Greetings, farm friends!

We’re officially in the time of chilly, dark mornings and beautiful, temperate days. Autumn is overwhelmingly beautiful, despite the increasingly dwindling supply of flowers. We’re cutting every stem we can and savoring the blooms while they last. At this point in the season frost could come at any minute, though there’s none in the forecast yet. We take advantage of every frost free day, and once Frostmas arrives, we rejoice in the sudden change of season. Farm cleanup, planning, and dried flowers become the name of the game almost instantaneously.

This year we planted more strawflower than ever before, doubling down on a flower that’s stunning fresh and dried. We’ve consistently sold a ton of it to florists, and a mid-summer bumper crop left us with an extraordinary abundance for drying. We’re now beginning to dip into our stash of dried flowers and we’ve decided to make lots of dried bouquets this year. We begin drying flowers in June, starting with larkspur, nigella pods, poppy pods, and other spring odds and ends. Throughout the season we continue to dry our extra flowers, and we cap it all off in October with a big harvest of beautiful tan, red, and brown sorghum from our cover crop.

Our drying system is a bit complicated. We use the space that is reserved as a pawpaw cooler in September as our flower drying area. It’s a small room, and when we’re not operating a Coolbot system for fruit inside of it, we’ve got it filled with wire racks for hanging flowers to dry and a dehumidifier to keep the blooms in nice, mold-free condition. Once the blooms are dry, we rotate them into boxes and store them in a basement, also equipped with a dehumidifier. It took us years to figure out a good drying and storage procedure for our flowers. Maryland humidity consistently caused storage issues, and there’s nothing worse than pulling out a bunch of moldy blooms!

*This week was most likely the last week for an abundant dahlia harvest. We’ll continue to have them through frost, but as the days grow shorter they become less productive.*

*My personal favorite of our bulb offerings, Sicilian Honey Garlic.*

We ordered extra flower bulbs this year, and we’d love to share them with you! We’ll have Giant Gladiator Alliums, Sicilian Honey Garlic, Allium schubertii, and mixed ranunculus and butterfly ranunculus available at market until they sell out. All of the alliums are easy to grow, and we’ve written a ranunculus growing guide that is included in any ranunculus corm purchase. We’re growing all of these flowers on the farm, so we can assure you that they’re great both in your garden and in a vase. Plant them in the fall for gorgeous blooms come spring.

We’re back at the JFX Market this Sunday, October 15th. Emerge from your homes after staying in during or participating in the Baltimore Running Festival and pay us a visit! (We’re wishing all of you runners the best this weekend!)

*Last week’s incredible market bouquets.*

This week’s market availability will feature bouquets, basil, bunches of dahlias, eucalyptus, celosia, marigolds, and of course, our build your own bouquet bar. We’ll also have figs, persimmons, pawpaw seedlings, and flower bulbs and corms.

Because our harvest is beginning to dwindle, we will only be attending a few more markets this fall. We’ll be at the Baltimore Farmers Market October 15th and 22nd, and then return for November 19th. It’s hard to believe that the end of the season is so rapidly approaching! Thank you for all of your support at the markets this year.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy this gorgeous Fall weather.

Amelia & The Two Boots crew

Flowers: Fresh, dried, and to be planted