Feeling like Fall
Greetings!
We’re enjoyed an extraordinary week of weather on the farm. We’ve been blessed with crisp, cool mornings and blue skies with highs in the 70s all week long. Living in Maryland, there really aren’t that many weeks of the year that are this pleasant, so you have to take advantage of them when they come around! Though the Autumn equinox is still a couple of weeks away, it’s beginning to feel like Fall on the farm.
In the coming weeks, we’ll begin to see waning productivity in summer crops like cosmos and zinnias, but our dahlias and mums will be pumping out stems straight through October. We harvested the first few stems of heirloom mums this week (early!) and it looks like there are many more to come this year. We’ve struggled in the past with heirloom mums. They’re challenging and expensive plants to source, and our very favorite varieties seem to be the most difficult to propagate. We’ve put a lot of energy and money into getting a good crop this year, and I’m hopeful that it will pay off. I think we’ve still got more to perfect with timing the planting so that we can get the maximum number of stems off of each plant, but this crop is our most promising to date, and I hope it sets the stage for a future of bountiful mums. They’ve become my absolute favorite crop over the years, and there’s so much to learn about them!
We’re in for a wild September, full of weddings, massive florist orders, and all of the pawpaws we can pick. Then it’s on to fall planting and getting the farm cleaned up for winter. It’s incredible how rapidly the season comes to a close! We’ll continue to enjoy this beautiful weather as long as possible, and keep working hard until there’s not much left to finish. Everything feels a little bit easier now that the heat has broken.
The cooler temperatures have slowed the pawpaw harvest significantly, but we’re still hoping to have some pawpaws to bring to the market this weekend. Fear not, if we have a break this weekend we’ll be sure to have more the following week! There’s plenty of fruit on those trees and they’ll definitely ripen at some point in the near future, they’re just taking their sweet time for now.
2024 Pawpaw Popup Schedule
Pawpaws are ripening up early this year, so until the popups start you’ll be able to find them at our stand at the Baltimore Farmers Market. Because they’re so ahead of schedule, we can’t guarantee how long the season will last, but we know we’re on track for our best harvest in years!
Takoma Park Farmers Market - Sept 15
Dupont Circle Farmers Market, DC - Sept 22, Sept 29
We’re at the Baltimore Farmers Market this Sunday, September 8th from 7:00- 12:00!
We’re planning to bring bouquets, hydrangeas, celosia, dahlias, eucalyptus, veronica, and Two Boots merch. We’re hoping to have pawpaws this week as well, but if they’re not there on Sunday, we’ll definitely have them the following week.
And, of course, the Build Your Own Bouquet bar is back!
Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you at the market!
Amelia & The Two Boots crew