Farm Tour Friday 2-10-23
Woohoo, we made it through another week. This was the first full week with our team on the farm, and it was very productive. We started the week off with seeding, seeding, and more seeding: Strawflower, Statice, Orlaya, Forget-me-nots, Sweet William, Campanula, Bupleurum, and Stock. Yes, there is a flower called Stock and it has a great scent.
Stock bunches at The Flower Shack last spring.
Stock seedlings freshly germinated.
Next we finished planting all of the ranunculus, it seemed as though we would never finish. It's going to be a beautiful sea of color when they are all blooming, hopefully for Mother's Day. The crew worked on preparing more high tunnels for the seedlings when they are ready to be transplanted. To prepare a bed we loosen the soil, add fertilizer, rake, reshape it, add irrigation lines, and put down fabric in the walkways for weed control. When we weren't working on seeding or planting we were busy dividing more dahlias tubers. Many great varieties and we still have inventory on most varieties in our online store.
Ranunculus ready to be transplanted.
Two rows of freshly planted ranunculus.
We had spring like Temps this week(what does that silly ground hog know?) If it's above freezing at night, we agree it is spring. More of our chickens started to lay eggs this week. We are averaging about 8 a day. We plan to offer our eggs at our Flower Shack this spring. What is old is new! Did you know we use to specialize in salad greens before we started to grow flowers? That is true and we have missed growing them. We started a few types this week to get back into the swing of the planting rotation. We planted arugula(our absolute favorite), Mizuna, tatsoi, green wave mustard, cilantro and lettuce. These will be available for Easter weekend at the Flower Shack. Maybe before, stay tuned
Fresh eggs from our hens.
Tulips growing in a high tunnel, these will be ready for Easter!
Mark has been working hard to get our new furnace in our gutter connect high tunnel working. Guess what? It didn't work. He tried everything he could think of to get it to turn on. So, we called in the professionals. The last report I was told was that the transformer on the furnace was bad. This is a brand new furnace. Hoping that we can get the problem solved quickly, because we have more seeds to start. The 24v transformer needed to be replaced, grrr!
It works! We have heat!
Our PA Dep. Ag plant inspector came to the farm today for our annual inspection. This is really exciting because she inspected our heirloom chrysanthemum plants, which they passed with flying colors. We have been working for over a year now to get ready to start selling and shipping heirloom chrysanthemum rooted cuttings. We have over 60 types. There has been so much to learn on shipping plants. .
We will announce when the Heirloom Chrysanthemum rooted cuttings are available to order. The Chrysanthemums will ship in April.
