New Boxes Planted!

 We got the new garden boxes planted!

I just took pictures of the flower box, because the rest were mostly seeds--so they look empty.

I decided to go with tones of peachy pink, raspberry, dark pink, and purple.

All my favorite colors!

After some thought, I did some perennials in this bed. I'm assuming we'll rent the same beds next year.

If not, or if we move, I will have to dig them up and bring them--or give them away to a friend.

This daylily is in the back left corner, below.

Love it!

In the middle I put a 'Cheyenne Spirit' coneflower.

You know how much I love those!

Then in the corners I've got the daylily above, Coreopsis Li'l Bang 'Starstruck', a bright pink geranium, and bright pink petunias.

On either side of the coneflower are 2 agastaches: 'Sunrise Orange' and 'Morello.'

I also put in 3 achilleas, all 'Summer Pastels' variety, and one lavender for my youngest daughter 'Hidcote Blue.' I filled in empty spots with Verbena Lascar 'Mango Orange' and alyssum 'Easter Bonnet' mix.

It's going to be so pretty once everything fills in and starts blooming!

In the long skinny bed, the kids planted half beans and half carrots--a mix of colors for each.

The other square box had almost 10 pounds of potatoes hidden under the soil!

After digging those out and refilling with dirt, the kids planted our one zucchini plant in the corner, then they did onions, corn, wheat grass, and bunny tails grass.

In this box I planted 3 varieties of sunflowers in the big empty spaces you see there.

I pulled out the parsley. The leaves were yellowing and it was going to seed.  

I don't remember the names of the sunflowers offhand, and the seed packets are in the garage!

One will be velvety burgundy, one was a mix of colors, and the other....nope, can't remember.

Those are my dahlias there, front left, getting big and bushy!

Plus a glimpse of the winter squash with very tall peas back on the left.

Everything has really started to take off these past couple of weeks!

Flowers in Bloom--Week by Week

This post falls under the “record keeping” category. It’s good to have a record of what I had in bloom each week—partly for evaluating what worked and what didn’t, but also for planning out next year’s flowers. What can I offer each week? When can I expect flowers to cut from the things I plant?

I did quite a bit better this year at taking harvest photos each week. There were a couple I missed, but overall, I did all right. These are not always the best-looking photos. They were not staged at all, for the most part. Just what I had in my buckets. Upping my photo game? Next year’s goal! :)

One thing you may notice: for most of this season, I was doing my main harvest every other week. My big days were every other Friday, because that’s when I had all 3 business subscriptions coming due, with a total of 4 arrangements. I cut other stuff in between for smaller orders, and supplemented some with purchased flowers—both from other local farms and from the wholesaler.

So, want to find out what flowers I had in bloom from one week to the next? Come on, let’s do this!

April

April 11: A handful of daffodils and 1 short hyacinth.

April 18: Hyacinths growing taller and more colors blooming! Another small handful of daffodils.

April 25: Just daffodils, all sorts. I love the doubles and the pink-cupped ones!

April 29: The first of the tulips, more daffodils, some phlox cut from purchased perennials I was about to plant in my flowerbeds, and some green feathery wildflower leaves. (Okay, okay, they were weeds! They held up very well in my arrangements, thank you very much.)

May
 

May 2: Oh, those daffodils! Coming on strong now! Plus a few more tulips.

May 17: Lilacs in their full glory! Plus in bucket #2: flowering plum, ninebark foliage, alliums, pink salvia, and perennial bachelor’s buttons.

May 31: More alliums, perennial bachelor’s buttons, plum foliage, honeysuckle, and a few bright orangey-red geums tucked down in there, as well. 
(The second photo is just a closeup of the geums—same date.)

June

June 13: We’ve got peonies, folks! Oh, they were gorgeous. Most of these were cut from a friend’s garden. Mine should be ready to begin cutting from next year!! Can’t wait!

June 21: Annual bachelor’s buttons, that did me the favor of reseeding themselves from the year before. Plus, a handful of blue Allium caesium (I planted more of those this fall.)

Also, in the second bucket are catmint, more allium, scabiosa, a late peony, and 2 little roses. That last pic is just a closeup of the scabiosa—they were so big and beautiful in June!

July

July 2: Mixed bucket here. Let’s see if I can see it all—Bells of Ireland, annual bachelor’s buttons, scabiosa, the pinkish-red one in the back is Jupiter’s Beard. It looks like there may be a rose tucked way down in there as well.

One of these days in early July I had 2 or 3 full buckets cut, including one full bucket of around 40 stems of Bells, but I didn’t get a picture. So add that to your mental list.

