Tenacity in the Wind

Yesterday we had a gentleman out to give us a quote for an irrigation system because we currently do all our watering by soaker hose and there are hundreds of feet to manage. We realize we need a more manageable solution, one that we can grow with. We met with him and he still had to measure the area of our flower beds and provide a quote -- I told him we had to start working on our green house because we were losing daylight, so he sat in his truck for over an hour and created the quote. I did offer that he email it, but he preferred to do it his way. Once he was done he walked over to us and said "You two have some tenacity!"

At this point it was nearly three in the afternoon and we spent the next three hours pulling new plastic over the hoop house to cover 24 feet of flower beds. It was windy, snowing, and "cold as fuck" or "cold as a witch's tit" as Martin says. Ha! It was miserable. Beautiful, but miserably frigid.

We pulled back the plastic from the previous weekend and uncovered enough to see that some of the flowers were in fact coming through the soil. We are excited. Much of it had been completely iced over so we are unsure if they will grow but we are hopeful. This is our first test season, so we know that if they survive this much harsh weather they will grow beyond our hopes in a more structurally sound and formal greenhouse of the future. That is the goal in the future of Sixteen Acres Farm...

One of the things we learned from watching our V.1 hoop house being ripped apart from the wind was that we needed to bury the edges of the plastic. This time around we decided to dig a ditch around the hoop house (yes, in the freezing temps of about 28 degrees) and bury it. We did. Fortunately for us, we were able to dig under the edges of the original plastic (which kept the soil warm) to make that possible. Martin dug the trench and I buried the plastic in the mud. After over three hours in the freezing mud and snow, working, the sun was beginning to set and our fingers and toes were quickly approaching frost bite, so we called it quits for the day.

On Sunday we worked to pull out the old plastic, ice, and snow that had covered the flower beds under the cover of the hoop house which made the cold temps much more bearable. After a full trash bin full of plastic and three bags full later we moved on to clearing ice to the center walkway, which will leave water in the soil once it melts. A makeshift watering system, au naturel.

Here's what we learned after having our V1 hoop house ripped apart by the wind and eventually blown down in under two months:

1. The ends need to be flattened instead of tied down. Air was able to get under the edges when we tied the ends in a bunch and down to a stake. Instead we laid wooden planks over the edge of the plastic on each end, with bricks to weigh it down, leaving no room for air to get under the plastic.
2. Our ropes were too rough and were damaging the plastic - we switched to softer, cotton rope.
3. Additionally, we buried every edge of the plastic underground in a trenc

We're on to V.2 now and we are hopeful it will withstand the wind and snow for enough time to get our blooms this first season. We hoping our little test provides some beautiful blooms as an outcome.

After everything was said and done this weekend, we were blessed with a beautiful winter sunset as a reward.

The Greenhouse (Hoophouse) is Gone

I woke up this morning and thought Martin was joking when he said "I hate to tell you this, the greenhouse is gone." We call it a greenhouse even though it's just a plastic hoop house.

My first response was "What?! You're kidding right?" I did think he was playing a joke on me. We've worked so hard to put it up and plant the over 500 cream and rose ranunculus, and albino anemones. They can stand a slight frost but not a full snow and freeze.

It was snowing and the wind was howling outside. I quickly said "what are you still doing sitting here?" I was still half asleep. Our guest who was up having tea with Martin just minutes before I woke up also offered to come help. I threw on boots and a coat over my pajamas. Martin thinks I'm nuts. I am just dead serious about getting it right. We all hurried outside in the blowing snow to cover the hopeful flowers.

I just couldn't let it be. I wanted to know that we tried all that we could to see them bloom. We agreed to just put the plastic over the ground to cover the flowers and order new plastic to put up. The plastic had been blown down and it had holes in it from the wind so we needed to start over.

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We hope that just covering them will keep them from freezing just until we can put up another layer of plastic...at the end of the week. We are hopeful this will last until Spring and offer us the gorgeous blooms we're hoping for.

Learning from the Expert

This past weekend, before a LOT of hard work, (more on this later) we were lucky to be able to benefit from the kindness and experience of two amazing ladies, Jenny Love in Pennsylvania, and Janet Brondyke in Michigan.

One of the many challenges of growing flowers is to have blooms available from early spring through late fall, while avoiding an unmanageable glut in midsummer. We did some research, and some testing this year, and settled on Ranunculus and Anemones for spring, and bought additional Dahlias for fall. We have other flowers but these are new for us this year.

We spoke to Jenny from the well known Love and Fresh Flowers on Friday afternoon, and she gave us great insights into growing the Spring flowers. They need protection from the worst of the weather, so hoop houses or poly tunnels are the way to go. Sounds simple enough, but those structures effectively create a little arid desert inside them – no water gets to our flowers – and watering in the Winter presents lots of challenges. But with the help of special planting sheets – complete with 6” spaced holes and built in drip tape – it’s possible to have these beautiful blooms from late January onwards. Then by summer they are finished, and we can use the houses for later plants like Lisianthus, which last two to three weeks as a cut flower– perfect. So, greats tips from Jenny – the best of which was perhaps “Don’t be discouraged by the very short stems of the first [ranunculus] flowers – just pick them and the next flush will be longer”.

On Friday night, the 6th, as we drove to the farm, then, we were shopping for poly tunnels, planting mats, and – believe it or not – heated hoses!

Fortunately for us, we learned that a dahlia flower farm was going out of business and were able to acquire some of the mature tubers from that business.

On Saturday morning, the 7th of November, we were up early to pick up a rental truck to head up to Hamilton Dahlia Farm, a hundred miles or so North of us. We arrived to the empty fields at the end of Hamilton Dahia Farm's season to pick up about 800 Dahlia tubers (now in crates and far less stunning than before) and to meet and talk to Jan (Janet Brondyke), whose father Harvey Koop founded the farm in the 1950's, and at one point had over 90 acres of dahlias and never sold a single cut flower – only tubers! (Dahlias grow like potatoes – from a tuber in the ground that makes more tubers each year. If you cut the flower instead of selling it, the energy of the plant goes into growing larger tubers, thus offering greater opportunity for quality tuber sales.) They are also known for being the first to sell Dahlia tubers on the back of Kellogg's cereal.
According to Jan, they had a coupon on the back of the box for a $1 off the tuber. It clearly worked like a charm - they've been in business for over sixty years.

Jan took over 15 years ago when Harvey passed away, but now she’s about to retire and is selling off all her dahlias. We were lucky to find this out, and to talk to her for an hour or so. She told us how to cut and store the tubers – they have to come out of the ground each fall after the first frost – to make sure they would grow again the following spring. They need a frost-free environment, and high humidity. Jan has a purpose built storage facility, which is perfect. We learned how to plant, weed, and water these ugly tubers that can produce stunning blooms up to 12” across, and all from a lady who has done nothing else for most of her life. She did try six months in an office but hated it! She said she was happy to come back to working on the farm.

So, we loaded up with 20 crates of various tubers and we headed home to clean and sort our basement so that we could store the tubers safely. That meant hours of driving and hard labor Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday, but now they are tucked under their fleece blankets for the winter, and we are looking forward to some evenings cleaning and dividing them over the next few weeks (we might have some Champagne while working).

The materials for the hoop house have arrived so we’ll be preparing the beds for the ranunculus and anemones too – we’re hoping that the weather holds for this outdoor work. And seed catalogs are now arriving in our mailbox, so we have work to do there as well.

We are honored to have learned from these ladies and to have purchased a little bit of flower history. We're just hoping to have the same results as they have with these beauties.

Don’t let anyone tell you gardening is just a summer activity!