We love fruit. Especially fresh fruit grown right in your own backyard. Choosing the right fruits to grow in your Jasper, GA yard here in north Georgia is relatively easy, and your selection is wide. Whispering Springs Nursery shares a few of our favorite and easiest to grow fruits for the north Georgia climate and soil. 

Blueberries

Blueberries are one of the easiest to grow fruits for our climate. You can just about plant them and forget them, although a little attention and fertilization with some cotton seed meal definitely wouldn’t hurt. They tend to grow slowly at first, so if you buy bigger bushes, you’ll get a bigger crop of fruit in your first year.

Peaches

Peaches are excellent growers in our zone, that’s why Georgia is known as the peach state! Plant your peaches in well drained, moderately fertile soil with full sun. Six weeks after planting, fertilize with one pound of nitrogen fertilizer.

Grapes

Unlike many fruits, most grapes are self-fertile. That means that you do not need to buy more than one plant for cross pollination. Plant bare root grapes in early spring and construct an arbor or trellis for them to climb on to limit their tendency for disease.

Strawberries

You can grow strawberries just about anywhere, but in our area you will probably get better results by planting them in containers. This way, you can keep the birds and other wildlife from stealing your fruit before you can get to it.

Are you considering planting fruit at your Big Canoe home this spring? Let us know what you’re thinking about planting!

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Growing vegetables doesn’t have to be utilitarian. You can grow your veggies in beautiful containers that look like unique flower arrangements! Whispering Springs has 5 ideas for ways that you can take your edible garden from simply growing to gorgeous this spring. 

1. Make it Colorful 

Not only with the various veggies you can grow, but plant them in colorful pots too! If you’re going to grow veggies in containers all summer, at least plant them in something you want to see sitting on your front porch!

2. Be Creative

Just as you can add some color with your planters, you can add some creativity too! Pick up containers that wouldn’t normally hold plants and use them to make interesting pots. A couple of great ideas include wine crates, old tins, and watering cans.

3. Think Up

If you’re short on floor space, think about ceiling space. Some plants actually grow better when they are grown in hanging containers and allowed to drape off the sides of their container as they grow. Tomatoes and strawberries do especially well when they are hung from above.

4. Window Herbs

Create a window box for whatever window is nearest your kitchen and grow all of your fresh herbs there. They will be close at hand for you to pick and throw right in whatever dishes you are cooking.

5. Provide Support

If you prefer to plant in pots and want to plan vines such as cucumbers or beans, use a trellis and train them to grow upwards. Just because you’re planting veggies doesn’t mean you have to use those plain wire vegetable stands!

What are you planning on planting in your edible garden this spring?

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Arbors are beautiful additions to your landscape. They provide not only a beautiful piece of art, but also serve a functional purpose. These are 3 reasons that you should add a custom arbor to your Big Canoe landscape. 

1. Creating Shade

Does your landscape get so much sun that you can’t sit outdoors to enjoy your yard in the heat of the summer? An arbor will create a space that is cool and comfortable for you and your family to sit and enjoy the outdoors.

2. Creating a Place for Plants

The romantic image of a climbing rose draping off the roof of a wood arbor is iconic. Get this picturesque view right in your own back yard by planting a climbing rose or other favorite vine on your arbor. Come spring time, your custom arbor will be covered with your favorite blooms.

3. A Centerpiece for Design

If you’re looking to redesign your landscape this spring, a custom arbor is the perfect place to start. Whether you want your arbor over a bench or seating area, or built as a gate into your yard, a custom arbor is the perfect center piece to a classic and stylish landscape design.

Whispering Springs Nursery is lucky to have the expertise of James Grno working for our garden center and landscape design team. He is an excellent carpenter that has been creating custom landscape elements for clients for over 13 years. Call us today to schedule a meeting with James so that he can design the perfect arbor or other carpentry creation for your Jasper, GA landscape. 

Black mondo grass, (Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’), bishop’s weed (Aegopodium podagraria var. variegatum) and pink oxalis (Oxalis crassipes).

In Jasper, GA and the surrounding areas of Big Canoe and Bent Tree, many avid gardeners tend to plant their favorite plants and shrubs in containers so that they can keep them close to their house, away from our hungry deer population. But, if you opt to go with container gardening, that comes with its own set of challenges including keeping your plants alive during the frigid winter temperatures. Whispering Springs Nursery can help you make sure that your plants make it through our tough winters to thrive again come spring.

