Tip #1: Know Your Frost Dates Identify not only your hardiness zone, but also your historic average first and last frost dates. Your hardiness zone can only tell you which flowers you can plant in the fall to winter over. To figure out when you need to plant, in both...
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Top 5 Must-Have Flowers Every Farmer Should Grow
During our high-production years, we sold our cut flowers to florists, grocery stores, farmers markets, and in subscriptions. Want to know what our all-time favorite must-have flowers are? The ones I think EVERY farmer should grow? Read on! #1: Sunflowers But not just...
Best Flowers To Grow For Summer Bouquets
Bouquet Builders that Beat the Heat We've just passed the longest day of the year - Summer Solstice. Here in western North Carolina the heat is on from now until fall frost, and I’m not just talking about humidity and daily rising temperatures. Summer heat can take...
5 Best Books for Starting a Cut-Flower Farm
Back before I was a flower farmer, when I was still just a “gardener gone wild” as I like to say, there weren’t very many learning resources available. I started before the internet, folks! So naturally, books were the main way to expand my knowledge. And just as I...
Succession Plant Your Way to Flower Farming Success
In 2018, I had the incredible opportunity to attend Lisa’s on-farm Flower Farmer Boot Camp to learn what it takes to become a successful flower farmer. Those two days would change my life forever but what really blew me away was the number one thing Lisa told us we...
How Profitable is Flower Farming? (the truth from a farmer)
Can you really make money growing and selling cut-flowers? You may have heard that cut-flowers are one of the most profitable specialty crops you can grow. But how profitable is flower farming really? Here’s the truth, from a flower farmer with over 25 years of...
Basil for the Big Win!
Everyone loves it, we plant tons of it all summer long and we sell every single stem of it! From our florists and wedding designers to our grocery store clients and weekly farmer’s market customers, people just love it! Basil has turned out to be one of the most...
Organize your Seed Packets
Like many of you, I have lots of packets of seeds. More than I can plant in one season for sure. I will confess, I feel like I need them all! Worse yet I used to miss planting some because I somehow misplaced them. As an attempt to maintain my seed sanity, I have come...
A Garden Love Story: Lisa and Steve Ziegler
From our 2009 archives. It all started with a dog. In 1992 I was a happy single girl employed as the office manager at the Denbigh Animal Hospital. Just loving my job and minding my own business. Then this guy walked in with his yellow Labrador Retriever—without an...
Seed Starting Schedule for Summer Flowers
This is the general guide that I follow to start my warm-season tender annuals. We certainly tweak it from time to time and don't always stick to it, but this gets us up and going. This is all based on the last expected spring frost date. In my 8a winter hardiness...