Lisa Mason Ziegler

I’m sharing more details on our Flower Farming School Online course because registration is just around the corner! This post is to give a look at how the course works and how you will be able to interact with the technology and with us.

• When you purchase the course you will have unlimited access to all of the course materials: videos, slideshows, resources, etc.

• You will be asked to setup a username and password during checkout. This information will be required to re-enter our platform and get into your Library.

• You can enter your Library at anytime through the Course Login button located on our website Online Course page.

• In your Library will be the course Flower Farming School Online. If you also purchased Cool Flowers, Beyond the Book for Flower Farming it will also appear there. You click on the course to enter.

• Flower Farming School Online is a 6 week course. Once school starts October 29 a new class will appear in your course Library each week. You will have all 6 classes in your Library by the end of the 6 weeks.

• Each weekly class will include several sessions made up of videos and slideshows. There will also be resources attached to those weekly classes.

• I created the individual sessions to be 20 minutes or less so they can be easily watched on the fly if needed.

• We will have a secret Facebook page that is for Flower Farming School Online students only. This is where all flower farming course questions can be posted. This page is monitored by myself and my team to answer questions and students can also support one another.

• I will also be doing Facebook Lives on the secret page when a particular topic sparks lots of questions. The Live events will be announced in advance so you can attend but it will also be recorded to watch later at anytime on the Facebook page. You must have your own Facebook page to be able to join this closed group.

I hope this answer some of your questions on how the whole online course works.

Reminders:

• Registration will open for School October 1 to October 10.

• School starts October 29.

• If you sign up to be notified you will receive a special coupon towards school that is good for the first 24 hours of registration. We will send it to you the day before and when registration opens.

• Extensions for registration or the coupon cannot be offered so please set a reminder!

I hope to see you in school!

-Lisa Z.

Lisa Mason Ziegler is a commercial cut-flower farmer in Newport News, Virginia; she lectures and writes about organic and sustainable gardening. You can email Lisa at lisa@shoptgw.com , call her at 757-877-7159 or visit her website www.TheGardenersWorkshop.com .

Order Lisa’s new book Vegetables Love Flowers now!

Like us on Facebook  and follow us on Instagram to keep up with the farm

 

I was a novice gardener back in 1997 when I discovered that cut-flower farming was a career possibility. I had never dreamed I could become a flower farmer. Besides not knowing anything about farming, I lived in the middle of the city and only had a large yard. Looking back now, what appeared as odds stacked against me, actually became a big part of my flower-farming-business success story.

I launched my urban farming business in 1998 and for the first 11 years, I farmed and produced great abundance from less than a half-acre garden. In 2009, I was able to purchase the adjoining acre and a half of land, and my little city farmette took a big leap in production. For the following 8 years, it was a full production farm serving over 20 florists, 2 farmers’ markets, 2 supermarket chains along with two CSA type programs. I was growing a bunch of flowers…

Today, I still maintain an acre and a half working garden as I pursue writing and teaching to share my experiences from the past 20 years as an urban farmer. My farming focus has evolved as I no longer produce cut flowers for the masses. I am growing for my projects, and the resulting cut flowers are sold to existing customers.

I truly believe, that anyone who wants to, can become a successful flower farmer. Take what you have and make the most of it—dreams do come true. I have created Flower Farming School Online to offer the steps so you can realize your dreams, too.

– Lisa

Click here to be notified when the registration doors open for Flower Farming School Online!

About my farming conditions:

• An urban farm located in the southeastern part of Virginia.
• Do not have a greenhouse or hoop houses; all of my growing is done outdoors in the garden. I do occasionally use low tunnels.
• I start all of my transplants in my work building/garage using the soil blocking method and grow lights.  
• The farm is in winter hardiness zone 7; with a first expected fall frost date of mid-November and the last expected spring frost is mid-April.
• Winter temperatures go into the teens with single digits for short periods.
• Occasional snow.
• Typically do not have much spring but go from cold to hot quickly.
• Summers are long, hot, can be dry, and humid.

More on Lisa’s Story…

Lisa Mason Ziegler is a commercial cut-flower farmer in Newport News, Virginia; she lectures and writes about organic and sustainable gardening. You can email Lisa at lisa@shoptgw.com , call her at 757-877-7159 or visit her website www.TheGardenersWorkshop.com .

Order Lisa’s new book Vegetables Love Flowers now!

Like us on Facebook  and follow us on Instagram to keep up with the farm

I sometimes sit and wonder, how in the world did reading a book (The Flower Farmer) a little over 20 years ago lead me to where I am today? My flower farming idea has grown into a multifaceted business that I enjoy.

Today as a flower farmer, author, speaker and online retailer I am totally smitten that dreams can come true with work and determination. I love what I do and that I’m able do it with my family.

One part of this business is our catalog and online garden shop. We offer the same tools, seeds, and supplies that I use here on the farm. In addition to the online store, Suzanne and I have traveled all over the country for the past 13 years giving lectures and taking along our products to do pop-up shops. We have developed a nice group of customers and  appreciate you all so much.

As the business has grown we have had to face some growing pains along the way, all good. The current pain is we cannot continue to house, maintain, or grow the online garden shop warehouse here on the farm. So, instead of closing our online garden shop –we are moving our warehouse!

How will this affect our customers? You wouldn’t even notice unless you happen to read the return address on your order from us. This warehouse move up north will happen this summer and should go without a hitch on filling online orders. Our only regret with this move is that it will eliminate our ability to offer free order pickup for our local customers and to do pop-up shops. Our stock will no longer be housed here on the farm, but my books will still be here.

