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!