July 10: Bells of Ireland, annual bachelor’s buttons, drumstick alliums, scabiosa, the first of the snaps!, first of the lilies, roses.

July 11: Bells of Ireland, annual bachelor’s buttons, snapdragons, feverfew

July 12: Bucket of Bells…and 1 snapdragon!

July 12, #2: spray roses, lilies, scabiosa, drumstick alliums

July 19: Snaps!! (Can you tell I love snapdragons?) Bells of Ireland, dill, one sunflower

July 25 x 2 buckets: (top bucket) Snapdragons, Queen Anne’s lace, dill, weed? foliage

(bottom bucket): Yarrow, Bells of Ireland, bachelor’s buttons, white echinacea, roses, drumstick alliums, sedum, ninebark foliage, poppy seed pods

August

August 1: sunflowers

August 9: Yarrow, Bells of Ireland, white echinacea, zinnias, roses, Queen Anne’s lace, a couple of snapdragons, and a big weedy flower that I thought I could use and shouldn’t have!

August 16: Hydrangeas, zinnias, yarrow, white echinacea, feverfew, pink statice, pansies, perennial bachelor’s buttons, scabiosa

August 30: Hydrangeas, pink yarrow, scabiosa, zinnias, echinacea, roses, statice, mint, first of the cosmos + cosmos foliage, sedum

September

September 6: Echinacea, cosmos, roses, zinnias, tansy foliage

September 12 x 2: Zinnias, scabiosa, yarrow, sedum, catmint, Jupiter’s beard, mums, columbine foliage, ‘Milennium’ alliums. 2nd picture: cosmos galore! + a handful of mums, it looks like

September 20: Cosmos, mums, New York asters, pink statice

September 26: Just mums

September 27 (last 2 pictures): Cosmos and more cosmos.

October

October 4: Hyrangeas and plum foliage

Well, that about wraps it up! Even just going through this exercise made some things become quite obvious to me—improvements to make for next year.

The biggest thing is: I need to get my production levels up! I made it through, but nearly every bucket was a couple stems of this and a handful of that. If I’m going to grow this little flower business of mine, I need to GROW more flowers!

By this time next year, I want to see full buckets of 1 type of flower, consistently!

Seeing as how I put in nearly 800 more bulbs this fall, not to mention several varieties of perennials, I’m on my way. I am taking Flower Farming School online right now, as well, with Lisa Mason Ziegler, and that has been great at giving me the tips and information I need to really make this into a commercial operation. The basics—like figuring out the watering, making beds, keeping weeds out. You’d think I would already have all that mastered, 2 years in, but I still have a lot to learn.

I have to say, though, it was a great year! For the most part, I had all the flowers I needed for my customers this summer. I fully expect it to just keep getting better every year.

More Freebies--Yay!

 Just when I think I’m done planting for the year, I get some more free plants! Lovin’ it!

My friend and neighbor down the street, who has gifted me with plants already, told me she had some rose bushes for me. I was excited! There’s a section along the one side of her house that is going to get cemented in at some point in the next year. She let me come dig up some stuff!

Here’s what I came home with, and where it went:

1 white rose bush—back corner flowerbed

1 mini red rose bush—in back, by the Jupiter’s Beard and the honeysuckle shrub (Actually, I’m not sure if they are mini roses simply because the bush is still so small, or if that’s the size they will stay as it grows)

1 pink and white rose bush—she said it was kind of striped petals. I wonder if it will look kind of like this one in my oval flowerbed, above? So, I put this one in the front fence bed, to replace the David Austin rose that died this year. I’m not really sure it’s going to go with the color scheme out front, but hey—it's a rose that has proven that it can withstand our winters, so that’s got to be worth something.

1 hosta—front flowerbed, in front of the lilac bush

4 large clumps of asters—these I planted in my perennial beds in the garden, starting a new row for “purple/blue” colors. At her house they were nearly as tall as me, before we cut them back for digging, but they were in partial shade there. I’ll bet in full sun they will be shorter.

1 clump that separated into 6 or 7—um…long brown things? I don’t know what they were. She called them coneflowers, but they weren’t like any coneflowers that I’ve ever grown. The seedheads looked like the cone part of the coneflower, on a 4-5’ long stalk. She said that’s what they were—no flowers, just these cone things. Anyway, I thought they might add some interest to my arrangements next year, so I plopped them in behind the greenhouse, between my eremurus that I got planted a couple of weeks ago. I’m hoping I didn’t just plant a pernicious weed of some kind! Ha!

I’m so excited to see these shrubs grow next year, and to have another hosta, some more asters, and some…brown things! She was so generous, and happy that her plants were going to a good home. I was happy to be that good home! Win-win!

