Fleur du Jour - Just show me the dirt!

Since I started Fleur du Jour as a sort of countdown to Spring and fresh garden flowers, I find it necessary right about now to remind everyone of the simple beauty of soil. Is it not the soil which nourishes the plants, holds the roots, houses the microfauna, holds the water, and feels so incredibly wonderful as it runs through our fingers? I don't know about you, but we just had two snowfalls, are completely snow-covered, are expecting more snow in another day, and then one or two more snow "events" (some event, huh?) in the upcoming week, so I am suddenly really missing the beautiful brown soil and welcoming spring green grass, which grows between my flower rows. Since I am in a suburban neighborhood, I try to make my flowers fit in, hence the 4' flower rows separated by about 30" rows of suburban-familiar lawn. Even with the loss of space to lawn cover, this little flower farm that could, known as Butternut Gardens, cranked out nearly 45,000 cut flower stems in 2014. Here's to nice, warm organic soil! Hope to be working it by mid March, which means only 49 days to dirty hands and fingernails. Yahoo!

Fleur du Jour - Dutch Iris

Hardly subtle!

Fleur du Jour is my way of bringing the beauty of fresh cut flowers into our lives as we feel, perhaps, a bit grey to match the winter weather, although today was a real sparkler around here.  Yesterday I offered up a marvelous subtle spring tulip. Today a very different approach - vibrant Dutch Iris with equally vibrant tulips, columbines and allium. Dutch Iris are planted every fall. Although I do get some repeat bloomers in following springs, I  could not depend on them for the number of blooms I require (or desire). Based on last year's first cut date of May 20, only 119 days to go to those gorgeous deep purple iris. I know that sounds like longer than we want, but that's why we have the likes of anemone, ranunculus and poppies, which burst open even earlier!Enjoy.

Fleur du Jour - Tulips - Bringing hope for Spring

Have faith. We'll be up before you know it.

Of course I had to put tulips into my Fleur du Jour postings! Spring wouldn't be spring without tulips. While we usually can't wait for bright reds and yellows to give us just the perfect pick-me-up that we need as we slog through the sometimes cold, rainy or blizzard-filled days of March, I chose, instead, to highlight one of the softer tulips grown last year at Butternut Gardens. Oh, the reds and yellows were there, as well. Never a worry about that since some 2400 tulips went into the ground the previous fall. Here for your viewing beauty I present a gem, which adds a really nice, cool feel to spring bouquets, and on its own. Based on 2014 first cut date, we can cross our fingers for tulips in another 93 days. Enjoy!

Flower Subscriptions going strong

A spring subscription delivery with tulips, allium, iris and lilac, among others.

One of the joys of flower farming is following all the changes that take place during the course of a growing season and seeing "what's going to come next."

Through the Butternut Gardens Subscription Service, many loyal customers also share in the joy of new flowers every week and the joy of anticipating "what's going to come next."

I am happy to offer several types of subscriptions to meet individual interests and budgets. 

An early summer selection.

Quite a few subscribers receive flowers every week.

Some choose to have fully-made bouquets delivered.

Others choose the 'bucket' option and create their own arrangements from a mixture of loose flowers.

I often hear that a number of flowers make it into the second week, although others, we know, are expectedly more fleeting.

There are many times when I would love to see how  the 'bucket' subscribers choose to display their floral bounty.

Bi-weekly subscriptions are also popular. As just mentioned, a number of flowers last longer than a week, although I would not count on that for the majority of blooms.

Flowers delivered every other week can also come as fully-prepared bouquets or as 'bucket' subscriptions.

One of the most fun parts of subscriptions is that you really do NOT know what is coming next!

Sure, it might be the time of year when Phlox is bountiful, but with what will it be paired? Will it be a monochromatic offering with all lavender or all pink or all white blooms? Will it be sheer Phlox ecstasy - purple, pink, white, deep pink, pink and white swirled phlox all bunched together? What special little accent flower shall I add this week? Mountain mint, perhaps?  Flower subscriptions are truly gifts and surprises!

August bouquet

The third season-long subscription option is the monthly option. Every month fresh flowers arrive at your doorstep.

This seems to be the perfect floral pick-me-up for many subscribers. It is also a very popular gift item - just enough, but not too much - and a full season's worth! For many, it makes their month.

