Author: Allie

Despite the week of torrential rain, and mostly gloomy weather the flowers here at Lottarock are really starting to come into bloom. I have buckets of flowers waiting for your selection!

Since the first of July we have recorded over 7 inches of rain. Unheard of for this time of year. Not that I am complaining much, the rain barrels are overflowing which is fabulous, but I would like a day or two of decent sunshine to dry things out a bit and for all those buds to break open. Have you ever met a farmer that is completely happy with the weather gods? We strive for perfection.

The most exciting news on the flower front here at Lottarock is that the Lissies (Lisianthus is their real name but we call the lissies here) are starting to bloom. Yeah! These are magnificent flowers in both bud and bloom and there are lots of shades to choose from.

The other cool flower starting to bloom is the Crocosmia. I love what these flowers add to a bouquet in both color and their form and look great with the rudbeckia, sunflowers, grasses and goldenrod.

It is sad to say that I am stopping the harvest of the beautiful Icelandic poppies. I am letting the remaining go to seed to collect so I can plant many more for us all next spring. But there are so many more flowers to choose from I hope that they won’t be missed.

That seems to be the most exciting news at Lottarock this week, there are lots of really cool flowers to choose from if you are building your bouquet. Some are perennials so their time is fleeting, but that is OK because the annuals are really starting to come into their own. Every week or two is different in the selection of flowers that make it all the more interesting as a flower grower and as flower lovers.

So I leave you with two photos of Shirley poppies that are growing in the beds. They are stunning flowers as you can see but for the life of me I can’t get them to last more than a day or two in a bouquet no matter how I condition them, so I am leaving them in the garden because they are a honey bee magnet and I just love looking at them.

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Until next week. Allie

Happy 4th everyone. Hard to believe that it is already July and the summer is quickly zipping by, although the weather isn’t feeling like July, more like April. One week we are sweltering, the next shivering. God know what the plants are thinking about these temperature fluctuations. Hot, cold, hot, cold so on and so forth. At least we have finally gotten some well needed rain. 3.8 inches! We’re still in moderate drought but improving.

The flower garden is really starting to fill in. The bachelor buttons are going gang busters as is the feverfew and the Icelandic poppies. One of my new favorite flowers to grow. They are amazing. I keep thinking that with each heat wave they are going to peter out but they are still going strong. I do believe the poppies will tide me over until the cosmos and the zinnias really kick in which should be by next week. I am getting a flower here and there so they are close to harvesting. Oh so close. The other flowers are closing in fast on their heals so by Mid July there will be buckets more of flowers to chose from.

I am starting to pull together the seed list for the perennials, bi-annuals and the plants that I am going to experiment to winter over this winter to get flowers to everyone earlier next spring. Lots of planning on where everything will go, as well as other little details but winter is a great time to play with different growing techniques.

As usual, I look forward to seeing you all at the flower shed on Tuesday afternoons and Friday mornings. I leave you with a photo of last Friday’s flower shed door bouquet. Soft and delicate.

Until next time. Allie

It is hard to believe that this is the last Sunday of June. Summer is just zipping by, but the flowers are really starting to fill in and every week there are more offerings to be had. The bachelor buttons are a sea of flowers, and that blue added to a bouquet really makes the bouquet pop.

You might be asking, “But what is new?” Well, the calendulas and rudbeckia are starting to bloom, the grasses are really starting to look interesting, soon we will be having lots of cosmos and zinnias as well. I am hoping that by the middle of July I will be harvesting from everything that has been planted. Well, not everything, because I have some late summer flowers that need to wait their turn.

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Not that I want to jump ahead in the seasons, but I have just placed the remaining tulip order for the spring of 2022. Yikes! The plan is to have 6500 tulips available starting the middle of February on until the natural season ends sometime in May, depending on the weather. I have ordered some stunners so that is something to look forward to next spring. In flower farming, planning for the next season really starts six to 12 months out. Crazy I know, but it takes that long to get crops started and grown to be available in time.

I got the pumpkins and gourds finally planted in the ground last Friday and they made it through the weekend.They are outside the fencing so I am hoping that the local critters will leave them alone.

Speaking of local critters, I have a snake living or hunting under the weed mat in the garden. It startled me when it came out but it had a rodent in his belly so I told it that it could stay and eat to it’s heart’s delight, just give me warning when it appears so I don’t get startled. It needs to live in the lisianthus right now because someone is eating the roots off the very expensive seedlings and killing them. Grrrr. (I refer to it as an it because I don’t know its sex).

I leave you a picture of Orlaya, a new plant for me to grow but I think a keeper. Let me know what you think.