Also, I was so proud. I dug them up yesterday and got them planted TODAY, friends! Good job me! They didn’t languish in their pots on my front porch for days and days…or all winter.

Okay, now I think I’m really, truly done. Unless I give in to the sale ads coming into my email inbox right now and order a bunch of tulips for 40% off. It is so tempting! But also, I shouldn’t. Maybe my amaryllis will come in this week and keep me busy getting those potted up, so I don’t have time to purchase any more plants or bulbs. If any one wants to give me some more plants, though—I’m all over that!

At some point, I want to make a large flowerbed just for roses, and another just for peonies, and fill them up with all kinds of beautiful shrubs to cut from. Until then, these go in my flowerbeds, where I know they can stay for awhile, undisturbed.

Are you still throwing things in the ground?

Do you have any beautiful flowering shrubs or plants you no longer want?

[shrug. worth a try.]

Roses and Sedums--Is This Goodbye?

Lately, I just can’t get over how beautiful my roses and sedums look out front. It seems the cooler weather brings out more vivid coloring in the roses, and the sedum (variety ‘Autumn Joy’) is just doing its awesome thing where it starts out a dusty pink then gradually keeps getting darker and darker pink/coral/rusty red as the temperatures drop.

 

I have been trying for several weeks now to catch a picture of the way my miniature rose echoes the colors of the sedum behind it in my front corner bed, but somehow the camera isn’t picking up what my eye can see. Lack of skill on my part, I’m certain.

After a rainy, windy day today, the temperatures are supposed to drop down into the 30’s here in the next couple of days. After taking some pictures of them in their flowerbeds yesterday, I cut all the roses and rosebuds I could find and brought them into the house to enjoy in an arrangement. I can see it from where I’m sitting right now, and it is making me so happy!

If the frost isn’t as deep as expected, they may last outside another week or two, but remember we had snow last year in the first week of November. 

So even with a possible reprieve this weekend, the end is near.

What will you miss most from your gardens this winter?

Welcome Fall

 We’re already into the middle of September, and I keep expecting that first frost to come any night now. It’s not just cool in the mornings now—it’s cold! My fingers were going numb as I cut flowers this morning, and that was around 8:30am. That makes it perfect flower-cutting weather, by the way! They do much better when you cut them cold.

I have continued working on clearing out the garden and planting what I’ve purchased. Just today I was able to get the last coneflowers and the 3 sedums planted. I am getting my color rows filled up! I’ve still got quite a bit of room in the white row—I want to get some daisies this week to put in there, and maybe some phlox or penstemon. The yellow/oranges have about half a row left, and the pinks are down to about 1/4 row. I need to start and fill up a blue/purple row, as well.

My cosmos are finally blooming! I just cut a whole bucket of them this week.

I’ve also still got quite a bit of transplanting I want to do—moving some of the perennial bachelor’s buttons out of the Oval Bed and planting all of the lilies in crates into the garden itself, as well. We had some awesome thunderstorms this week that really helped my transplants survive! I’m pretty sure our secondary water will be turned off sometime in the next couple of weeks, as well, so any rain we can get is a blessing!

The garden is so full of weeds. It’s discouraging, to say the least. The purslane has gone crazy with the extra moisture and has formed a mat of green covering the ground. The red root pigweed is all over, as well as another one that I don’t know the name of, with very wiry tenacious roots. Plus the other usuals: bindweed, grass, goathead thorns, mallow, etc. Too bad those weeds aren’t worth any money. I could make a fortune! Instead I just battle them, always and forever. There were some monster-sized weeds in the front flowerbed that I managed to pull out, roots and all. That was satisfying, let me tell you!

We pulled out our fall decorations the other day and now a rather eclectic collection of pumpkins sits on top of my piano. During the summer time I want clear surfaces, but come fall, I’m ready for a little whimsy and something new to look at again. I’m craving apple cider and wanting to find an orchard (or a friend!) with an apple press, like we had going for us in Washington. Apple cider. Yum.

One year at the orchard in Washington, this is what we picked! We weren't planning to get very much.

Last year at this time, I was canning everything in sight, but I’ve really only done one round of canning this year—apricots. I may still do peaches in the next week or so, or we may just eat what I canned last year. The veggie garden was pretty much a bust this year—we have a handful of green tomatoes on one of the vines—so I am anxious to just get it all cleared out and prepped for winter.

Is it sweater weather where you live? What are some of your favorite fall traditions?

A Good Day

 Fall planting is moving forward! A quick trip to Lowe’s and the Valley Nursery this past week resulted in several new specimens to add to my perennial cutting beds. Yes, I had to stop myself from finding places for them in my flowerbeds around the house! It’s hard to fight those gardening instincts!

