Lisa Mason Ziegler

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…

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

Did you know that there are ‘cool vegetables’? They are veggies that appreciate and thrive in cool-to-cold weather just like Cool Flowers. You can apply the same growing concepts found in my book about growing cool-season flowers to these cool-season veggies.

Who are they?

• Lettuce *
• Spinach *
• Chard
• Kale *
• Collards
• Mustard
• Beets *
• Turnips *
• Radishes
• Carrots *
• Peas
• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Cauliflower

(Those marked with the asterisk * even winter over to harvest during winter in my Zone 7 garden under low tunnel hoops and lightweight row cover.) View all cool season seeds. 

When to Plant?

This group of veggies tends to thrive in the cool crisp days of fall, early winter and in early spring. Mid-summer, fall and very early spring are the times to plant seeds and / or transplants.

When to plant depends on how long it takes the plant to mature to a harvestable size. As example, broccoli should be started from seed 12-14 weeks before your first frost in fall to allow it to mature before winter conditions start. While leaf lettuce only needs 4 weeks to reach a harvestable size. Seed packets or plant tags should provide this information. 

Easy Fall Salad Garden

I find growing a fall salad garden is easy, quick, and is a great way to get started with ‘cool vegetables’. Leaf lettuce, spinach, and radishes can all have their seeds planted directly in the garden and will sprout quickly in the warm days and cool nights of fall. Watering the bed everyday during sprouting will speed up the getting started process.

I grow both leaf lettuce and head lettuce– however leaf lettuce is the quickest and most productive. Once the leaves are 3 inches or so, start harvesting. Just like flowers, the more you cut, the more will come.  Holding the tops of the leaves, cut the entire plant at just above ground level with a sod cutter or clipper makes for easy harvesting. I do my best to keep the leaves clean during harvest which makes washing easier. The plants will regrow fairly quickly when happy.

My little lettuce patch is only 3 feet long with 4 rows of lettuce and it produces a ton. I harvest one row a week so the rows are all in different stages of regrowth. Spinach can be treated much the same although not as quick at regrowth but it does regrow.

Radishes are quick growers too. Plant a few seeds each week up until 3-4 weeks before first frost.  Pull from the garden what you need for a weekly harvest and radishes tend to hold well in the refrigerator.

Cool-season vegetables suffer from the same affliction as cool-season flowers: because of their awkward planting times most gardeners just skip over them. Once on the calendar to plant at the proper time they just may become some of your favorites homegrown vegetables!

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 newest book Vegetables Love Flowers now!

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