One Season Fades, Another Takes Root
As I write this, I have six buckets of flowers sitting on my table, waiting to be arranged into something even more beautiful than the individual flowers themselves. I still love watching a bucket of freshly harvested blooms turn into a beautiful bouquet!
I can hardly believe we are officially into fall and already a fourth of the way through October! As the days grow shorter and the nights get cooler, the warm-season annuals have slowed way down, and some are nearly finished for the year—except for those gorgeous Coco Marigolds that I succession planted back in July! They are still putting on quite a show.
This past week, I had my last major harvest of dahlias, along with most of the zinnias and cosmos. The lisianthus, however, are still going strong with their second flush of blooms, which has been one of the sweetest surprises of this growing season. The ageratum and hydrangeas are putting on their final show, while the heirloom mums are just getting ready to burst into bloom over the next week or two. I love how one flower finishes just as another knows their performance is up next.
But as much as I love having flowers still blooming, I've reached that point in the season where I'm ready to start cleaning things up and preparing for next spring! There's something satisfying about clearing out the old plants, adding fresh compost, tilling the soil, and hilling up the beds in anticipation of another growing season. So, little by little, I've been working my way through our original garden space, getting it cleaned up and ready for a fresh start. I'm especially loving the rye and clover I planted on the eastern, wetter side of our original garden. It's such a bright, lush green that it almost feels like spring again! I keep imagining all those roots working their way down into our heavy clay soil, helping to loosen it up, improve the soil structure, and hopefully allow for better drainage next season. After all the water struggles we've had this year, that's an exciting thought!
And then there's the new garden space!
We've added an entirely new growing area, just as large as the first, dedicated to cool-hardy annuals and a large peony patch. This has been a huge undertaking, especially with all the rain and heat we've experienced this year!
We decided to make the beds and aisles a little wider in this new section, keeping in mind the possibility of offering U-Pick flowers in the future. We haven't decided for sure if we'll go that route, but we wanted to plan ahead and leave room for people to comfortably wander through the flowers if we do! I've also planted grass seed in the aisles, and I'm really hoping it has time to sprout and get established before winter. After battling so much mud this year, I'm hoping those grassy aisles will make a big difference!
I've been busy planting both plugs and seeds, with hopes of having an abundance of beautiful flowers in early spring. Snapdragons, delphinium, Sweet Dianthus, and campanula have all gone into the ground as plugs, while I've direct-seeded lupine, bupleurum, Bells of Ireland, nigella, Bachelor Buttons, poppies, larkspur, and ammi. It's exciting to imagine what this space might look like next spring!
Burning holes in the weed barrier using the handy template Adam made for me, all while listening to the Ohio State–Kent State game. (I'm kind of a crazy sports lady, too! But I’m all about being productive…no time for sitting! 😂)
If you ever want a total-body workout, just use a broadfork on multiple 50-foot garden beds, and you can skip the gym for at least a week! 😂
Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate with my carefully planned fall planting schedule. Ideally, these plugs, and some of the seeds, should have been planted six to eight weeks before our first frost, giving them enough time to establish a good root system before the cold weather sets in. The goal isn't necessarily to get much growth above ground this fall, but to develop strong roots that will help the plants survive the winter and take off when warmer weather returns in the spring.
Mine didn't quite make it into the ground during that ideal window, so we'll see how they fare! We'll also be putting low hoop tunnels covered with frost cloth over the beds to give the young plants a little extra protection from the harsh winter weather. I'm hopeful they'll do well, but I also know that flower farming involves a whole lot of learning, experimenting, and sometimes just waiting to see what happens!
As this first growing season begins to wind down, I find myself feeling a little bit of everything—thankful for all the beautiful flowers we've enjoyed, relieved to see some of the hard work coming to an end, and already excited about what next year might bring. There have certainly been plenty of challenges along the way, but also so many wonderful surprises.
For now, there's still plenty of work to be done before winter settles in. And those six buckets of flowers sitting on my table aren't going to arrange themselves! 😊