Two Boots Farm

4226 Maple Grove Rd. Hampstead USA

(443) 507-8428

A family run farm and floral design studio in Hampstead, Maryland. We grow a wide variety of cut flowers and produce. We also have over 100 cultivated pawpaw fruit trees. We use ecologically sustainable practices so that future generations can continue to grow in healthy soil.

Maintenance season

July 06, 2023  /  Elisa Lane

Greetings, farm friends!

The fields are buzzing with pollinators.

We’re continuing to enjoy the afternoon thunderstorms and warm summer days. The rain is keeping our fields looking lush, and since we’ve not yet mowed down the remnants of our Spring crops, the fields are particularly full of color and pollinators. It’s beautiful out there these days!

Consider joining us for a workshop, yoga, or a farm dinner! Each farm visit features a farm tour, and the workshops and yoga day will each provide you with the opportunity to play with flowers and take home a gorgeous design of your own. We look forward to sharing the farm with you!

This week we’re looking towards Autumn and planting the last few trays of heirloom mums. We’re also working on lots of crop maintenance. The abundant rains have helped everything grow quickly over the past few weeks, which means it’s time for pinching, staking, netting, and a whole lot of weeding. It takes a lot of effort to keep these blooms looking good— most of our efforts in July and August are focused on tending to what is already in the ground; it’s maintenance season.

On Thursday the soil was in perfect shape for cultivating with our stirrup and collinear hoes, which made fast work of weeding a large block of beds. Once we passed through with the hoes, we undersowed dwarf white clover in those beds. The clover is an interplanted cover crop, acting as an understory to the snapdragons, scabiosa, and other crops we planted out several weeks ago. We seed the cover crop after the crops we’re going to harvest from are well established, and over the next few months the clover will continue to grow, suppress weeds, and keep the ground covered and the flowers’ roots cool. We’ve been experimenting with undersowing cover crops for a couple of years now, and for the most part we’ve loved the results so far.

Jane and Elisa harvesting wheat and nigella.

It’s rudbeckia season— a farmer favorite!

We’re back at the JFX Market this Sunday, July 9th.

For this week’s market we’ll have bouquets, sunflowers, snapdragons, scabiosa, strawflower, rudbeckia, cosmos, and so much more!

Thanks for reading this far!

Wishing you all the best,

Amelia & the Two Boots crew

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