Five Favorite Flowers (and more!)
Greetings, farm friends!
We’ve had a productive and pleasant week on the farm. Last week’s rain and this week’s warm, sunny weather brought on loads of blooms, and it feels as though the season has now begun in earnest.
Karen, Wren, and Meg, taking a break to watch Monday’s eclipse. What a treat!
Mid-April is a busy time on the farm, and we’re gearing up for packing and distributing all of this year’s plant sale orders.
The online sale closes on Monday, April 16th, so if you’ve been procrastinating get those orders in this weekend! There’s still an abundance of seedlings available in the online store, and everything in the greenhouse looks incredible!
In anticipation of the plant sale, I’d like to share my top five flowers in the sale.
Amelia’s Top Five Seedling Sale Flowers
1) Rudbeckia, Chimchiminee: This flower is the bees knees! Stunning both in the garden and as a cut, each chimchim plant is unique. The plants are full of blooms and pollinators adore them. We love the unusual quilled petals, and a flower bed full of rudbeckia never fails to put a smile on our faces.
Nature antique shades pansies, plucked from the stem to use for edible flowers.
2) Cosmos, Bright Lights: Though this one isn’t a great cut flower, it makes a lovely, cheerful addition to the garden. The plants are sturdy and branching, and continue to pump out brilliant orange blooms all summer long. I love the color, and the fact that these cosmos are excellent for natural dyeing!
3) Mountain mint: A delightful native perennial, mountain mint is a fantastic, low maintenance addition to your landscape. The soft silvery foliage is lovely, and the potent scent is great for awakening your senses. It’s another excellent plant for attracting native pollinators.
4) Pansy, Nature Antique Shades: We’ve been growing these for florists for years, and I think they’re hands down the cutest flower on the farm. These tiny gems are perfect for bud vases, lovely as a cake decoration, and adorable as a pressed flower. And, of course, they’re sweet as can be as a low lying plant in your garden.
5) Echinacea, angustifolia: This one is a bit nostalgic for me. My parents always had it growing in the backyard of my childhood home, and I love watching birds land on the seed heads and enjoy a late season snack. The soft purple petals accented by orange-tipped seed heads add a lovely pop of color to the garden.
Elisa, showing off some massive artichoke foliage we harvested for Local Color Flowers’ annual Bloom Battle.
Some of our peonies are already forming buds, and we’ve started harvesting our field grown tulips. This week our crew planted strawflower, rudbeckia, and campanula, along with a new planting of woody perennials. We’re expanding our supply of spiraea, hydrangea, and ninebark, as these are some crops our florists can’t seem to get enough of. And, as a bonus for us, they’re pretty low maintenance!
As soon as the fields dry out enough for us to continue doing bed prep, we’ll be planting this year’s lisianthus crop. We received our plugs last week, and we’re anxiously awaiting the opportunity to get them in the ground. Lisianthus needs a nice long cool period to get established, and once it’s planted it won’t do much at all until mid-July!
Crop Spotlight: Heirloom Narcissus. These fragrant, fluffy blooms are nothing like the boring daffodils you’re likely familiar with. We grow about 15 different varieties of narcissus, and they’re all stunning! This is likely the final week we’ll have them available at the market, so be sure to scoop some!
This year’s butterfly ranunculus crop is outstanding! These unique flowers have a great vase life and come in a gorgeous array of colors.
We’re back at the Baltimore Farmers Market this Sunday, April 14th!
If you’ve not made it to the Baltimore Farmers Market before, it’s under the JFX at 400 East Saratoga St.
The market runs from 7:00-12:-00 every Sunday, April-December.
We’re planning to bring bouquets, flowering branches, heirloom narcissus, tulips, pussy willow, poppies, butterfly ranunuculus, and anything else we can find in the fields!
Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you at the market!
Amelia & The Two Boots crew