Going from one month to the next, subscribers see the biggest difference in blooms, because what a difference a month makes in the gardens.

It is the difference between peonies and tulips to phlox, iris and daisies; the jump from sunflowers and zinnias to dahlias and chrysanthemums. 

For those who are not certain about receiving flowers regularly, I also offer a one-month trial of four bouquets. This is another perfect gift item. Generally, the biggest concern about flower subscriptions is, "What happens if I want to take vacation?"  I try to be as flexible as possible, and change delivery weeks or double up on flowers other weeks, to best accommodate.  Somehow it all works! Many thanks to my flower subscription customers. I love growing your flowers and surprising you with what comes next.

Tuberose is here!

A singleTuberose stem.

To those of you who have waited so patiently for this year's crop of Tuberose, it is time to celebrate!

The 2014 Tuberose is a-bloomin'.

Many of you have said the fragrance of this beauty reminds you of Jasmine.  

Many have said it reminds you of Hawaii.

Others think Gardenia.

For those of you who do not know Tuberose or its allure, prepare to fall in love! 

Though not large in size, each of the waxy flowers packs quite a wallop of a scent as the blooms spiral open up the stalk. 

Some have called this the secret lily, owing to the fact that a number of lily varieties also have such a strong fragrance.

Tuberose is not a rose and not related to roses. Tuberose is related to Agave plants.

In the field, I leave a number of flowers so I can enjoy the scent for quite a few weeks in late summer and early fall. These few flowers send off fragrance, which wafts through the entire front garden. During the heat of the day, I smell very little of it. Come late afternoon and dusk, however, the fragrance is intense. This is because Tuberose is a night bloomer. In its native Mexican habitat, the Tuberose is pollinated by nocturnal moths. 

Tuberose in bloom. Also showing are the relatively short leaves, which form the bulk of the plant for the better part of the season.

Tuberose is not hardy here, but it is quite easy to dig each year and store. So, that is what I do. I plant in the spring in late April or May.  To allow for the best drainage, I mound the soil a bit so as to actually plant the tuberose very close to the natural soil level. I add a dash of bone meal. Then I cover it with only an inch or two of soil. After watering in, I wait. Fortunately, I do not have to wait as long as one waits on tulips or other spring-flowering bulbs. For the bulk of the summer - some 90 to 120 days - the Tuberoses remain as tufts of light green foliage less than 6 inches tall. Then the magic happens. Flower stalks grow to 3-4 feet tall. I could extend the bloom time by staggering plantings in the spring, but I generally find some variability in bloom time from plant to plant. 

Many of my Farmers' Market customers line up for bunches of Tuberose 'straight up' - no other flowers needed. For several weeks these customers return faithfully for the fragrance, which they report fills their entire apartment or home.  My weekly subscription customers can look forward to either a bunch of Tuberose added to their order or a few stems mixed into their bouquets. As you can see here, I also enjoy tucking Tuberose into arrangements.  Their clear white flowers and sweet fragrance are highlights of each growing season.

When the season comes to a close, I cut back the foliage and dig the Tuberose. For several weeks I let them dry in the sun on sunny days, and bring them inside if precipitation is on the way. Once fully dry, they will be good to go until next spring. Gems! Absolute gems!

Ageratum - my go-to blue for summer and fall

Now that we are into August, one of my favorites - Ageratum - is hitting the bouquets big-time. I just love this soft, powdery grey-blue gem. What a heart it has! Keeps on blooming until frost, but makes a very immediate departure at that time. My mother used to grow Ageratum. Every summer, to complement her beautiful perennial beds and rock garden, she also planted an annual garden around our grass courtyards.  Every summer she went with a red, white and blue theme, using the low-growing white Alyssum, the medium-sized blue Ageratum, and the taller spikes of red salvia. Lots of planting. Lots of summer color. No mulch. At the time, mulch was not used nearly so much as it is today.  I cringe at the thought, but she was from Iowa, and whoever mulches their acres of corn?

The Ageratum I grow is hardly my mother's Ageratum. While puffy mounds of color were perfect for her garden beds, what I am looking for is far greater height.

My varieties of choice are either 'Blue Horizon' or 'Blue Planet.'

