Big seed starting day over here! Today we started:
🌼 calendula: we’re growing Ivory Princess, Alpha and Bronze Beauty. The last two are new for us! I have mixed feelings about calendula but I’m excited to give them another try. They’re kinda pesty (initially until the ladybugs show up) but their round faces are a useful shape during “spike season.” We already have some in the field but we lost a quarter of them to the freeze so I thought I’d start another quick round.
🌼 bupleurum: we didn’t grow it last year so I’m happy to have space for it this year!
🌼 ammi
🌼 stock: our final round-I feel this is about as late in the year as we can start stock before it starts getting too hot and before the aphids go wild. So I aim to have the last stems cut before then!
🌼 strawflower: tons! All the colors!
🌼 snaps: last year this was perfect timing for us for Mother’s Day so hopefully it works this year as well!
🌼 saponaria: I grew this our first year but haven’t since. I have no idea why because I loved it. Here’s hoping the seed isn’t too old!
🌼 cilantro: as a cute airy filler flower trial
🌼didiscus
And I think that’s it! Happy Friday, y’all! 💛
Queen Lime Orange zinnias in all of it’s color shifting glory! ☺️🍊🤎
Farm-y things I’m looking forward to this week:
-I’ll begin planning for our first plant sale! Hoping to have some transplants for y’all this fall! Lots to learn, materials to source and timing to dial in, but we’ve got that fancy Prop House that Dan built and I’d like to put it to use!
-two of my very fav Texas natives are in season: Eryngium yuccifolium and Artemisia ludoviciana
-Celosia are coming in to bloom/maturity! I really hope to hone my celosia growing skills over the next couple years and focus a lot of summer attention on them. I barely water them and they tolerate the heat so well.
-Today Jake and Walter flipped a bed in our “short lived perennial field” that I’ve been neglecting for wayyyy too long (pretending that it doesn’t exist) and finally gave it the attention it needed. Compost and cow peas after a quick broad forking and extensive weeding.
-This week will be our final push for mulching! We’ve been putting down a super thin layer of fine wood mulch in our annual field (what could break down over a season) and a much thicker layer on our perennials and I’m loving the results of our efforts!
🌵🌞🪲🌀💘🌀🪲🌞🌵
Technicolor zinnias for Best Buds Week 4!
Things I’m looking forward to (around the farm) this week:
🦋 Dan has the day off (from his off-the-farm job) and will be tending to the neglected herb garden with our farm worker, Jake, and our WWOOFer, Walter. It’s not technically part of the farm but I rummage in it for bouquets sometimes! And it’s terribly overgrown with Bermuda grass and bumming me out. Haha
🦋 looks like I’ll be cutting the first of the cosmos! A summer favorite.
🦋 we’ll be cutting buckets and buckets of zinnias this week in all of the colors!!! I can’t think of a better flower to brighten all of our days. I’ll be using a ton in our retail bouquets and Best Buds too!
🦋 Kelly, our harvester, will be continuing to cut flowers for drying. We’ve been hanging strawflower, yarrow, monarda and more to revisit later this year and I’ll be thankful for her hard work come fall (and now too, of course).
🦋 we’ll be pulling the last of the Spring crops and putting down cover crop seeds. The summer slow down is tip toeing in, although seeding for fall crops starts soon!
Hellllooo agrostemma!!! I took this video last week when they were at their peak. Best we’ve grown yet!! ☁️☁️☁️☁️ But, that’s not the point of this video! I’m here to say, we posted our Mama’s Day offerings online and I hope you take a peek at them: Field Walks and bouquets! 🤍🤍🤍
Today’s bouquets are very cute! 🐣 Foxglove, stock, calendula, strawflower and more! 💛
Giving this beauty permanent residence bc I’ve never had so many DMs about a flower before! ‘Bottle of Bliss’ bearded iris from @schreinersgardens. 🐣🐣🐣
Best Buds Week 12! Featuring three native grasses (I started them all from seed!), green sedum, echinacea, spotted bee balm, and more. Best Buds will resume in September (details TBD) when we and the farm have had a little break. Thanks to all! 🧡💗
Ok, tiny dog (Sunny) is gonna need some serious training because his current favorite thing to do is pull flowers from the bucket as I’m harvesting and run off with them. 😝
But, announcement time! Dan and I are taking the first two weeks of August off to go camping in Washington State! So, that means:
-we will be shutting the online shop down for pickups and deliveries for those two weeks (offerings will be light until September)
-we won’t be taking any florist or wholesale orders for those two weeks (offerings will be light until September)
-we won’t be doing Best Buds Club in August but will resume in September and I’ll list that for sale online when we return and I know a certain start date.
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I’m mentioning all this now because we have a to-do list a mile long before we leave and I don’t want to wait until the very last minute to communicate with y’all! But, I’ll definitely be repeating all of this again before we leave. :)
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We plan to “shut down” for the month of August every year from now on. It’s part of our commitment to ourselves to make space/time for a vacation to rest our bodies and minds. And it’s part of our commitment to sustainability. Our first year of farming, our August water bill was $800! In year three, our field is roughly three times that size and we can’t stomach the idea of using that much water to irrigate flowers that are typically already pretty stressed from the heat. Some day we hope to have a giant cistern and we’ve been working to hold water on the land with ponds, but we still wouldn’t want to use it all in August anyway! And this all feel kinda ironic since it’s currently pouring and some of our plants are a bit stressed from tooooo much water, but I digress. 🙃
This zinnia is glowing! 🪲🌸🌟
I took this video last night of Best Buds Club: Week 2. Thanks y’all!!! 💗
(This is more than one bouquet).
Did y’all see the forecast for next week??? Already pulling out the shade cloth! 🌞
☺️☺️☺️ It’s a good day to be a duck (or guinea or goose) in the flower field.
A Vday bouquet I made for a BFF’s valentine. ❤️💕❤️💓❤️💖
A sea of white frost cloth, freezing rain and frazzled nerves. Day one of nine of freezing weather! We’ve got a game plan for the really cold weather on Sunday and Monday nights, we’ve been prepping all week, and we are hoping for the best. Which isn’t really my MO, but I’m trying. Good luck fellow farmers and growers!!! 💙
Crab walking down the row planting Gaillardia ‘Lorenziana.’ Hopefully it’s as cute as the internet pics suggest! 🦀☁️
Quite a bit for our neck of the woods! ❄️