Whoa! Last Sunday of April!
Well this quarter of 2025 zipped right by. How does this happen? Is it because the flower season starts in January with hauling in crates of tulips? Is it because by mid February tulip harvest has begun? Is because by March we are in the thick of tulips, seeding and getting ready for the next season? Is it because the end of April has seen the last of the forced tulips and yes, the first in-ground tulips will be harvested tomorrow? I don’t know, but time needs to move down just a titch please.
It has been another busy week on the farm, but no news there I guess. The willows that were planted out are showing new growth which is exciting and even more exciting is the new shrubs are looking really good so the plan for this week is to get the cardboard down in the rows and the wood chips on top. I fed everything on Thursday in anticipation of the weekend’s rain, which we did get a good amount of, so now mulching. After that gets done it will essentially be hands off for quite a while, which will be good because there are plenty of other things to attend to.
It appears as though the bird attempting to build a nest in the greenhouse thought better of its chosen location which is great, but now I have a bird building a nest in the flower shed. Not quite as bad because it can come an go at its pleasure and I am only really in there once or twice a day every few days.
In the dirty room (which we can now spin around in there is so much space) the seeding is going right along. I have a lot of transplanting to do this week and another big batch of sowing, this time the zinnias and cosmos and other things that I missed. The chrysanthemum cuttings are looking good so far which is very exciting, and the next batch of seedling transplants can go out into the greenhouse to harden off.
The greenhouse is looking mighty full with the bench filling up again. The narcissus will all have to go under the bench this week because I have buds on the anemone and soon I will have to be able to get to the crates to harvest some flowers! Whoo hoo. I don’t see much happening on the ranunculus yet, but hopefully those flower buds won’t be far behind. The tunnel is looking good, and it seems as though the ranunculus that I planted without soaking have decided to show signs of life after all, with the back up plants ready to get planted now. Nothing like a little bit of competition to spur growth on. After this week things will be getting really tight in there.
For the past few years I have been asked to do the flowers for the Music on Norway Pond benefit which I really enjoy doing, lets me stretch my creativity. So this is what I created yesterday.
After today it looks as though we are going to be in for a stretch of nice weather so I will be pulling tulips, I suspect so, by Friday. Fingers crossed there will be a selection of varieties, but other flowers are rocking in as well so things are looking good on the floral side.
I will leave you with last week’s #windowframe. It is essentially the prototype of what I created yesterday. Enjoy.
Have a great week, Allie. I dream of flowers, do you?