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!
