How Many Flowers Do I Need To Grow? (as a Flower Farmer)
There are two big questions I get from a lot of flower farmers
What do I plant to ensure it all goes together?
How much of each do I need?
These are great questions to ask, and really get to the heart of the flower farmer’s business. It’s important to ensure that you have enough volume of material in order to supply your sales and income streams, but it’s also important to know that information (And actually, the majority of flower farming’s stresses can be attributed to these two questions!)
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How to Retroplan Your Flower Farm
When talking with new flower farmers and growers, a big question is how do you decide what flowers to grow?
There are many species of flowers to grow, with hundreds of varieties and cultivars to try out. Each flower variety has its own merits and negatives, and it can honestly be quite a bit confusing trying to determine which flowers you may want to grow. It’s kind of like falling down the rabbit hole - your head starts practically spinning so fast with the possibilities that it can make you dizzy.
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7 Great Reasons to Start a Flower Farm
Thinking of starting a flower farm?
Great! Because there has never been a better time to do so, and it’s also never been easier.
Now you may have already started your flower farm and are doing just fine - hats off to you. But there are also some of us (me!) that needed a justification or reason to start a flower farm. After all, it can be quite the laborious and complicated venture. Or perhaps we wanted to ensure that we’re doing the right thing and that we’re aligned towards a certain reason or goal for our flower farm.
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A Flower Farm Starts With a Vision
When it comes to putting together a flower farm or flower garden, the first and foremost thing that you’ll want to create is your plan. Your dream, your blueprint, your vision.
It’s important. Without this vision, you won’t know where you’re heading, you won’t know what you’re wanting to accomplish, you won’t know what you’re supposed to be growing or designing or what the whole point of this all is.
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Why I Don’t Use Charts or Spreadsheets as a Flower Farmer
Okay, so when I first started out flower farming, I made a lot of charts. Charts for seeds to be purchased, charts for seeds to be sown, charts for planting dates and succession dates and sales and clients. This was OK the first year, but it quickly got larger and larger and what started off as a fun and exciting business project suddenly started requiring spreadsheets, lists, charts and diagrams
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Winter Hardiness and the Science Behind Freezing Temperatures
When it comes to plants and winter, it’s helpful to know what happens as far as plant physiology and how it can effect your plants - especially hardy annuals and biennials.
There are a few factors that determine how cold some varieties of flowers can endure.
First of all, not all hardy flowers have the same level of cold hardiness. Some, such as Icelandic poppies and dianthus and orlaya can endure temperatures down to -5 F. Others, such as scabiosa can endure temperatures down to only 15 F, while nigella endures temperatures only a bit below freezing at around 23 F (and of course there are exceptions to these temperatures, but more on that in a minute)
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Want to Sell More Flowers? Believe In Yourself
The number one issue I believe with flower farmers is that you don’t believe in yourself.
Not that you can’t grow flowers. Chances are that you’re doing that already, and you’re doing it pretty damn well.
Not that you’re not a flower farmer or a professional, because chances are you’re also doing that too.
But it’s a very deep rooted thing that goes to the core of your being that you’re not good enough - that your business isn’t good enough - and that you’re scared of what may happen if you think you’re good enough.
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Floral Design Tutorial: A Simple Summer Centerpiece
I 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
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10 Time-Saving Tips for Flower Farmers
Time 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
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How to Grow Orlaya for the Cutting Garden (and Floral Design)
Orlaya 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
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How to Grow Nepeta (Catmint) ‘Walker’s Low’ for Flower Farmers and Gardeners
Nepeta - also known more commonly by the name ‘catmint’ (not be confused with catnip, which we’ll get into later) is a great plant to grow. Every gardener should be growing it, every flower farmer should be growing it, and every landscaper should be using it.
It’s like the perfect plant - seriously. Let me tell you a little bit about nepeta’s many virtues!!
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How to Grow Phlox 'Cherry Caramel' (for Flower Farmers and the Cutting Garden)
Phlox 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!
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How to Grow Sweet Peas (Even if You Live in the Desert)
Sweet 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
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Lilacs and My Senior Prom
Lilacs had really nothing to do with prom at all (this was the early 2000’s and high school when flowers and horticultural and plants weren’t really interesting or cool - kids these days have it so easy) but more to do with the fact that lilacs bloomed in Minnesota in late May, around the time of prom.
Smart parents and teachers probably planned it for that time of year so that you weren’t having to walk through a blizzard and having to pair your fanciest threads with a pair of snowboots (that was winter semi-formal).
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Introducing the 2021 Summer Cutting Garden Lineup!
We’ve already planted out our spring flowers (see Our 2021 Spring Cutting Garden post) but we’re are gearing up for our summer flowers, which run from approximately June through October.
I know it seems a bit premature to be planning for summer flowers right now when we’ve barely started into spring, but good flowers require planning ahead, and since we have a relatively short spring (around 3 months) compared to our much longer summer and fall (5 months) it’s important to plan for your summer blooms early on.
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Our 2021 Spring Cutting Garden
Hello 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.
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Flower Farming Business: Dealing with Imposter Syndrome
After six years of growing flowers professionally, I still feel like a fraud.
I know that sounds silly because if we’ve been growing flowers professionally and selling to florists and designing for wedding, then we technically can’t be “fake” flower farmers, but I still feel it.
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When and How to Plant Your Dahlias (And Strategies To Get Dahlias to Bloom Earlier)
The 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).
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Three Items to Help You Stay on Schedule as a Flower Farmer
Flower farming can get complicated very very quickly, and it’s easy to let the season get away from you. To stay on track, for us it boils down to three items - the vision board, the map (or design) and the spreadsheet. Each of these items support each other, help to understand your planting schedule and scheme and will help you to stay on schedule as a result.
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Book Review: Laura Dowling 'Floral Diplomacy at the White House'
In 2009, Laura Dowling received news that the White House florist had retired (after a 32 year tenure). At the time, she was working as a part-time florist out of her basement kitchen in D.C> while working another full-time job. She applied - not really thinking that she would get the position that hundreds of people were applying for - but to her astonishment she found herself amongst the 12 semi-finalists for the position, and would eventually be selected as the White House florist.
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