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You might be wondering at the title, well we are six weeks into the new year. Holy Moley. Normally I wouldn’t know this but I have been doing spread sheets for the seed sowing and crop planning and this is an easier way to keep track of the timing,(so they say) so, I am learning weeks. But can you imagine me doing spreed sheets? I didn’t think so.

My big news of the week! Week 5? Ta Da. I have a crate up bulbs blooming!

The first bulb bloomed on my birthday, I couldn’t have had a better gift. Sorry Steve. Talk about psyched. This last week the rest of the crate has bloomed, so they are going back into the bulb cooler to hold until the next crate blooms, and I can see buds….

So. You know what this means….I WILL HAVE TULIPS FOR YOU FLOWER LOVERS! I am shouting it from the roof tops! I won’t have tons just yet but I will have tulips. If you let me know you are interested I will package them accordingly. If three of you show interest, then you will get good bunches. If sixty of you are interested, well them you all might get one or two each to make everyone happy. But know that there are plenty more on the way.

This week the temperatures seem to be getting more moderate, so the ranunculus and the next batch of tulips are going to be going into the greenhouse, with lots of protection. The tulips need more light, as do the ranunculus, and I need the space for seeding. That and our dog Jager thinks that the ranunculus corms are great things to play with, so we have taken a gate from the barn to block off the door to the dirty room to keep him out, but that makes life here more interesting because everything I need to do is on the other side of the gate Argh. So they have to go into the greenhouse, and all will be happier because it will be cooler and we will be warmer. I won’t have to open the door to vent the dirty room to keep it cool.

The days are getting longer, and the action is picking up. Still have lots of classes that I am doing, get the learning in while I have the time, but things are certainly picking up.

I leave you with a picture of moving the flowering crate into cool storage to hold it for you all on Friday.

So remember, if you are interested in tulips on Friday, make sure you let me know. The pick up area will be different, probably Main Street Cheese, but details will follow on Thursday.

I am looking forward to seeing you all, believe you me. Until then think flowers. Allie

You might think that celebrating the arrival of February might not mean much, but to this flower grower it is everything. The two most important things are for my psyche is the days will really start to get longer, yay! and hopefully the temperatures will start to moderate because my dirty room is really starting to get kinda full.

The seed racks at the moment are filled with ranunculus sproutings and the first batch of seedlings, the crates in the middle are transplanted ranunculus and to the left which you can’t see yet are the tulip crates.

Patience isn’t one of my virtues, and am I worrying over these babies. Exciting to be sure, but omg, worrying. I just need the temperatures to moderate so I can get them in the greenhouse and out of the dirty room. I am going to need the space for all the flower seedling babies.

So you are asking, I can hear it cause my ears are burning, “When am I going to have flowers?” I am trying my hardest. At this point, I would like to say before the end of February, but all I can say is, “Stay tuned.” When it happens believe you I will be yelling it form the rooftops because I will be so damn excited. But until then, Patience. I am told it is a virtue.

So. When the flowers happen, know that your flowers are being grown responsibly, have almost zero carbon miles, have been nurtured with love and will last so much longer than flowers that aren’t being grown locally.

So until next time. Allie

To tulip time. Ok I will be honest, I check the bulbs almost hourly, and no, that doesn’t speed up the blooming process anymore than getting a tea kettle to boil. It yields complete frustration, but also so much joy of what is to come.

So this is where we are now. The first three crates were pulled into the dirty room last Tuesday, Have a look at where we are….

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As you can see, we are making progress. Four more crates come out of the bulb room this Tuesday. The dirty room is going to be very very full if the temperatures don’t calm down a bit. I can’t put them into the greenhouse because the nights are just too cold for them. Even with frost cloth, it will be too cold at night. Can you hear me sigh very deeply?