Every year I have roughly 300 Ageratum plants, from which i cut thousands of gorgeous stems of flowers. The touch of blue is a wonderful accent for the many bright summer - blooming flowers, but also goes beautifully with the softer tones, such as the rose, peach, and white zinnias.  It looks equally nice with some lime green zinnias.

As we move later into August, and on into September, Ageratum adds a lovely touch to many dahlia-centric arrangements and bouqets.

It looks fabulous with white, lavender, peach, and almost any color at all.

Come fall, when we find the gardens moving into the more bronzy tones, I find Ageratum continues to shine.  It so very often adds just the right touch of contrasting color to make everything else really pop to life. From October Dahlia bouquets and arrangements into November Chrysanthemum presentations, Ageratum makes a welcome splash. While this gathering of autumn color would be marvelous on its own, doesn't it gain from the little hints of blue afforded by a sprig or lavender statice and some of that powdery blue Ageraturm?

No, dear, those aren't wildflowers

I am happy to share the following, which appeared in the national Field To Vase website, for which I am proud to be a guest contributor. Field to Vase is dedicated to helping the public better understand "Slow Flowers", or the growing movement of localizing the flower industry. 

Please view the website at http://fieldtovase.com/  and see the June 6, 2014 blog posting.

Early spring bouquet of daffodils, andromeda and magnolia.

I hear it all the time - “Wow, I love how natural your bouquets look with all those wildflowers in them,” and I think to myself, “Ah, the sorcery!”

While it might look like this farmer just goes out and grabs whatever she finds, and in a sense I do, it is only there for the taking through very careful planning and planting.  Ready to find out more about how YOUR “wildflower bouquet” came to be? 

In the suburban area where I farm, my biggest limitation is space.  I know a good number of local, small-scale flower farmers, and every winter, as we assess the previous year and look forward to a new growing season, we face the same daunting task: how do we fit everything we need, for each and every bouquet or wedding piece needed for every week of the growing season, into our growing space? If I need a specific flower, or more like twenty or so specific flowers and greens for YOUR bouquet on June 24th and your best friend’s bouquet on September 15th, I had better have them planted so I can cut them when needed.  Step 1 of your bouquet is called PLANNING.

When I say planning, I mean mega-planning. Spreadsheets like you wouldn’t believe.  How many of each flower needed for a bouquet? Make that every bouquet. How many seeds to plant?  Is it a sunflower or lily that gives me one bloom each? A snapdragon that might give me two? Ageratum, dahlias or zinnias that give me even more, but won’t bring their blooms until a bit later in the season? How many square feet needed per plant? How many plants and how much space needed for an expected bouquet count? Now let’s talk timing and color. How long from seed to flower, or seed to seedpod if I choose to use some of our other botanical elements? Am I planting for some pastel beauties or some amazing “summer brights” as I call them?  Do you want bright red in June, or would you prefer peachy tones, pink, dusky rose?  What matches terrifically, and what is a near muddy miss?

Dissecting your bouquet a bit, we will likely find one focal flower.  It’s the one that I usually put facing you in the center of the bouquet – a sunflower, lily, peony or hydrangea, for example.  It is often the largest, but sometimes it is not the single flower that truly grabs your attention. More on those little goodies in a bit.  For now, think a minute about you as a gardener. Spring comes. You excitedly plant a few sunflower seeds, which, in time, move into your garden. Each gives you one dazzling sunflower. All is great. Not so for me. 

Because of its one flower limitation, and because I cut the flowers, when it comes to finding that focal flower for your bouquet, as a matter of course, I must plant several varieties of sunflowers, lilies and the likes every few weeks from spring to midsummer, say mid-July.  To make life more efficient for myself, I often plant two or three different varieties at once, but I plant varieties, which take slightly more or less time to bloom.  If all goes to plan, a one-time planting will eventually supply focal flowers, in succession, for two or three weeks. Seeing the beauty of spreadsheets now, are we?  So, Step 2 of your bouquet, as just described, is called SUCCESSION PLANTING. It’s making sure I have the flowers I need when I need them, each and every week. 