I look forward to seeing many of you at the flower shed, and wish my international friends could visit for a flower fix. Until next time. Allie

Today is the first day of summer, the longest day of the year. That is good because it gives me more daylight hours to get everything done, but soon I will lose all this glorious daylight and you know what, that will be good as well. Cheers to summer and all the beautiful flowers it will bring.

We are entering the quiet time in flowers again. Don’t panic, I still have flowers, it is just that there is a slow down between the peonies and when the annuals really start in. I do have peonies that my flower fairies cut when I was away and put in storage for me, I have six stems of stink’n awesome foxtail lilies. Just six stems, well, maybe seven, but not many so I wouldn’t pass these by believe you me. They are tall, elegant and well, you judge for yourselves.

The bellflowers are still going strong, snapdragons, stock, orlaya are all coming in, as well as other flowers from the garden. Some mighty fine arrangements can be made with the flowers that are available.

The Icelandic poppies are still going strong, their flowers are paper thin, translucent almost, on these thin wiry stems but they hold up so well.

I am back to the annual question. I ask you, How many tulips is too many? I seem to have a problem narrowing down the number of tulips that I want to grow for you all next year. Hmmm, what is a flower grower to do?

Until next time. Allie

I say that because, honestly if I don’t know what season it is these days, how on earth do my flowers? Tropical days, quickly followed by cold nights and days, quickly followed by more topical days, and now quite pleasant.

The peonies have not liked the sudden temperature spike, anymore than I did, but I had a very faithful core of friends who kept the plants and seedlings well watered and were harvesting flowers that were trying to explode from the heat every few hours, putting them in water and cooling them down while I was away at a very important memorial service. My thanks goes out to everyone who pitched in to keep my flowers going and helping to keep me sane. Actually I don’t know what task has been more difficult this spring.

I know you are all hanging off the edge of your seat to know what is happening here at the farm. The second batch of sunflowers have been planted with one more seeding to go. The next batch of glads get planted this week. I still have peonies and the Icelandic poppies are just stunning. I have called it quits on the ranunculus and anemones for the year. They were lovely but they don’t like the heat and I need to make room for a new growing structure. The perennials are holding down the fort while the annuals are getting established. One can only plan so much, then mother nature does what she wants.

I am slowly pulling together the tulip order for next spring so if there was a tulip from this year that really pulled at your heartstrings, better let me know.

I leave you with an image of last weeks flower offerings. Every week is new and different, but always something to look forward to. Until next week. Allie

After a short break of not having three open flower shed days, we are back on line with lots of beautiful flowers. This heat of the last few days is really bringing on the flowers, I have lots of Icelandic poppies that are the most intense colors, then iris, foxglove, Canterberry bells, oh! did I mention peonies? They are starting to come in strong. There will be some really different flowers to make some really interesting bouquets.

Just about everything is planted in the garden. The first batch of glads are in, all the dahlias, the first succession of sunflowers, with one lot on deck, and another yet to get seeded. The garden is quickly filling up and is looking good. I have hooked up the irrigation finally and have had a run through and it all seems to be working, for the moment anyway.

I leave you with tempting shots of some beautiful peonies. I least I think they are beautiful.

Wow, what a roller coaster weather week this past week has been. Wednesday topping out at 88 degrees and high humidity, to a front out of Canada that dropped the temperatures as well as trees. And as I write this we have the wood stove going because the temperatures haven’t gotten above 45 in the last three days, it is windy and it is finally raining. Our lowest night temperatures these last few days have been 40 degrees, much better than the frost and freeze warnings they were getting a bit further up north. Hallelujah. With the rain we are slowly catching up on our rain deficit and the rain tanks are nearly full. Yay! It has been a weird spring.

My big plans for the weekend have been squashed by the weather, I thought it was just too wet and cold to be out in the gardens planting dahlias and the really cold sensitive plants so they are all waiting on deck to be planted on Tuesday when it is a bit warmer and drier. Just have to get these in and then everything is in and starting to grow.

So the big question is when are bunches of flowers going to be available again. I am hoping that the peonies will start coming in soon, then we will be a go again. They are getting close, but not close enough to harvest. Believe you me, you will be the first to know. We are all being impatient at this point. At least I am.

There will be not an open flower shed at Lottarock this week. I don’t have enough flowers for you all to make the trip, and Friday June 4 we will be away attending a memorial service for Steve’s Uncle Fred who sadly passed away a year ago March. The following week we should be ready to rock and roll again.

I leave you with an image of what is to come. And until next time. Allie

What a run I had on the most magnificent tulip collection. There were some real stunners this year, and even when they were fully opened, and even starting to go by, they were beautiful. The beauty in aging. Now everyone has to wait until Mid February, if all goes to plan, for another, hopefully much longer, tulip season. It is always sad to see them go, but knowing what is next on deck makes it that much easier for me to bear.