The ranunculus are also really stating to sprout like crazy, so in another week or two they will be potted up in crates and they will go into the unheated greenhouse with frost protection, and into the very open ended high tunnel. The anemones on the other hand are taking their sweet time, but I’m not stressing, much, because they are putting on good root growth.

I am trying to find a solution for my flower club people for flower pick up this February and March. I have a thought but haven’t checked it out yet, but we have a couple weeks yet. I think. I will keep you posted. At the moment our driveway is a giant glacier, and we look like Antrim Lumber South with all the pile of lumber for the still ongoing garage build. Enter another deep sigh. I will certainly let everyone know what transpires. Fingers crossed please.

I know that everyone is as excited about the tulips and the other early spring flowers that will be available this spring. So. Here we go.

To be a member to the Flowers of Lottarock, It is a cost of $100. It acts as a gift card, your purchase is deducted from your balance. Your card is good for two years from the date purchased. If you empty your card it is easily refillable. Flowers from the flower club can be picked up at the farm on Tuesday afternoons and Friday mornings. You can buy either by the stem, or I will make a bunch up for you, also priced by the stem. If, and that is a big if, I am organized, I will also have bunches pre-made for you to just grab and go. Organization isn’t my best skill, but I am improving. But I like you flower people to show your creativeness and build your own.

If you would like to purchase a card, a check can be sent to Flowers at Lottarock, PO box 35, Hancock NH 03449, please also send along your address so I can send you your card. You don’t need your card when you come because I do keep track for you but sometimes you might like to know what your balance is.

Stay tuned to the blog for details….very important. I will also post on Instagram if you follow me there…..

I leave you of a photo of two years ago of field grow tulips…oh the joy of what is to come.

Till next time. Allie

If you hadn’t noticed, the days are getting longer in the evening at least. We can go out and do chores at 5:15 now and not need a flashlight to see what we are doing. Progress!

Did you know that yesterday was International Tulip Day? I didn’t until all the flower growers that I follow on instagram were wishing everyone happy tulip day holding either their tulips from last year or this year’s crop. Very envious of those with this year’s crop already, but next year hopefully I to will have tulips to hold in my arms on International Tulip day, which is held on the third Saturday of January of you were wondering.

If you are really wondering about it, google it. It is sooooo amazing I am hoping to go next year. This years was cancelled because of you know what, Covid, but hopefully by this time next year it will all be a distant memory.

So what has been happening here at the Rock? Learning of course, watching my tulips which is about as good as waiting for a kettle to boil. Pointless, but must be done. Some of the seeds have geminated and I made the critical decision to move the ranuculus and anemones onto the seed starting shelves in the dirty room because they were doing nothing in the bulb room and it was driving me crazy. I also don’t have to put my coat on every two hours to go into the bulb room to see how they were doing, or not as the case. So the dirty room is just getting dirtier and somehow smaller because until the temperatures moderate, the tulip crates will be brought into there for growing on.

So. My plan is… that the tulip crates will have one more week in the bulb room at 48 degrees, then drop the temps to holding and every week I haul out two or three crates of bulbs to force for sale. So, if I get my math sorta correct….The earliest I will have tulips available will be the week of Feb. 21, or from anytime then on. I hope you all love tulips because I will have buckets of them.

So. By the first week of February, if you don’t have a credit from last year’s flower card you might want to think about getting a flower card to be ready. I will always have them ready but I don’t want anyone to miss out. I will let you know when the time is right. So stay tuned. I will keep you all posted, believe me, I am as excited as you all are for some local farm grown, chemical free, long lasting flowers that haven’t been shipped from overseas.

Until next week, I will be dreaming beautiful tulips. Allie

I know this is a week late but I thought I would give you all a break, especially since not tons has been happening, but it is a new year and new happenings.

My most exciting tidbit is that the tulips are a growing. Have a look at this!

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Pretty exciting isn’t it? OK for me it is, but fingers crossed that in another 6 weeks I will have beautiful tulips available for you all.

