I hope you are enjoying your summer.  Summertime brings the blooms of Showy Fleabane (Erigeron speciosus).  Penstemons (Penstemon serrulatus) in the garden are also in full bloom and the bumblebees love them! 

Summertime is also when weeds, pests and diseases catch up with some of the nursery’s plants.  At Tadpole Haven, we are in the business of healing a damaged environment.  It doesn’t make sense to grow native plants (which will be planted as agents of ecological healing) in a way that CAUSES damage.  Most nurseries use chemical fertilizers, hormones and pesticides, which enables them to produce beautiful-looking plants quickly and efficiently.  This is standard practice, but I hope the “green” industry begins to re-think this.  Things happen more slowly at Tadpole Haven where we use organic solutions.

 We weed the nursery plants and beds by hand (no herbicides), which is time-consuming, as any good gardener knows! Plants in containers are in an artificial state, which often makes them vulnerable to pests or fungal diseases. When we run into some kind of pest problem, we find ways of changing the way we care for them; perhaps we’ve given them too much water or maybe they need a different location within the nursery. We don’t rely on herbicides, fungicides and other pesticides. We look at most “diseases” and “pests” as part of the environment and try to give them few chances to get out of balance. But a few spots or nibbles? Not usually treated as a big deal, but as a message from the plants. This organic approach results in birds, amphibians and insects using our nursery as habitat!  And it’s a healthy place to work, too!

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