It's Finally Raining!

After months of dry, warm weather… and we are not complaining after the wet spring we had…the weather has shifted and we are easing into autumn with showers and sunshine in equal measure for now!

With the forecast for rain this week we had the Amaranthus crop harvested and tucked under cover right away. We are making our way through the various crops as quickly as we can to get as many blooms and greens into the flower studio and coolers before it really gets wet and cold.

Once harvested these crops are pulled out, the soil is amended with organic compost and we plant in our hardy annuals and biennials that were seeded in late August and early September so that they will bloom just after our tulips in the late spring. 1,000’s of Italian Ranunculus and Anemone corms are being pre-sprouted so they can be tucked into the ground for a succession of spring blooms.

Tulips

Some of our planting rows will be tilled and then trenched for our mass planting of 40k tulip bulbs. This is double what we did last year! As a flower farm we plant tulips close together (as if in an egg crate). This way they grow tall and support each other and don’t take up as much room as you would think. Last year we had one 3ft x 100ft row of tulips in the big greenhouse and the rest out in the field under low tunnels. There wasn’t any difference in performance and quality so this year they will all be out in the field. If you have seen the wide selection of bulbs on our website, well…we will have all of these and many more varieties as blooms for sale in the spring!

Our specialty tulip bulbs are available on the website if you are interested in having them in your own garden or planter or as a gift…We offer pick up, local delivery, and Canada-wide Shipping.

Dahlias

Our dahlias are still blooming! They took forever to get started this year and a few still haven’t given us a flower…others are just pumping out the blooms… just a weird weather year for them I guess.

So many new varieties this season. My favorite for production of oodles of long strong stems in a wonderful orange ball form is hands down “Sylvia” aka Maarn. For beauty it is the dusky colours of “Night Silence”. For cuteness “Porcupine Valley and for Big Bold and Beautiful I can’t decide between Breakout, Café au Lait and Fairway Spur.

Our Dahlia tuber Sale will start December 1st. (I’ll send a reminder in our November Newsletter)

Dahlia tuber varieties will start to show up on the website as we confirm availability. These will be ready for pick up, local delivery and shipping across Canada in April 2023 once a viable eye is apparent on the tubers.

In the Big Greenhouse

With no tulips in the Big Greenhouse this means there is space for the scented geraniums to overwinter in the ground. They grew to be about 3 times the size of what the field grown ones did last year and we have been able to harvest continually for the last 3 months!! Some of our Italian ranunculus will be in there, grown in crates (so the voles don’t devour these expensive treats like they did last winter!!). I’m not even going to try sweet peas in the greenhouse as 3 successive crops were feasted on last winter as soon as they were planted. I’m starting them in the little greenhouse, protected from critters and will get them into the field when they are good and ready! As this season’s Celosia, Snapdragons, Green Mist, Bells of Ireland have been harvested and removed we have already replanted partial rows with Bells of Ireland, snapdragons, along with seedling eucalyptus.

The big news in the greenhouse is that my heirloom chrysanthemums are blooming!! What were little rooted cutting this spring are now 5ft tall plants covered in sprays of different colours shapes and sizes. I didn’t disbud any of the stems (take off secondary buds so the main one grows really big) as I wanted to see how they grew on their own. Well, I’d say they they are pretty low maintenance- they just needed staking -and they are starting into their late fall production. If all goes well, we will take cuttings in the early spring 2023 and we should have a 100ft row in the greenhouse rather that my starter section of about 10ft. The plan is to extend my growing season into late November/December with these hardy late bloomers.

 

 

Workshops

Our amazing and wonderfully talented Rekha leads our workshops. Her background in fine art combined with her Constance Spry education, European training and work as a floral designer gives fresh ideas, techniques, perspectives and approaches to many traditional arrangements.