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Garden full of flowers, Open Farm

by | May 31, 2015

2015 Sweet Peas

As spring is rapidly moving into summer, I am always surprised by the variety of flowers we grow. To think we can have sweet peas and zinnias at the same time seems crazy– but it’s true.

Each weekly harvest this time of year changes so much. It seems like the peonies were just budding up, and now they are but a memory. The Sunflower harvest always provides the most cheerful buckets and we are so thankful for them–also amazing to have field grown sunflowers at the same time as peonies.

2015 SPring Suns

As the summer flowers are just getting started the hardy annuals planted last fall and very early spring are really stealing the show. The stock planting that was a successful experiment has just finished– and they were gorgeous! A new addition to Cool Flowers. The snaps were equally as beautiful and the sweet peas just won’t stop blooming this year.

2015 Spring 2

Our late spring hardy annuals look to be very promising in volume this year. It would seem that the extended winter with more snow and rain than normal was appreciated by all.

The lessons I learned so far this year? All fall planted hardy annuals definitely need raised beds. Last fall the direct seeded beds were planted in flat beds. Unfortunately this garden spent a great deal of time in standing water with all the rain and snow. Incredible the plants survived, but weed control was impossible with either pathways to wet to walk in or soil to wet to hoe. All of this led to terribly weedy beds of which I ended up mowing down.

2015 Scabie

What I am most thankfully for these days is the ever changing variety in my garden. We have flowers from the first crisp cool days of spring, throughout the brutal heat and humidity of summer right up to the short cool days of fall.

Want to see it all and learn how to do it? I invite you to our once a year in season Open Farm. Join me and let’s walk the garden together. I’ll give an informal talk at 10:30 on having flowers from spring to fall.

2015 Spring

Are you a vegetable gardener and feel like flowers is a waste of real estate? Come learn why flowers missing from your vegetable patch may just be why you can’t get an organic garden going!

Hope to see you June 6, 2015 for our Open Farm!

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 [email protected], call her at 757-877-7159 or visit her website www.shoptgw.com.

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