We are very excited to take this next step and to work with business associates that we know will do a top notch job for us and you. This will allow us to focus on creating more gardening and flower farming videos and so much more!

Moving isn’t the only thing going on here on the farm, check these out:

Open Farm

On-farm Gardening and Farming Workshops

Sign up for the 2019 catalog here

Online Courses coming this winter!

Till we meet again—

Lisa Z.

Lisa Mason Ziegler is a commercial cut-flower farmer in Newport News, Virginia; she lectures and writes about organic and sustainable gardening. You can email Lisa at lisa@shoptgw.com , call her at 757-877-7159 or visit her website www.TheGardenersWorkshop.com .

Order Lisa’s new book Vegetables Love Flowers now!

Like us on Facebook  and follow us on Instagram to keep up with the farm

This is for sure one of the busiest seed starting times of the year and for me, one of the most exciting times! Woohoo—let’s get some baby plants going! The anticipation and excitement are almost too much. (Some, have even been known to overindulge into this practice of seed starting, but no names please…) All seeds and supplies have been gathered and we are going at it here on the farm.

So, when do you start anyway? Not to go down a rabbit hole, but first you need to know an important fact, there are two different types of annual seeds: tender warm-season seeds and hardy cool-season seeds. Knowing which type seeds you have is key to determining when you should plant and grow that plant. Once you know when to plant a transplant you can count back to when to start the seed. Simple really.

Warm-season seeds are those that grow and prefer the heat of summer. They include plants like tomatoes, zinnias, squash, sunflowers, etc. This is the group of seeds we are currently beginning to start.

Cold-hardy seeds are those that like cooler temperatures and are often planted in the fall or very early spring. Some of these are lettuces, snapdragons, spinach, cabbages, sweet peas, poppies, etc. This group of plants are already in the ground in early spring and preparing to bloom and provide a harvest.

So, back to when to start. This season is coming upon us to start warm season seeds (tomatoes, sunflowers, etc,). But beware— don’t start to early! One of the most frustrating struggles I hear folks have when starting indoors is how big and unmanageable the plants got before they could plant outdoors. This is simply because in our excitement to get started, we start to soon. Which leads to an unhealthy, tall, lanky plant that will not perform and produce like a younger healthier plant.

Solution: get excited and get outdoors and do spring chores like weeding, mulching, and adding compost, etc. Wait on seed starting to the correct time. The correct time for me is later than most seed starters because we use the soil blocking method that really accelerates root and plant growth. Examples; we start tomatoes 4-5 weeks before planting out and zinnias 2-3 weeks.

The important tip here is to start later than earlier for a healthy plant to transplant outdoors!

If you’d like to learn more on seed starting checkout my free video series Seed Starting Saturdays and my All Things Soil Blocking that pools many resources in one spot for your convenience.

Happy Early Spring!

Lisa

 

 

I am suffering the consequences this fall of planting my Cool Flower seeds and transplants in the garden too early. It doesn’t really matter what drove me to break my own rules— and by the way, breaking the rules totally backfired, as rule breaking generally goes.

What troubles you may be asking? Let me count the ways as I am currently recovering from one of the most frustrating! For easy finger pointing I’m going to just list them below as I have lived them out. My correct planting time for fall hardy annuals is early October. I planted in early September and have suffered because of it. Early October is the recommended 6-8 weeks before the first expected hard frost here in my zone 7 garden.

One of the benefits and key ingredients of fall planting is the cooler temperatures, especially at night. This is not happening in early September here in southeastern Virginia. Hot days with warm nights does not make for happy cool-season hardy annuals. Read on for their revenge.

The Troubles:

1. Slow and spotty germination of the direct seeded flowers I planted. Guess what wasn’t slow and spotty to germinate? The weeds. So, while my flower seeds sat there and waited for “their” preferred cool conditions the weeds well, flourished.
2. The Bells of Ireland began slowly sprouting a couple of weeks ago, but oh so poorly. However, the past few days temps dipped at night and we had rain and guess what? The Bells are popping; however, they are so many different sizes from tiny to big which makes hoeing those early weeds difficult at best. I just finished hand weeding three 80-foot rows. Something I haven’t done in years.
3. We plant transplants into biodegradable film for many reasons. For fall plantings we use the black film because it helps to warm the soil through winter and spring. Well, when you plant too early and the daytimes temperatures are still occasionally heating up, it can toast transplants in one afternoon. It was to warm one afternoon and I toasted about half of our transplants. We have had a whole second round of seed starting to produce plugs to plant into the burnt-up transplants holes. A very sad state of affairs for the seed starter and the planter around here.
4. Those transplants that survived the heat in the film are now growing way too big to go into winter. So, I just spent time cutting back all those plants. The stems now all lay in a pile.

To seal this whole ‘I will never plant early again’ deal; we are nowhere near having leaves to mulch the pathways, so I am having to keep the pathways weed free while we wait for fall to really start…

LZ’s old farmer rule: stick with the rules to succeed with the least amount of work.

Learn more about when you should plant hardy annuals and more—All Things Cool Flowers.

Lisa Mason Ziegler is a commercial cut-flower farmer in Newport News, Virginia; she lectures and writes about organic and sustainable gardening. You can email Lisa at lisa@shoptgw.com , call her at 757-877-7159 or visit her website www.TheGardenersWorkshop.com .

Pre-order Lisa’s new book Vegetables Love Flowers now!

Like us on Facebook  and follow us on Instagram to keep up with the farm