Farm Tour Friday 3-3-23

Woohoo, it's Friday! Good bye February hello March (my favorite month of the year). What a week it has been. I have been down for the count with a back injury and resting while my crew has been taking care of the farm. Also, my parents stepped up, too. They filled in for me on the farm, drove me to the many appointments I had for my back injury, and helped get my 4 children off to school each morning ( not an easy task somedays). This is one of the reasons we all live together so that we can help and support our family and business easier when one of us goes down.

Our team did a great job keeping us on track for the past 2 weeks. They have continued to seed the first set of annuals for field production, divided more dahlia tubers, took thousands of heirloom chrysanthemum cuttings, and tended to the daily tasks that keep the farm going. As the season gets started each day there are more and more daily tasks from watering, seeding, transplanting, harvesting, the list goes on and on. Having a good trained team starting this season has been invaluable.

cress

Freshly germinated trays.

We had a good amount of sunshine this week. That meant removing row covers and opening up high tunnels each day to prevent our cool loving flowers from getting too hot. The ranunculus and anemones that are currently growing in our unheated high tunnels grow best when the soil is cool. On the spring days that the temperatures reach into the 60s or higher with sunshine we have to open up the high tunnels to cool them down. If we didn’t the high tunnels would quickly reach 80 to 90 degrees and that would trigger the anemones and ranunculus to stop growing and go dormant. To prevent that from happening we open the roll up sides on the high tunnels, remove the row covers, and water the beds to keep the soil cool. Warm days in the spring are great though sometimes it means extra work.

The tulips in our high tunnels are up and growing. So exciting!!! We plant tulips in a high tunnel and out in the field each year to extend our tulip harvesting time. The ones growing in the high tunnels are just starting to pop though the soil. We have closed the end of the high tunnel to encourage the tulips to grow. They will be ready for Easter!

ranunculus

Tulips starting to grow in the high tunnels.

The new propagation area that we made in our gutter connect high tunnel is almost full. The team started all the cool loving annuals that will be transplanted to the field first such as snapdragons, nigella, bachelor buttons, cresses, and many others. Every year I plan to have the first set of transplants ready to go in to the field by the end of March beginning of April. If the weather holds out and we can get the tractor into the fields by mid March I think we can reach that goal this year. We will see if Mother Nature cooperates or throws a wrench in my plan.

New propagation area.

The first round of heirloom chrysanthemum cuttings were done this week. The team was able to take thousands of a cuttings from our mother plants. We have been working with our ag department so that we can sell and ship our mum cuttings. There is much to learn when shipping plants across state lines. We have had our annual inspection done already and the mums passed. There are a few more things that we have to do before we can put the mum cuttings up for sale. Look for them to be available to order in April.

Have a great weekend!