First Baby Plants of the Year!
just born!
I cannot tell you how it feels to start seeds and succeed. Once your first baby is born you are hooked for life! Tending them each morning inside my little plant room than is warm and sunny is the perfect place to be while winter still lingers…
To learn more about seed starting ans soil blocking click here.
Book Signing was Fun and Deliciuos!
The book signing went off really well yesterday at the Carrot Tree Kitchen in Yorktown, VA. I took Susan Yoder Ackerman, my good friend and editor along and we where both pleasantly surprised with the delicious High Tea meal that was served. Having never attend a High Tea before, it was such fun to be with a room full of gals with their friends sipping tea, eating yummy things and then talking gardening! The day was set for it also, coming in around the mid-60′s.
I chatted about how I got started, my absolute obsession with growing masses of flowers and then offered how my book The Easy Cut-Flower Garden book can guide anyone that wants to do it at home easily.
Fun time over all and we sold many books and Journals!
Buy my books now! Buy my books now!
Tour our Farm! Historic Garden Week 2012
Garden Club of Virginia’s Historic Garden Week!
We are so honored for our farm to be on the Newport News tour ticket for Historic Garden Week 2012!
The Newport News Tour is Wednesday, April 26, 2012.
Purchase tickets: Click Here
What will you expect to see on our farm?
Our fall planted, spring blooming garden should be on the verge of or in bloom. This includes snapdragons, sweet william, bachelor buttons, corn cockle, bells of ireland, larkspur, columbine, campanula, anchusa, rudbeckias, sweet peas, scabiosa, ammis, calendula, and more!
Our fingers are crossed that our 80 year old tulip magnolia tree will be in bloom crowning our beloved shade garden of columbine, lenten roses, primroses, Virgina bluebells and more!
Can’t make the tour? Watch our video garden tours: Click Here
Hope to meet you on the tour, I will be giving a continuous tour throughout the day.
Time to Prune!
The planning stage of our growing season is done. Now it is time to start doing it!
This year I have an added area of chores, to groom our landscape in a more timely manner because of company coming. We are having the March 24 workshop guests here following the program and our farm is on the Historic Garden Week tour for Newport News…yikes!
Pruning chores are at the top of the list. The goal is to have this done by valentine’s day. My most challenging chop job is the liriope. Nothing is fresher looking than a bed of all freshly grown foliage on a mass of liriope, but what a job! If you wait to much longer, the new growth will have started and you will cut there tips off, not good.
The trees and lone rose bush next. We are pruning some of our neighbors trees that are hanging over our fence, with permission of course. This will really brighten the corner of one garden and liberate a couple of fig trees.
The more I write, the I realize I have to do….
Finish your winter chores so you can enjoy spring in your garden!
Lisa Z
Cool Weather Seed Starting Today!
I am always eager to start the new season and today is the day. We are planting a second go round of some of those plants we planted in fall that have wintered over and are ready to bloom when spring comes. By replanting them in really early spring (cold doesn’t hurt them) we can extend our bloom time. Those planted in fall are ready to pop into action, those planted in March will take time to get established and then start getting ready to bloom. They will not be quite as tall or as abundant, but it is sure nice to have a fresh crop coming on when the others are past their peak.
What I am starting: Rudbeckia Indian Summer, Rudbeckia Prairie Sun, Rudbeckia Double Daisy, Ammi, Green Mist, Buplerum, Dill, Snaps, Dianthus, Salvia Blue Bedder, and Feverfew.
All available on our store under Seeds then Fall Planted seeds.
Yeah, the season is starting!
Cheers,
Lisa
Join Me for High Tea Feburary 1, in Yorktown, VA.
Feb. 1, 2012, 4-6pm at Carrot Tree Kitchens, Yorktown, VA.
I am telling the story of becoming a flower farmer and how it has grown beyond my wildest expectations!
Please join me! I’d love to see you!
Reservations required: Carrot Tree, Yorktown (757) 988-1999.
The Hidden Farm
I am on a quest to find the hidden farm at our place. The hidden farm is not what you think it is or not what I thought it was until I read more of the Winter Harvest Handbook by Eliot Coleman. The hidden farm is the under used or not being used land or resource you already have.
On our farm the goal for 2012 is to turn crops as quickly as possible, beds will not lay bare or finished after their time. Such as, as soon as a bed of sunflowers is harvested, it is mowed, tilled, and planted within just a few days. This hasn’t also been an option for us while doing all the work by hand, but now that we are adding a tractor/tiller/bed maker to our helpers here on the farm this is a reality.
We can almost double the growing square footage of our little farm by finding the “hidden farm” that is right under our nose!
Home gardener’s can certainly do the same. My first thought is making a summer garden a four-season garden. Plant bulbs for spring color, perennials for summer color, shrubs and feature trees for fall color, foliage and berries.
It is often easier to think you could have a better garden or farm if you had more space, but in fact why not make the most of what you have that you are already weeding, mulching and building the soil?
Find your hidden garden! The possibilities are endless.
Happy Winter,
Red-Tailed Hawks Nest
As I sit at my new writing site for the winter I have a great view of our resident hawks nest. We discovered it 2 years ago and have watched their babies grow up. We have been entertained by their first flights, playing, hunting attempts and even wrestling in our gardens.
We all anticipate the spring activity of the nest and yesterday I had my first glance.
As I sat to look out over the farm to ponder my planning, my eye was drawn to the nest. There sitting was one of them, perched on the nest, looking out over the farm just as I was. The sun was shining on their breast and although hundreds of feet away, I could see them as clear as if they right outside my window.
I watched until they flew off, flying over our fields and gardens perhaps looking for a meal or may be pondering the upcoming season and the babies they would raise.
Spring will be bursting soon!
Lisa Z
