Tulips are one of the most beautiful and venerated blooms of spring and for good reason. Coming in a rainbow of colors, they are some of the most spectacular and boldly colored blooms of the entire year and are also one of the first flowers to bloom (along with daffodils).
Although tulips are generally treated as an annual (with the exception of a few varieties) they can be a good spring flower for the flower farmer to grow!
Read MoreWhile tulips often get the focus and attention of spring flowers, daffodils should not be forgotten in the spring lineup!
A truly perennial spring-flowering bulb, daffodils are a great addition to any flower farmer especially for early spring sales. Some of the first flowers or plants to bloom in spring, they are as beautiful and graceful as any flower out there.
Here are some tips for working with daffodils and working them into your flower farm business
Read MoreI designed this centerpiece to be representing some of the best of the summer flowers - dahlias, zinnias, basil and other herbs, grass plumes, Queen Anne’s lace and the first of the flowering sedums and vitex seedheads that start to come into their own in the autumn.
You can of course you anything that you have available in the garden, but know of course that growing the correct high-quality flowers makes your arranging and centerpieces come together more
Read MoreTime is money, and for flower farmers that is a particularly accurate statement. There are only so many hours in a day, and although farmers in general are known to be hard-working people with grueling schedules, saving time is important.
More importantly, time is also about effort and efficiency. The more time, effort and stress that comes from flower farming, the higher the risk of burnout, getting injured or sick, and the less sustainable it becomes in the long term.
To save you some time (and work!), I wanted to share some things we’ve learned over the years to make our flower farming business more efficient
Read MoreOrlaya is the funny name for a beautiful flower that we weren’t growing.
I wasn’t convinced initially that we should grow it - it was an umbellifer much like Queen Anne’s Lace (Chocolate Lace Flower) and Ammi and fennel, all of which we were growing already and had good success with.
On the other hand, there were a couple things that (after discussing it with other growers - we’re the worst at enabling each other in growing too many varieties of flowers!) had me excited about orlaya
Read MorePhlox is a wonderful plant to grow as a cut flower. Specifically my favorite variety ‘Cherry Caramel’ that has these dreamy creamy-beige petals with bright fuchsia centers that perfectly blends with both brightly colored, saturated flowers as well as light, monotone, muted colored materials as well that just makes it a brilliantly versatile and underappreciated flower - but one that is a must-grow!
Read MoreSweet peas give everyone the warm fuzzies, but they’re also a great cut flower to grow because they’re extremely productive, has a beautiful flower that works into just about any sort of floral design and are surprisingly tough as nails despite their rather fluffy and delicate appearance.
They’re also easy to grow so long as you follow a few rules and understand what they need
Read MoreHello there!
So it’s officially spring and unlike the springs of yester-year (yester-season?) I am actually on top of our spring flowers this year.
We’ll be talking about our spring cutting garden first, and then our summer/fall cutting garden next. I’m really excited for our spring garden and can’t wait to share all the awesome varieties of flowers we’re growing this year.
Read MoreThe short answer? Around your last frost date just to be on the safe side. Of course this has some caveats, but for most people that’s going to be the correct date to plant out.
If you can keep your dahlias from freezing and getting flooded in early spring, you can then push the envelope a little bit as far as planting out and getting your dahlias going. We’ve had dahlias blooming as soon as mid-June with some of the strategies I’m going to share with you (whereas when planted out in the garden or the field they only just start blooming in early July at the earliest).
Read MoreAnemones, ranunculus, tulips, hyacinths, muscari are some of our favorite spring flowering bulbs. We’ve written a care guide including their growth habits, cultivation needs and how to harvest and utilize them as cut flowers indoors!
Read MoreThe best time to plant hardy annual and biennials is when the summer heat has left, but before the season is over. It’s a very narrow window of time for most people, but with a bit of planning you can make sure that you plant at the ideal time.
But when is the best time?
Too soon, and your plants won’t do well. Cool season annual flowers like cool and moist conditions to grow in, and if temperatures are too hot you may find a lot of issues with growing them including finding it hard to establish, a higher disease rate, and other issues that come with warmer weather.
On the other hand, you don’t want to plant too late - if too late in the season, your seedlings can’t get established and may not survive the winter. Or in the best case scenario, your seedlings may not die - but they won’t have time to get their roots established either, which means that you miss out on your advantage of fall planting.
Read MoreThe traditional way of using zinnias is similar to other compound flowers like gerbera daisies and mums - simply placed into an arrangement overlapped with foliage and filler until you have a solid mass of vegetation… I personally think zinnias are massively underrated and underutilized as far as their form and line, especially because zinnias in the garden or field get some very interesting and beautiful stem shapes. The same way that a stem of ranunculus may swoop and snake around to create some of the most interesting shapes, zinnias when used in the same way can also create the same visual interest.
Read MoreInspired this week by the weedy grasses growing in the unkempt part of the garden (the part that I don’t usually photograph and avoid thinking about until I can figure out its purpose better) I decided to make an airy, elegant, wild arrangement inspired by those grasses.
Read MoreWhile the basics of floral design are important to know (It’s not advisable to attempt an asymmetrical compote arrangement if you haven’t mastered the mason jar arrangement) and it may take a while to develop the eye for certain designs, there are also a couple tips that I’ve learned over the years to help ensure that your designs are consistently good.
Read MoreAmaranthus is pretty easy after you’ve got seedlings in the ground - with enough heat and sunlight, it will be one of the lowest maintenance plants you can grow in the garden. Seriously, it will just start shooting up into a big and tall plant, seemingly rocketing up overnight to take advantage of the warm growing season, and if you keep giving it water and nutrients it will continue to grow just as explosively.
Read MoreGomphrena (also commonly referred to as globe amaranth) is the cutest little flowering plant you’ve ever seen. Little brightly colored gumdrop-like flowers at the end of long straight stems make for a very unusual but very enjoyable plant in the garden and in the vase.
Read MoreSunflowers are one of our favorite flowers. Their sunny faces are well-beloved by pretty much everybody -with even artists like Monet and Van Gogh immortalizing them in their art - and are one of the easiest, most reliable flowers to grow. A staple of flower farmers ad gardeners everywhere, they are a great flower to have in the garden and in the vase.
Read MoreLooking at last year, dried materials were our most popular and most profitable section of our sales from flower farming - it was incredible!
But what’s interesting too is that lots of the materials that go into dried material arrangements and products would literally have been composted otherwise. And while I’m all for improving the soil through composting of organic material, there are still plenty of ingredients that can be used for dried florals and bring in money during the off season.
If you haven’t already read my post on trialing florist chrysanthemums, you might not know just how passionate I am about mums.
I really am though. Coming at a time of year when I’m usually burnt out and ready to give up on the season, they are a welcome burst of fresh floral excitement at a time of year when everything else is winding down for the season. They come in the perfect fall colors too - rust, burgundy, gold, dusky purple and rose and light pinks that are incredibly elegant and rustic.
Read MoreChrysanthemums had always been a controversial topic in our house.
I don’t think we could ever really justify growing mums for cut flower production due to the fact that they were so ubiquitous and cheap from the wholesaler in the fall - and having to not go through disbudding and staking for production would always be a plus to reduce the amount of labor for producing flowers.
We decided to compromise, and I ended up purchasing some plants this year to run a trial. They took a long time to get going, but eventually they started blooming at the end of September - and I was able to assess them as far as productivity, appearance, and productivity.
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