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It was a long hot summer but we weren't sitting on the porch fanning ourselves. We planted and weeded throughout the summer and this gave us the best late summer crops we've ever had. Every flower farmer I know says this seemed like the worst weed season they can remember. It's hard to say, but I know it seems like we spent 80% of our time weeding and came nowhere close to containing the masses of weeds. We have a bumper crop of pokeweed second only to the summer of 2016, when it rained constantly. Ah well, the rains and heat brought the flowers, so we cannot complain, especially when we hear the reports of drought and much worse weather elsewhere.
Our bumper crop of late summer flowers provided many events and weddings with flowers in August and September. We sent thousands of zinnias, dahlias, cosmos, ageratum, gomphrena, love-in-a-puff, verbena, pineapple mint, scented geranium, celosias of many types, amaranth, tweedia, hydrangea, and more out into the world. What a joy it is to fill buckets with flowers and send them on their way.
Our hope was to begin to sell bouquets again locally in August, but the demands on the farm and incredibly high demand for flowers in the wholesale market meant we did not have the time available to do this and we really missed it. We plan to once again offer local bouquets in the winter and spring. This year we will be growing tulips even earlier than last year and will hopefully have some to share with our local customers. We will let you know!
It's been an exciting year as we grow and expand and we hope to be able to begin to share what we are doing more with our local friends here in Washington County. We often get requests to visit the farm and we wish we could allow this, but every day is full of harvesting and deliveries and visits just aren't possible at this time. We hope to plan some "Open Farm Days" next year.