So you ask, what is next. Well, low and behold, the anemones are blooming. Go figure. The stems are short, but the flowers are beautiful, and an even bigger surprise, the ranunculas are full of buds! This is a crop I had written off because the corm were last year’s that I had saved, the mice were enjoying eating the new sprouts and yet, there are strong flower buds, so by Friday, I should have some amazing stems of color. Not only anemones and ranunculas are going to be blooming, but the Icelandic poppies have got a gazillion buds that are starting to show color. I am keeping my fingers crossed that these blooms will keep you happy until the peonies start.

So when are the peonies going to start? Wish I knew. Farming isn’t an exact science, we are at the mercy of Huey the weather god, dealing with first low temperatures then on to “are you serious?” high temperatures to “God I wish it would rain.” Last week I got the perennials hand watered. They are not hooked up to the irrigation because of the well, and they are perennials, but they got a good hand water soak, two days running, then compost and mulch and they are looking much better. Almost happy.

The annual cut flowers are slowly getting planted out, and hand watered until they get established enough to use the irrigation. They are really starting to put on growth. I am starting to see more green than black now, or should I say yellow with all the pollen on the weed mat. The sweet peas have finally gone in, and this week is the big push to get everything else planted in the garden. This will be quite a feat, especially with the predicted heat so it will be early morning planting and late afternoon planting when the hours are cooler for both the plant and the planter.

Also, as an aside, make sure you note the newsletters because I will post if there isn’t going to be a flower day due to lack of flowers. Hopefully there will be a steady stream of flowers available.

Until next week. Allie

Here we are just a titch past mid May and the flowers are still rolling in, although I will be honest, this week coming will probably be the last week for harvesting the tulips and the narcissus. Don’t worry though, I still have some in storage in the cooler so if all goes well, I should have flowers available until the peonies start, and many of them are budding up quite nicely. I do wish it would rain though. Tuesday it looks as though I will be spending the majority of the day dragging hoses around watering, giving everything a good deep soak. And listening to podcasts which I am way behind in.

Seed sowing and subsequent planting out into the garden is still happening. The sowing has slowed down to a few varieties of seed every other week now, and as the temperatures start to warm up, the plants are getting hardened off, or in other words introduced to the rigors of life here at Lottarock. Most of the rows in the garden have been prepped for planting, I only have another five to go. A mere five to go. That includes the rows for the sweet peas that hopefully will be planted on Tuesday, the dahlias, and the other summer bulbs. Hopefully soon when you drive in you will be seeing more green in the space than rows of weed mat with holes burned in. The biggest planting push of the summer season is Memorial Day weekend when all the remaining available space will be filled and possible more. Who needs vegetables? Steve wouldn’t miss them much, I am sure.

I have spent the last few weeks madly harvesting the most amazing tulips and narcissus, but honestly, I really haven’t taken time to deep dive into their beauty. Have you? Look at these magnificent flowers will you?

Are you getting bored with the tulips and narcissus? I sure hope not because there are more varieties that will be put out on Tuesday and Friday during the open flower shed hours. On deck this week is the leucojum and allium, to add depth and dimension to your flower arrangements.

Hope to see many of you this week, and if not, Until next weeks blog. Cheers. Allie

I hope all you mothers out there got lots of flowers for mother’s day and that they came from local flower farms. Supporting local flower farms not only supports a local farmer, but gives you the best and freshest flowers that are more than likely grown sustainably, and certainly don’t have lots of air miles that imported flowers do.

It is the time of whirlwind days. Starting with farm chores, you know, the basic feeding and watering of goats, donkeys, chickens, peeps and guinea fowl, walking the dogs and the ilk. Then watering the seedlings, possibly seeding and pricking out seedlings…Harvesting flowers and getting them conditioned while it is still cool in the morning. If not enough rain has occurred then watering the plants that have already been planted outside in the gardens. Phew, that takes me to mid morning. To make it even more interesting, some mornings I have flower deliveries, and gardening clients. I don’t seem to have much sitting time, but this flower farmer isn’t complaining. Loving every minute of it.

So while we all love the big bodacious blooms, we can’t forget about the littlest of blooms. Many times these are more intricate and delicate and would get lost in a large bouquet, but in a little spice jar or jelly jar they just stand out. I have a lovely selection of very dainty narcissus that I have been harvesting this past week, and what they make up for in size they make up for in scent. They are powerhouses.

I leave you with todays littlest arrangement that graces the counter in the loo. It is in an old spice jar which seems to be the perfect size. What also works well are old little bottles or even empty nip bottles. Perfect for a stem or two.

I look forward to seeing many of you on Tuesday 3-6 and Friday 9-12. There are plenty of flowers for everyone.