I was able to get some planted yesterday, before my little one was done being outside, and this morning in the cool of the day, I got the rest divided and in. Yay!

I still need to find a companion shrub for this one, to put on the other side of our walkway. Alas, I did not look for shrubs this time around.

I decided to plant my perennial rows by color. I’m excited about it! My growing space is limited, and even if I had the market for—say 50 white echinacea plants’ worth of flowers, I wouldn’t have the space to put them in! I need more of a variety, in both colors and flowers to make the best use of my space. However, just 3 or 5 of one thing doesn’t come close to filling up the whole row. That’s where my brainstorm came in.

Planting by color will mean I will always know right where to put new acquisitions, for one thing. For floral designing, it will be helpful to see everything I have in a certain color. Brides usually want certain colors, but may be less concerned about specific flowers used. In my everyday arrangements it should make it easier to visualize what will go well together. I am also hoping it will help with diseases and pests to have more diversity in each row. Since these are perennials, that means they won’t get rotated, so anything I can do to throw off the critters will be helpful.

So, with what I purchased this week, I started a white row and a pink row. I bought 5 white echinacea, 3 ‘Summerwine’ Yarrow in pink, and 1 container of ‘Millenium’ garlic—which is the variety of allium I’ve been looking for online with no success! It’s funny that they called it “garlic” on the tag. Anyway, that’s pink as well, so I got all the small bulbs separated and planted out next to the yarrow.

When it comes to purchasing plants, here’s the price hierarchy:

FREE! Divide your own plants, scatter seeds and hope they come up next year, or gifts from neighbors, friends, and family.

CHEAP: purchase and start your own seeds ** It must be noted here—buying plants as seeds and growing them yourself only saves you money if you’re good at it! ** You do have to factor in the cost of purchasing a grow light setup as well. So maybe this should be “Cheap after the first couple of years.” Again, IF you’re good at it (or become so!)

PRETTY CHEAP: Purchase plugs. This is where you let someone else start the seeds for you, then you buy the baby plants and plunk them in the ground and take all the credit! As mentioned, my limited space makes this a hard option to go for, since plug trays usually contain somewhere between 50-72 seedlings. Also, they are most often all one variety, which is prohibitive for me as well.

NOT CHEAP: Purchase plants from your local retail store or nursery: Lowe’s, Home Depot, and even Walmart all have plant sections. Although this is the most expensive option, the benefit is that you come home with a good-sized plant to begin with, for instant impact and often useable flowers. Also, look for sales!

I decided this fall to give myself some breathing room as I continue to learn how to start seeds and keep baby plants alive. A buffer zone, if you will, of already productive perennial plants. In other words, I’ve got some money allocated for buying plants from the hardware stores and such.

I will be watching for end of season sales, of course, but I have another trick for getting my money’s worth with these deals:

Most perennial pots sold have more than one plant in the pot.

Did you know that? So you can separate them and plant each individual clump, which brings the cost per plant down considerably.

You can see here what I mean—see those 2 very distinct clumps? Each one can be planted separately!

For example, I purchased 5 ‘Pow Wow White’ echinacea plants this week. As I was digging the holes for them, I noticed that each one had at least 2 distinct plants in the pot. I made a shallow slice across the top, between the two, with my soil knife to get things started, then slowly pulled them apart. Each one was $8 to begin with, but now I have 10 plants out there, bringing it down to $4/ plant. I possibly could have separated them further, but the bigger clumps tend to survive much better. I was quite happy with that!

Here are the 2 separated and ready to plant!

[Side note: I’m thinking this may be part of my problem with the seed starting—maybe I am too eager to get those babies divided and into their own pots, when they would be better off growing big with some neighbors in there too! Hmm…something to think about.]

There were some poofy-headed “cantaloupe” echinacea that were twice as much as the white, which I didn’t buy. Now I wish I had checked the pots more closely to see how many clumps there were. If there were at least 3 per pot that would bring the price down to compare with the others.

Harvesting Bells of Ireland Seeds

Part 2 of the outside projects today was to harvest Bells of Ireland seeds. My patch has been ivory colored and dry for a couple of weeks now. I finally got out there today to take care of it! My darling children helped some as well.

2 trays full!

I had my gloves on due to the spines, and put as many of the actual Bells in to my trays as I could. The more dry the plant, the easier those Bells popped off! I filled 2 trays with them. I didn’t take the time today to pop all those little seeds out of the Bells, but that may happen in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, there were plenty that just fell down to the ground in this process, so I have no fears that my Bells patch will live strong again for another year!

Clearing the Bells patch and getting some beautiful flowers into the ground. #winning

How was your day today?