In each bouquet, I next add a handful of secondary blooms, such as zinnias, dahlias, black-eyed-Susans, phlox or daisies, for example.  These give unlimited combinations of substance, texture and color. For some of these I’ll succession plant. For others I rely on plants that come up every year but might flower in a particular window of time. Many of these blooms have their own particular cultural needs. Where I live, for example, dahlias do not quite survive the winter. So, every fall, after frost, I dig the dahlia tubers out of the ground, cut them, clean them and store them for the winter. Come spring, planting the dahlias is just another task that goes into making your bouquet.  Anemones thrive in the cool season and love water, but watch out so they don’t rot. Perennial plants, such as phlox, black-eyed-Susans and daisies eventually need to be dug up and divided. Just another task and how many do I have for which weeks? Stock likes to grow in cooler conditions; let’s cue the succession planting to give me soft bronzy colors for my fall bouquets. So, Step 3 might be called INDIVIDUALIZED CULTURAL CARE for the tremendous number of plant types I use to make different and interesting bouquets from April to November.  Translate “seasonally fresh” into “ever-changing, well-planned, and a lot of juggling and individualized work.” 

A mixed bouquet benefits from a little height for interest.  Here’s where the delphinium, snapdragons, plumed celosias and the likes come into play.  As with the other flowers, planning and succession planting are critical.  Step 3 – individual cultural care- is paramount with many of the spiky flowers.  Adding support netting to some of these stars, like snapdragons and delphinium, is crucial.  Without it, they love to bend over. The thing about snaps is, even if they start to bend over, as the tips of the plants continue to grow, the tips grow upward again.  Sometimes a curved stem is an absolute dream come true for design work, but not in your mixed bouquet.  For you, I’d like a straight stem.

Lots of varieties of scented geraniums have wonderful foliage.

Greens, or foliage, are unspoken heroes of your bouquet.  They add volume and offer fabulous color contrast to strengthen the colors of the blooms.  Foliage also offers astounding variations in texture, color and growth habit, holding its own in the desirable design elements category. It is also a treat to work with scented foliage. Sigh. This highlights Step 4 of your bouquet -VARIETY.  Local flower farmers offer an ever-changing variety of bouquets.  The offerings are seasonal.  They have many unusual blooms and leaves.  Some of the blooms are unique farm to farm.  Some are grown by many, but might not ship well and are therefore not common in the general flower markets. When I put together a mixed bouquet, I commonly have six or seven types of flowers and greens. 

This brings me to Step 5 of your bouquet – FINAL TOUCHES AND ACCENTS.  This is what, in my mind, transforms your bouquet from present day to “vintage, old-fashioned wildflower feel” and is what I believe is the biggest reason people must wonder if I am pilfering wildflowers from my entire neighborhood!  It only takes a little – even one bloom of millet, one sprig of grass, or a few green goldenrod branches (yes there are cultivated varieties) arching out in multiple directions to lend a totally different look and feel to your bouquet. Back to spreadsheet central.  Back to space planning to provide the room and plants needed to make this happen and set YOUR bouquet apart from the rest. Back to local flower farming.

Finally, we land at Step 6- MASTERFUL DESIGN. Here we circle back to the ‘little goodies” mentioned above. Although the sunflower in your bouquet is noticeable and noteworthy, sometimes it is the deep purple aster that I use as an even more noticeable accent to YOUR sunflower that implores you to take these particular flowers home as YOURS.  Sometimes, it is the single stem of sorghum you have never seen before that calls to you.  Maybe it is holding five stems of dahlias, each with different but complementary colors or a couple of tuberose tucked in with alluring fragrance, which many say reminds them of Hawaii.  You see, your wildflower bouquet is no willy-nilly hodgepodge of growth. Far from it. In fact, when I say, “masterful design” let’s do the drum roll for the double entendre because I speak not only of the actual crafting and construction of the finished bouquet you hold in YOUR hands and make YOUR OWN, but also the masterful design that was put into motion mid-January and followed throughout the growing season, which allowed the actual crafting when the time came to make YOUR bouquet.  Even though YOUR “wildflower” bouquet was never created on a whim, it was, by design, my plan all along to make you think it was.

Taken together, this is what makes local flower farming so exciting. Having, at my fingertips, an absolutely amazing supply of plants with which to work and create on a daily basis and to share with you in YOUR bouquet is Heaven. As to the other steps that go into your bouquet, I figure you might already be familiar with them if you have done any bit of gardening.  Need I mention weeds, water, compost, and mulch? There is that, too, on a daily basis, but I must say the joy of flowers is worth it every second of the growing season AND the offseason!