Month: December 2021

I know, I wasn’t going to do a blog this week, but Surprise, here I am. It has been quite a week. The long awaited 5c tulips arrived. Yay!

I emailed the tulip broker on Monday or Tuesday morning and he sent the tracking number on to me to say that they were ready to go. They were supposed to be delivered on Wednesday by the end of the day, but no, three of the four boxes arrived Thursday morning. The driver knew absolutely nothing about a fourth box. The next Fed Ex driver that drove in about an hour later said that he was only express and it wasn’t his problem. I will say that he did say it nicely though. Onwards we go though, so Steve and I and an elf got 1500 tulips planted, watered in, labeled and put in the bulb room which we had hooked up via an extension cord to run the temperature controls. Record time for a bunch of newbies. It took us about 2 hours all up. Once we figured out the learning curve of course.

Friday morning, yes, Christmas Eve day the fourth box arrives and Steve and I get it planted in about an hour and set into its new space. So here we go. Bulbs are now safely in the cooler, temperatures set at 45 degrees for about four weeks of rooting, then, I can bring them out and grow them on, so if all goes to plan, and we know how well those work, I should start having tulips ready for you all before the end of February. I would love to say by Valentines Day but seeing this is year one, I am giving myself a little leeway.

I hope you all had a safe and fun filled holiday, and I will be back again after the new year.

Allie

So I got a puppy. I know, funny heh. But true. I have know idea about the status of my tulip bulbs, so I/we decided to get a puppy instead. Let my introduce you to Jager, the newest member of the flower team here at Lottarock.

What possessed us? GOK. (God only knows). He is the reason that I didn’t get the blog published last night. I didn’t get home from picking him up till after 9:00, then we had a meet and greet with all the animals and that was that. So here we are, adapting to life with a young dog. He is 9 months we adopted him from 2Hands4Paws rescue and so far so good. He has done chores this morning, goats, chickens and donkeys and is learning that routine, had a big dog walk on his first leash dog walk and that went really well so fingers crossed that all continues to go well.

On the tulip front, just waiting. I reached out to the distributer but haven’t hear back so I will just continue on as usual if they don’t come but that would be a real bummer. I will still start the cool seeds and the perennials in the new year, I will still get the ranunculus and anemones going at their usual time, and wait for spring with my usual impatience.

I won’t be doing a post next week because of the Holidays, we here celebrate Boxing Day with all of my family and that is on a Blog Sunday, so my all of you have a wonderful holiday, filled with family, friends near and far, laughter good food and cheer. May we all have a safe and healthy New Year and a flower filled one as well. I thank everyone of you for such a wonderful year.

Cheers, Allie, Steve, Olivia, Sadie, Jager

I feel like I am a kid again waiting for Christmas, except that I am waiting for my tulip delivery. Will it ever get here? Will the delivery person (Santa) find his way? The waiting is killing me. I have been good. Well, for me anyway. I am ready, my crates are all waiting for their delivery of beautiful tulip bulbs. The bulb room is ready, or will be when I need to to be, says Paul….please get here soon. I am besides myself. And we all know that patience is not one of my finer suits.

Besides waiting for my bulb delivery I really don’t have anything exciting to report. My seed order from Johny’s seems to be taking the scenic tour of God knows where. From Maine, it has taken over a week to be delivered, and each time I pull up the delivery schedule, it is delayed. If you guys who are hoping to get Christmas presents delivered before Easter, good luck. It is an especially long flight from Albion Maine, to Hancock NH, via the north pole, the Falkland Islands, Australia, Guam….Argh!!!!

So. Here I am waiting. Tulip bulbs, seeds, spring….but hey, I have a building permit that will expire in 20 days. Yup. Don’t get me going.

Did say that patience is not in my DNA?

I took last Sunday off, if you hadn’t noticed. Thanksgiving and all of its celebrations and recovery were far more important than anything that could have happened at the farm that week, so I gave you all a week off as my gift to you. But. Today I am back with exciting news.

The &*(%!! building inspector has FINALLY signed off on our building permit. Only 11 months from when we had filed it. Don’t get me going on that topic. No we don’t have said permit in hand yet, now we are waiting for the selectboard to put their signatures on the permit, but as far as we are concerned, we are good to go and go we will! We may not be able to park our cars in it until June, but hey, as soon as it is enclosed and safe, the electrician will hook us up and I will have electricity in the bulb room. Meanwhile, an extension cord will have to do.

So here is a funny story. I was talking to a reader about white wedding flowers for early June. I couldn’t remember if I had ordered any white ranunculus and of course I couldn’t find any invoices or packing slips but I had the boxes sitting in the dirty room waiting for planting. What did I find in the first box I looked in? Tulips. Somehow 100 amazing parrot tulips never got planted back in October. Oops! And these tulips are amazing when they flower, so I planted half of them in the high tunnel, and half in a bulb crate to try out the new bulb room. Nothing ventured, nothing gained is my motto. And I do have 100 white ranunculus, as well as pink shades, pastel shades, picotee to plant in January.

The other warm day I started to prefill the bulb crates trying to find a system that will work before the big shipment arrives. I think I have it figured out but then all the best made plans do have a way of tweaking themselves.

If it is sunny and above freezing this will work. The first thing I had to do was get the pro mix thawed, so 4 bales are now in the dirty room and the least frozen got put in the crates. I filled each crate halfway using the bucket of the tractor as my work bench filling 24 crates and once I got going it only took about 2 hrs. The hardest part really was getting the frozen planting mix broken up small enough to use. So I have 23 crates ready to go, stacked in the tool shed and waiting for the big plant. One crate was used for the found tulip bulbs hence 23 remaining crates. This is going to work, I am sure of it.

My other exciting news is that I think most of the seed for the 2022 flower season has now been ordered and are being shipped. Yay! The end of December and January are going to be very busy with tulip planting, ranunculus, anemone and freesia planting, and then soon seeding of the cool flowers perennials and bi-annuals. I better enjoy the down-ish time of the next few weeks I guess. Sure, with Christmas, Boxing Day, New Years all happening too!

Until next week. Allie