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Open Farm, What to Expect?

by | Jun 18, 2017

When folks learn what my chosen work is their response is normally, I’d love to come see your garden. Thus, the once a year Open Farm event was born several years ago.

My little urban cut-flower farm has been a “working farm” for 20 years. This means that I get up 5 days a week, walk across the driveway at 6am and put on my working gear and go at it until 4pm like the rest of the working world. This doesn’t leave time in a work day for visits or tours nor are we equipped or staffed for parking, etc. While opening creates added work to the already heavy load–we love sharing what we do and opening our gate once a year is a highlight for us.

Late June is a great time in the garden. The spring blooming flowers, planted last fall, are still blooming (My book Cool Flowers tells how to do this!) The spring planted, summer blooming flowers have begun. We are still planting and seed-starting for summer and will be until early August (My book The Easy Cut-Flower Garden tells how to have flowers all summer!)  Then in August we begin starting seeds for fall planting for those spring bloomers to start the whole process all over again.

Learn about why native plants are critical to establishing an organic garden. Our native 400 foot border, planted to block the view of the coming housing development and to provide habitat is coming into its galore and is loaded with wildlife. The Insect hotel is frequently visited by a host of creatures and bugs–all good.

Perhaps the highlight for many is visiting the warehouse that is home to our online garden shop stock. We do not have a storefront to visit other than online–except for this one day a year. The doors to our warehouse are open for you to shop and we always have some killer deals for the day!

I will be giving an ongoing talking tour of the property from 9am to 1:30pm. Parking is on the street and please be mindful of my neighbors and don’t park in their yards! There are 2 side streets, Elworo and St.Francis across from me that have plenty of curb parking available.

The bonus of the day– come meet Beri our garden girl!

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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