Tips for Overwintering Containers

• Plant your selections in larger containers to provide more insulation. The more soil between the root ball system and the side of the pot, the more insulation those roots will have.
• New roots grow on the outside of the root ball which leaves them susceptible to cold weather damage. Using thicker pots or lining your pots with an inch of foam will help protect those vulnerable roots.
• Wrap the pots with bubble wrap, blankets, burlap, or geotextile blankets to shield them from the cold. It’s not the top of the plant that needs protecting so you can leave those unwrapped.
• Select plants that are cold hardy to 2 zones cooler than yours.
• Put plants in the right area – next to a wall or behind a shelter made of straw bales, and group them together. Put the hardier plants on the outside of the group.

Do you have your own favorite tips for making sure that your potted plants make it through the winter healthy and ready to bloom in spring? share them with us in the comments below!

Now is about the time of year that you see “landscapers” attacking crape myrtles with their pruning shears like the trees might attack them if they left even the tiniest of branches. The practice is called “topping” and its has taken over good landscape practices and replaced them with this cruel joke of pruning. Whispering Springs Nursery is going to let you in on the secret to good pruning practices for crape myrtles.

Why People Top

Topping crape myrtles has become so common place that it may be more out of place to see a crape myrtle that has been properly pruned! Many people top because they have come to believe the myth that it encourages blooming, the tree has grown too large for its space, or they simply see their neighbors doing it and feel that they should follow suit. None of these are good reasons to top your crape myrtles.

Proper Plant Selection

Crape myrtles come in a wide variety of cultivars. From dwarfs to giants, this versatile plant is used in most southern landscapes for its year round beauty – beautiful blooms all summer and peeling bark and elegant form through winter. There have been cultivars of crape myrtles that will fit in just about any space. They come is both bush and tree sizes. Making sure that you are planting the right cultivar for the area you have is the essential first step in good pruning practices.

Good Pruning

Crape myrtles typically only need a light pruning – not the heavy pruning of the topping practice.  Remove defective or dead branches as soon as you see them. You can also remove lateral branches, small twigs, or branches in the center of the plant to create more open space for sun and air movement during the plant’s dormant time, late winter and early spring. Also, as a young plant is maturing, you can prune away all but the three to five strongest limbs growing from ground level. As it develops into a tree, you can remove the lower limbs to encourage the plant to grow upwards instead of outwards.

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Your landscape is probably one of the last things on your mind right now – except when you come home and realize how sad it looks when there are few things in bloom. When the first daffodils start to bloom and spring is in the air, that’s when most people start to think about how they want to redesign their landscape for the approaching warm weather. Whispering Springs Nursery has a tip for you on your landscape design this spring – start now!

Design Now, Plant Later

Now is the perfect time to plan your landscape renovation for the spring time. When most things in your landscape are dormant and have lost their leaves, you can easily see all of the space you have to work with and see the spaces where you need to add some more evergreen color. Start out by taking pictures of the areas that you want to redesign. Measure the width and depth of your planting beds, and take note of anything special that you’ll need to take into consideration while planting such as limits to the depth of root systems or the height of trees and bushes. Now would also be a great time to take soil samples and send the off to the local extension office for testing.

With all of this information at hand, you’ll be ready to choose the perfect plants for each of your beds. You’ll have plenty of time to research exactly what plants you can use that will grow best in your landscape. Give us a call and we’ll be happy to consult with you and show you options that are deer-resistant, grow well in shade, or love loamy soil.

If you’d rather not have the stress of trying to dig through mountains of information, go ahead and schedule your landscape design consultation with Whispering Springs Nursery in Jasper, GA. Booking early means that your landscape will be on the top of our list for spring planting!

Planting season will be here soon – thankfully. No more frozen grounds, snow and ice to navigate up here in the north Georgia mountains. If you live nearby in Jasper in Big Canoe or any of the other surrounding communities, you know that there is a constant fight against our local wildlife to prevent them from chowing down on your favorite plants. Whispering Springs Nursery specializes in planting deer-resistant landscapes, so here are our favorite plants to use that your wild neighbors will stay away from.

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, very few plants are considered “deer proof.” There are the plants that we have experienced that deer typically stay away from.

