Greetings, farm friends!

The weather this week was beautiful and we’ve had extremely productive, pleasant days on the farm. We’re designing for two weddings this week, which means it’s been extra busy. We’re also busy weeding, staking, and netting all of our earliest summer blooms, and we filled all of the gaps in our overwintered dahlia beds this week! Everything is growing quickly these days, and we’re so excited for all of the new crops to come in. Still, we’re enjoying our Spring bounty, and this week began harvesting lots of stunning foxglove, nigella, and Siberian iris. And, of course, we’re continuing to harvest peonies twice a day, thanks to our crew who have been amazing at keeping track of time and making sure the task doesn’t slip away in the afternoons.

Lately we’ve been in a territorial struggle with some birds. I’m a big-time bird lover, but I can’t stand it when they eat our seedlings! We grow the vast majority of our main season seedlings in the greenhouse on the farm, and seed out anywhere between 10 and 40 trays most weeks of the year. It’s important to do all of our greenhouse work in a timely fashion, as any delays mean that the crop’s harvest is also delayed.

Unfortunately, a couple of weeks ago, all of the freshly germinated seedlings we’d recently sown were eaten by birds. After years of greenhouse work, we’re able to tell the difference between bird damage and mouse damage, and this was definitely birds- you could see the tiny beak marks! We lost about 15 trays of seedlings, and had to buy additional seed to replace some of them, which means those crops ended up being set back by 2+ weeks!

After years of makeshift solutions to dealing with bird damage, this level of loss forced us to bring out the big guns. On Tuesday Karen and Meg hung up a mesh screen along the roll-up sides of the greenhouse, and we’re going to hang mesh closures on the doors. As much as I’ll miss the occasional visit from a sparrow while i’m working in the greenhouse, I’m optimistic that this solution will save us from a great deal of pain in the future.

All is well elsewhere on the farm, and it’s looking quite good these days! The fields are full of healthy plants and our harvests seem to become more diverse daily. It’s a gorgeous time of year.

On Monday, we spent an hour after work planting out our crew garden, which was a lovely way to spend some time together outside of our regular farm grind. We’re growing lots of veggies for ourselves, in addition to some herbs and dye plants. We’re looking forward to having a small space on the farm just for tending to our own wants and needs! This is the first time we’ve designated beds on the farm for this sort of thing, and we’re all excited about having a small space of our own.

*We planted this baptisia in February last year and we can’t get enough of it. Fortunately, it should keep multiplying for years to come.*

Upcoming Events

May 28th: Baltimore Farmers’ Market under the JFX. We’ll have bouquets, campanula, peonies, ranunculus, an assortment of other bunched flowers, and Two Boots Merch.
June 17th: Centerpiece workshop on the farm. We will tour the farm with the sun on our backs while sipping mimosas and N/A beverages. Elisa will demonstrate how she makes an arrangement with seasonal flowers. You will then get to make your own floral arrangement to take home.

Thanks for reading this far!

Wishing you all the best,

Amelia & the Two Boots crew

Blooms, Birds, and Busy Days