Fall planting and pawpaw farewell
Greetings!
Karen in a pawpaw tree, overcome by childlike delight!
We’ve endured a rainy week on the farm and we’re nearing the end of pawpaw season. Dahlias are blooming profusely this week, but everything else on the farm seems to have come to a near halt with the grey skies and endless drizzle. All of the sudden, summer is long gone.
We picked up the vast majority of our cool flowers this week, so as soon as the soil dries up and we’re able to clear some space we will begin planting for 2025! We’re doubling down on delphinium because everyone loves it so much, and we’ll of course be planting all the usual suspects- snapdragons, orlaya, rudbeckia, foxglove, and more. I can’t believe it’s already time to be thinking about overwintered flowers! The season has absolutely flown by.
Our planting process is pretty simple. We first clear the bed, removing old crop residue and weeds, but generally leaving roots from old crops in place. This means that we usually cut out crops at the soil line, and then pull any stray weeds. If the bed is really weedy or the crop is too difficult to manage in this way, we’ll instead use our wheel hoe and a rake to clear the bed. Once the bed is free of plant residue, we apply compost and amendments to the bed. After that, if the soil seems compacted, we’ll broadfork, gently lifting and aerating the soil. If it seems like the surface will be difficult to plant into, we’ll gently hoe the top of the bed to break up the soil a bit more. Once all that is complete, we’ll put down drip tape and either lay landscape fabric to plant into (we use this the most over the winter, as our late winter/early spring weeds tend to get out of hand), or plant directly into the soil. We plant most of our crops at either 6, 8, or 12 inch spacing, in the bed, with 3-4 rows running across the bed. We’re able to flip beds and plant quite quickly these days. Our systems are well established and it’s honestly one of the most fun tasks on the farm! We’re looking forward to getting thousands of cool flowers seedlings in the ground in the coming weeks.
Dahlias are on fire this week!
This weekend we’ll have our last pawpaw popup of the year! Find us at the Dupont Circle Farmers Market in DC on Sunday, September 29th from 8:30-1:30. We’ve loved coming to DC to share these special fruits; thank for all the support and enthusiasm!
We’re back at the Baltimore Farmers Market this Sunday, September 29th from 7:00- 12:00!
We’re planning to bring bouquets, celosia, dahlias, eucalyptus, salvia, veronica, and Two Boots merch. We’ll have plenty of pawpaws too.
And, of course, the Build Your Own Bouquet bar is back. We hope to see you there for the first day of fall!
Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you at the market!
Amelia & The Two Boots crew
Karen, Mel, and last week’s stunning bouquets.
The fields are soggy and full of lush growth this week.
Cafe au lait, the queen of dahlias.