Every spring is a great time to plant trees, herbs and other perennials, but there’s also plenty of time all summer and even in the fall, suggests Donna Keegan of Myrtle Tree Farm.
“I like a lot of herbs. Tarragon might be my favorite to use,” said Keegan, who is in her 26th year running Myrtle Tree Farm with her husband CK.
The Keegans live and work at the same homestead where Donna’s father’s family farmed for three generations, before large chunks of the land was put into soil conservation status or sold to form the Presque Isle Country Club.
“We’re just farming it differently now,” Keegan said.
Herbs are one of the top sellers at Myrtle Tree and one of the original products that Keegan started the nursery business with in 1991.
For gardeners looking for herbs to over-winter and serve their kitchen year after year without replanting, Keegan recommends lemon balm, lemon verbena, lemon thyme, mints, sages, dwarf English lavender and oregano. Parsley also can be kept as perennials. Pull their flowers off in their second year to keep their leaves growing for food, Keegan suggested.
The Keegans also serve a dedicated customer base of ornamental gardeners, with a large array of annual flowers and perennial flowers, shrubs and trees.
“People are always anxious to see what’s new and I do my very best to make sure I have new varieties,” Keegan said.
This year, the nursery is carrying new varieties of irises, day lilies and baby’s breath, as well as several new trees, such as a variegated dwarf white birch, a birch tree that will grow to 8 feet tall with small multi-shaded leaves.
Keegan said she thinks Myrtle Tree is probably one of few places in Aroostook County to buy weeping larches, also known as tamaracks, the genus of “deciduous conifers.”
This spring the nursery also has seen customer interest in fruit trees, selling out of Evans Bali cold-hardy cherries and selling a steady number of Mount Royal plums, a cold-hardy, self-fertile European variety.
Of the different apple saplings Myrtle Tree sells, Keegan said she is a fan of the variety liberty.
“Liberty is the best apple tree, to me,” she said.
A top disease-resistant variety, liberty is immune to scab and is relatively low maintenance.
“You hardly ever find anything wrong with the fruit,” Keegan said. “They always fruit heavy. It really is one of the best orchard trees.”
With more than a quarter century under their belt operating Myrtle Tree Farm, Keegan said she’s glad that she and CK acted on her hunch back in the 1990s that a nursery business could do well in Presque Isle.
At the time, she said, “I realized here in Aroostook County at least, you couldn’t find a place to buy perennials after the first of June. I knew that you can plant perennials anytime and sometimes planting in the fall is even better.”
