Autumn Floralful Farm Update + Welcome!
Hello everyone and welcome to our first blog! - An autumn farm update of everything “growing” on here behind the scenes.
Firstly, thank you so much everyone for your Mother’s day orders - we sold out!
The weather is getting cooler and the summer crops have mostly faded, although there are a few dahlias left still blooming. There’s also a small crop of amaranthus and Queen Anne’s lace that self-seeded and germinated with all the rain we’ve been having over the last few months.
The chrysanthemums are blooming in full swing! Anyone who ordered Mother's day flowers were sure to get some of these beauties in their delivery! These plants were only planted last spring and they have grown so well with lots and lots of blooms. The variety on the far left is “Cherry Ripe” - such a gorgeous petite bloom with a long vase life, the middle is from a cutting that came from a Woolworth’s bouquet (yes that’s right!!) and the right photo is a bunch (from left to right) with “Cherry Ripe”, another Woolworths cutting and “Heather James”. I’ve sourced most of my plant’s from Frogmore Gardens, and I also hear that Wild Violet Flower Farm will have some available near the end of the year.
The dahlias are almost finished, only a few left blooming like “Florelie Kindness” (far left), “Coorabell Astrid” (far right) and an end of season “Breannon” (middle). I’ve been hand pollinating flowers for my breeding project (you can see the organza bags stopping the bees from pollinating certain ones), with the rest all being open-pollinated - I hope to have packets of open-pollinated dahlia seeds available in late winter, keep an eye out! We don’t get a really hard ‘killing frost’ where we are located so to encourage dormancy I cut them back progressively over a couple of weeks. They are then all lifted and the dividing mania begins! We also hope to have a small selection of tubers available as well if everything goes well.
Autumn means it’s time to plant sweet peas! I’m planting out all my sweet peas at the moment - this year I’m trialling around 20 varieties in various colours like salmon, blush, whites and blues to identify varieties that I find are the best for cutting.
There’s also some celosia still growing, although most of it was harvested for all the bouquets! I’m also keeping lots of seeds to grow next season - it’s such a great producing filler and not difficult to grow.
The ranunculus are mostly all planted, some are just poking through the soil after pre sprouting and the others are already leafing out nicely. I can’t wait to see these ruffled flowers come late winter and spring.
I’ve also planted lots of stocks and Queen Anne’s lace, trying to stagger the plantings so we have a continual supply when they all start blooming. Other annuals I’ve put in are strawflowers, scabiosa, larkspur, feverfew and phlox.
Thank you for reading!