinner plate size blooms.) After a long winter hiding from the paparazzi, these fast growing tropical beauties are now ready to get some sun. Plant them in groups for a dramatic display and to simplify their removal in the fall.

Feed ‘Em Right: Matching Fertilizers To Your Plant’s Needs
There is quite a bit of difference between the fertilizer needs of garden plants. Bachman’s horticulturalists are happy to answer questions about the many available products, but here’s a general guide.

• Flowering plants, including fruiting vegetables (i.e. tomatoes, cukes, peppers) benefit from additional phosphorus. Use Bachman’s MightyBloom™, a water-soluble fertilizer high in phosphorus (10-54-10.) A few plants— tropical hibiscus, tuberous begonia and wave petunias
among them—need especially frequent feedings with high phosphorus fertilizers.

• Foliage plants, like hosta, and even house plants do best with a more balanced formula
like Bachman’s Excel-Gro™ (15-35-15) or an all purpose formula like Bachman’s Garden
Food™ (10-20-10).

• Grass should be fertilized with products that are higher in nitrogen.

• Herbs, nasturtium and succulents need almost no fertilizer of any kind.

Garden Secret: Inoculant
Peas and beans are easy to grow from seed. But gardeners are sometimes disappointed to get only a light harvest from what seems like miles of vines. An extra– but simple–step before planting can radically boost yields. Use Garden Inoculant, a beneficial bacteria that you mix with seeds. It helps fix nitrogen into soil that might not be super fertile. Here’s how to use it: Before planting, shake seeds in a jar with the inoculant and a little water to coat. Then plant as usual. Garden Inoculant works wonders on green or dried beans, peas and sweet peas.

Mike Hibbard, Horticultural Advisor
©Bachman's 2006