• Chrysanthemum is a beautiful fall blooming plant that will add plenty of spectacular color including tones of red, rust, orange, and yellow.
• Dianthus is a perennial that will perform for you during all of the warmer months of the year. They’ll show off their colorful blooms in spring, summer and/or fall.
• Goldenrod may be one that some of you have to avoid for allergy reasons, but if you don’t have that problem than you definitely want this one in your garden. It explodes with bright yellow flowers in late summer and early fall.
• Hens and chicks – no, not the kind that lay eggs. These are super easy, drought tolerant ground covers that you can plant and forget about.

Have you always wanted a beautiful landscape, but you’ve given up the fight against the whitetail deer population? Give us a call today and schedule a landscape design consultation for your Jasper, GA home. 

Img via Flickr. 

We’re about to experience a hard freeze here in Jasper and the surrounding north Georgia areas. Thankfully, this isn’t something we have to deal with on a regular basis here, but because of the fact that we aren’t used to dealing with temperatures much before freezing, our landscapes might have a hard time handling the cold. Whispering Springs Nursery has some tips for you to give your landscape a hand against the frigid temperatures. 

If you have anything rated for USDA Zone 6 or higher, it’s going to need some help. All of your plants that are potted in containers or hanging baskets should be moved indoors, or at least into the garage out of the wind during a cold snap. If you have small annuals, dig them up and pot them to bring them indoors. They will be more likely to survive with this method, rather than leaving them to fend for themselves out in the wind. Anything that can’t be brought inside should be completely covered to protect it from the wind.

Typically, we would say that you should water everything that must be left in the ground the night before the freeze, but we have had so much rain lately that the ground is wet and this is not a necessary step. Watering plants before a hard freeze will allow the water to freeze around the roots which acts as an insulator and protects them from damage.

As soon as the dangers of the hard frost have passed, uncover all of your plants, put your containers outside, and let them soak up the sunshine!

Img via Flickr. 

The cold winter January weather is settling into the north Georgia mountains here in Jasper, GA but if you want to keep busy in your garden, there are plenty of things you could be crossing off of your to-do list if you’re brave enough to stand the cold. Whispering Springs Nursery has a list of things to keep your thumb green, even when the leaves have gone brown.

• Prepare your beds for bare root roses that will soon be in the nurseries. Dig holes that are four feet wide by twelve inches deep and backfill them with plenty of soil conditioner to help them grow.
• When all of the leaves have dropped off of the trees in your landscape, it makes it easy to see their structure. Mark the ones you’d like to prune off and step back to make sure everything looks right before you get out your loppers.
• If you have a clump of unwanted kudzu or bamboo, now is the time to attack it. Chop it to the ground now and apply weed killer to the leaves in April.
• Make sure you’re watering all of your pansies and other winter annuals before each hard freeze. The water helps to insulate their roots and protect them from the damaging cold.
• If you’re allergic to poison ivy, you can’t let down your guard even though the leaves are gone. The dry vine can still give you a nasty reaction.
• Prune your fruit trees including apples, pears, and grape vines.

Do you have things on your January to-do list that we left off? Share them with us in the comments below!

Img via Flickr.

Have you ever actually been kissed under the mistletoe? Have you ever wondered where this little holiday tradition originated from? Today, Whispering Springs Nursery has the facts on mistletoe’s origination. Make sure you don’t forget to string up some of the stuff before the big day next week!

• With over 1,300 species across the world, there are only 2 species of mistletoe that grow in the US.
• The direct translation of mistletoe is not as romantic as its story. Translated directly in Anglo-Saxon it literally means “dung twig.”
• The tradition of stealing a smooch under the mistletoe is proposed to be of Greek descent, as the believed that the plant has the power to give life and bestow fertility.
• In the 18th century, the English began using mistletoe in beautifully decorated Christmas balls under which a lady could not refuse to be kissed.
• If a lady found herself standing under the mistletoe and did not receive a kiss, the story goes that she would spend the next year unmarried.
• Mistletoe is an essential part of healthy forest ecosystems.
• It’s toxic to people! But, the leaves and berries are a source of high-protein food for many animals.
• The tradition of mistletoe kissing has no connection with the religious history of Christmas.
• Not to be confused with holly, mistletoe has thin, rounded leaves and white berries.

Whispering Springs wants to know, do you plan on getting kissed under the mistletoe this holiday?

Img via Flickr.