Jenny

Our Flower CSA is back for the 2022 season, with improvements and new member benefits that will make this the best time yet to join us for a season of local flowers! If these past couple of years have taught us anything, it’s that we thrive or wither by the strength of our community, so the focus of this year’s CSA (besides bumper crops of gorgeous flowers, of course) is to build strong relationships between our farm and CSA members – through farmer-led tours, on-farm events, and flower education.

What is Flower CSA and how does it work?

Flower CSA members pre-pay for their flowers in advance of the growing season, which in turn helps our farm shoulder the early season expenses of growing at a time when farm revenues are low (these costs include things like seeds, greenhouse heat, etc.)  CSA members receive a unique code to be used to pre-order flowers online (for pickup at our Hillsdale Flower Shop), and also a swipe-able card  to be used for in-person flower shopping at our Hillsdale shop. To thank you for your support, we’re offering CSA members special benefits like members-only farm tours, a free pass to one of our new on-farm flower forums, and discounts on gardening and floral design workshops!

Happening around the Farm in January…

Those bountiful CSA flowers are already well on their way! Our crew has been working hard planting, seeding, and preparing all winter. Ranunculus were started from corms in the propagation house in early December and have just now put on enough root mass to be planted out this coming week. Sweet peas? Seeded in November and carefully watched and watered as they put on cool-season growth and get big enough for planting out soon. Those gorgeous, July-blooming lisianthus that we all love were started from seed last week – yes, 7 long months from seed to flower! And, most labor-of-love intense of all are the dahlias, which will have several hundred hours put into them by the time they’re all divided for planting.  

Happy Memorial Day! We hope you’re enjoying this kick-off to summer! What a different year – last year we were able to give our crew the holiday off because we were so on top of our plantings, this year we’re scrambling without a crew, in a pandemic, to keep up with the harvesting while we try to set out plants and manage tractor cultivations with two toddlers in tow. 

This is probably the last week for ranunculus and anemone – they stop flowering once soil temperatures start to rise – and we’ll be sorry to see this gorgeous, productive crop go. We’ll also say goodbye to the tulips until next season, and will gather up all of the optimism we can for next year’s crop… we had a really tough season with the tulips. A strong and promising start quickly turned to anxiety as the plants started to show signs of disease during an unseasonably cold, wet April. Disease spread quickly, destroying most of our varieties. After many emails and photo swaps with a plant pathologist, it looks like we’re dealing with a couple weather-related and/or bulb-borne diseases, but plant samples are at the lab now and we’ll have confirmation soon. Luke calls growing tulips the ‘tulip gambit’ because the investment and risk are so high (and the rewards can be, too!) and we took a pretty hard hit this year. 

But, that’s farming! Nothing to do but focus on what’s ahead – sweet peas, poppies, larkspur, and more from the greenhouses, and a big field of peonies showing perfect buds!

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What a beautiful weekend! The sunshine and warmth had a huge effect on the flowers – it forced so many of the long-awaited tulip varieties open, and we were swimming in anemones and ranunculus in the greenhouse (in short sleeves!) Never mind that those two lovely spring days were sandwiched between cold and colder weather. Actually, we do mind…with every night in the 10-day forecast in the 30’s (and a few below freezing), this isn’t the welcome to May we were hoping for, especially after such a cold, wet April. Flowers do not like to sit under cold, cloudy skies for this long – we’ll be scouting closely for signs of disease until the weather lets up and we’re looking at more seasonable nights in the 50’s. We’d usually be trying to get a jump on our dahlia planting by now, too, but no chance with this forecast. In the meantime, it’s Mother’s Day week and we’ll be slammed in the barn putting together orders and arrangements with all the beautiful flowers the warm days gave us!

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