The next exciting thing is that last week I soaked all 500 of the ranunculus and anemone corms and they are now pre-sprouting in the bulb room. At least I hope they are. This is always the nerve wracking, nail biting part for me because the corms are so prone to rot, can’t have them to dry but certainly not too wet. Soon, I hope to have them planted in the high tunnel and into crates in the greenhouse.

Seeding has begun. Icelandic poppies, and something else, can’t remember. Then will be the perennials and the cool crops. Meanwhile, while I have nothing to do…

I am taking a slew of flower learning courses. This weekend was mad learning. Four talks on Friday that were on the woohoo of growing flowers, eight talks on Saturday all dealing with the technicalities of growing, that was really good, and today on marketing all the flowers. Thank you to Tom and Suzie who let me sit in their cozy room using their internet for some of the talks because our internet is squirrely this weekend. Of all times, really. I will be so happy to have real internet some year.

Now I just have to register for “Flowering in the Northeast” which is sponsored by UMaine and is really good, and then, a tulip forcing refresher for the course I took last year. This time it will be videos in living color and not just the instructors sitting in their offices talking to us. Then before you know it, I will be flat out and flowers hopefully will be available.

I will have to say, that I am totally thankful for the snow that came the other day because it will act as insulation for the perennials and the tulips that are planted in the ground. They and I are thankful for the added insulation for when the polar vortex pours in this week. Brrrrr.

So. Until next week. Stay warm, and think flowers.

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

Sometimes I feel as though I am going in far too many directions, trying to get everything done on time to get flowers to you on time. Talk about planning. Tulips and other bulbs need to be ordered in May, to be planted in November to be in your happy hands by March. Phew. Seeds need to be ordered and some started by January so you can enjoy them this summer, then I also need to think about the autumn flowers that also need to be ordered like now, so I an have a decent selection so you have a decent selection in the fall. It is like tossing a bunch of balls in the air and keeping them all going. And yes, I do have sleepless nights trying to figure it all out. That is just scheduling, and nothing to do with the vagaries of growing, like weather, which I really have no control over.

I wish I were younger, but since that isn’t going to happen I just need to do it all now. Everything I read is just pick a few crops and do them all well, but I just want to grow everything, within reason. I love growing the odd bits because they are what makes your arrangements so special. I just love seeing what some flowers do and how to grow them. Like pumpkin on a stick. Weird to grow yes, interesting curve to figure out how to use it in an arrangement, but I just might have it figured out. Will I grow them again, yes, just because. It turns out that although they look delicate, they stand up to freezing temps so for your outdoor floral arrangements, they work. Here are two views of pumpkins on a stick.

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So one never knows what will just happen. One just has to try, keep an open mind, and have fun.

Now that the gardens are put to bed for the season, my mind goes like this. Tulips. First 3500 in. Tick. Bulb crates. Tick. Potting mix to plant next 2500 tulips in. Tick. Bulb room for next 2500 tulip bulbs….sorta.

Getting there. The temperature is holding at 40F, all by itself. I will paint it white in the spring, and I will more than likely have to run an extension cord this winter, but…getting there. A big Yay to Paul. Big boo to Tim the building inspector.

Flower seeds for spring…. making lists and checking them twice….finding a market for all my tulips….what was I thinking? Look at the clock by the bed, crap, only 2:00 am….what am I forgetting? But the floor of the greenhouse is done, just have to add the landscape cloth and it is done until the tulips are ready to go in and get ready for you.

Enough of me. I leave you with a little last minute table scape for Thanksgiving. Waterless so when the cats decide they need to play with it water won’t spill all over the table. You can make this as well. Fresh sage from the garden, rosehips, dried grasses and strawflowers. If you find you need some dried flowers and grasses to boost your table scape, email me and I will set some aside for you. Next year I will be more organized. (If we are lucky).

I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. And my thanks is to all of you who keep me going with your enthusiam and love of flowers. I couldn’t do this with out you.