It may seem strange, starting up a cut flower farming business in one’s 60’s but here I am. The growing of flowers I am finding, more or less, the easy part. It is all the other important stuff one has to do to get the business name out there to generate flower lover followers. That is a mouthful isn’t it. The blog is chugging along and Mary is helping me with the website design because I am clueless. I don’t even know what half the terminology means. Then Instagram, whoa, that is way over my head, but I am learning. Baby steps. Hopefully I will have it all figured out by next year’s growing season. It is all such challenge because I would much rather be outside growing and playing with flowers than doing the computer stuff. Can you hear me sigh deeply?
With the rain we have been getting lately I have eased up on watering the beds every night, and instead sowed a bunch of buckwheat where I had spread the mown purple clover from the orchard. I can’t tell if the clover has germinated, but the buckwheat certainly has, and that is good because the recent rains have been pelting down. The white clover that I had spread on the roadway and paths all floated down the hill and was stopped by the wood chip that we had spread earlier in the season. At least the wood chip prevented everything from washing away and ending up in the woods. On the good side, the rain tanks are back to overflowing again, and bucket watering is taking a break for a few weeks. It is amazing how much time is opened up when one isn’t watering constantly.
The flowers are starting to really come on now. The sweet peas are still putting out flowers of 200 plus stems every few days. The snapdragons are flowering like crazy, the zinnias are starting up and there are a few flower buds on the dahlias that are showing color. Trying to get photos of the flowers in the garden is difficult because most of the flowers are cut before they are wide open so most of what you see is green. But I know that the flowers are there.
The flower shed is filling up very nicely on Tuesday and Fridays during the open hours. Soon I will have to put a board over the donkeys hay bin so I have more space to display the flowers and bouquets.
I look forward to seeing you soon at the open flower gate. Allie