One of the most popular additions to any vegetable garden is homegrown tomatoes. Nothing beats the taste of a juicy, sweet tomato that has ripened on the vine.
At Fort Collins Nursery, we offer a huge variety of tomato plants and seeds to satisfy your hankering. Our varieties include: Beefsteak, Cherry, Roma, Brandywine, Lemon Boy, and more! Call us at 970-482-1984 for availability.
Tomatoes are tender plants. We recommend using a Season Extender or Hot Kap to protect against cold temperatures. We also offer frost cloth.
Don’t forget to keep tomatoes off the ground with a sturdy tomato cage, garden stake, tomato tower, or even try a Topsy Turvy, and hang them upside down! Whiskey barrels also make excellent containers for indeterminate tomato plants – they’ll just grow and grow!
Did you know tomato plants like salty soils?
Our Colorado environment is home to some amazing native shrubs. Not only are these shrubs disease resistant and perfect for our native soil, they attract birds, butterflies and provide year-round interest.
Try adding to your landscape a sumac, Apache plume, serviceberry, rabbitbrush, fernbush, mountain mahogany or buffaloberry.
These shrubs have some very unique features, such as the curly, furry fruit of the mountain mahogony, reddish-orange berries of the buffaloberry or the white clusters of flowers of the serviceberry. After proper placement and establishment, these shrubs require little care.
You won’t find these shrubs outside the southwest region. Adding them to your landscape helps keep the area diversified and encourages the local ecosystem. They can be blended seamlessly with non-native plants, depending on the shrubs water and sun needs.
Ask for a tree and shrub representative to help find these native shrubs to match your landscape needs. We also offer many native trees and perennials, come out and see!
Looking beautiful color all summer long? Try adding a shrub rose for summer color, even in a harsh location. Some of our most popular shrub roses to try include Morden Sunrise, Winnipeg Parks, Hope for Humanity, Sunrise Sunset or a Knockout.
Shrub roses do well in most parts of Colorado and are the hardiest of rose varieties. Choose a full-sun area with well-drained soil. Avoid areas with other shrubs to cut down on root competition.
Make sure to amend the soil when planting, digging a hole about twice the size of the container wide a deep.
Shrub roses also benefit from early spring pruning. Remove dead, diseased or winter-damaged canes, and open up areas for air circulation and shape. There is no need to cut back shrub roses to the ground like the hybrid roses. Past-bloom flowers develop into attractive rose hips, which add a dab of winter color and food for birds.
Ask a nursery tree and shrub representative for more tips, fertilizers and maintenance on shrub roses.
Try fighting pests with their natural enemies! Beneficial insects prey upon pests that damage both your plants.
In our Garden Shop you can find ladybugs, praying mantid eggs, earth worms and nematodes. We can also order predatory mites to control spider mites, tricho-gramma to control caterpillars, green lacewings to control aphids and delphastus to control white flies.
We offer Plan Bee! mason bee nests, to encourage these wonderful (and threatened) pollinators, and Ladybug houses to encourage an active population in your yard.
Got grasshoppers? Try Nolo Bait, a long-term grasshopper suppression agent made of wheat bran coated in spores. The hoppers eat the bran and become infected. This bait is safe to use around humans, pets, birds and wildlife!
Diatomaceous Earth is another natural insect control. The “earth” is actually tiny fossilized hard-shelled algae that is mildly abrasive. For insects like ants, this irritates them and causes dehydration.
We also offer Red Wigglers, nature’s original soil improver! Worms waste product (castings) make excellent fertilizer!
Call 970-482-1984 for availably.
With rising gas prices, and grocery market mark up, eating fresh produce can make quite a dent in your pocketbook. Healthy, homegrown fruits and vegetables are a fraction of the cost, and need no shipping to get to your plate!
A few ounces of seeds will produce many pounds of fresh produce (sometimes too many pounds!). Anyone who has grown a zucchini plant will know. Share with your neighbors, set up a produce exchange with your gardening friends or donate to the food bank.
Seed packets range from 99¢ up to a few dollars. One seed packet is less money than one fast food meal, and keeps producing food all season long! Can your Big Mac do that?
If you don’t have room for a vegetable garden, or time to nurture one, try buying shares in one of our local Community Supporting Agriculture (CSA) farms.
Did you know tomato plants like salty soils? In other parts of the country with acidic soils, Epsom Salt water produce bigger blooms and healthier tomato plants. Magnesium Sulfate helps the plant absorb phosphate fertilizers and increases the plants natural resistance to disease.
Since Colorado soils are loaded with calcium and magnesium, you should only use 1-2 tablespoons of Epsom Salt per gallon of water. Apply around the tomato plant only once during the growing season.
Always consult a soil test before adding fertilizers. If your soil is already too salty, adding salt water could contribute to a decline in vegetable production. We recommend a soil test from the Colorado State University’s soil testing lab.
Soil tests are one of the most essential keys to a successful landscape. Many people add an all-in-one fertilizer every spring, thinking one application and forget about it. This can actually build up nutrients to levels that lead to plants’ decline.
Besides basic at-home test kits available at the nursery, we have the added benefit of Colorado State University’s soil testing lab kits. For a small fee, CSU will run a complete diagnostic for the exact breakdown of your soil’s nutrients and deficiencies.
A complete report is issued, detailing pH, salts, lime, texture, organic matter, nitrogen, phosphorus and other minerals. They also recommend specific steps to take to balance soil.
Bring in your report to Fort Collins Nursery, and we can help fill your soil’s needs!
Crabapple, redbud, pear, hawthorn and plum trees have a wonderful way of announcing, “Spring is here!” After a long, cold winter, these trees are some of the first to wake up and share their fragrant, vivid blossoms.
Not only do many of these trees produce edible fruit, but also are well adapted to Front Range conditions, which is why you’ll find them all over town.
We also appreciate the positive psychological effect these ornamental early bloomers bring: warmer, longer days are on their way! All of these varieties are available at the nursery.
Whether indoors or out, a fresh culinary delight can be found in a kitchen herb garden. It’s easy to do, and a beautiful, edible addition to any garden, patio or windowsill.
First, find a container that provides plenty of room for your herbs roots and good drainage. Place a pottery shard or rock over the drainage hole to avoid soil loss when watering.
Chose a rich, light potting mix or amend your outdoor bed with a compost full of organic matter, such as peat moss. Since your herbs are going to be consumed, only use organic fertilizers or pesticides.
Choose herbs that you know and love to eat, but group according to water needs. Also factor in that some herbs like to spread, like mint, thyme and oregano, and should be planted in containers. Perennial woody herbs, such as rosemary, are best purchased as a plant, where as annual herbs, like cilantro, can be successfully started from seed.
Harvest herbs before they flower for the best taste. You can control flowering by pinching off flower buds.
Ever wonder why you’d need to harden off a vegetable starter plant? This term refers to the acclimation process of preparing a plant to move from warm indoor growing conditions to cooler outdoor conditions.
About two weeks before planting, move plants outdoors to an area protected from blustery winds. Each day, gradually give them more sun exposure, but avoid setting out plants when the temperature is below 45 degrees. Bring them in at night and repeat this process.
Hardening off plants applies to vegetables grown from seed, vegetable starter plants, and flowers. Our nursery stock that is outdoors in early spring has already been hardened off for you, but greenhouse plants will still need that extra TLC!
