On Joy

Growing flowers is, in itself a joyful act. Flowers are beautiful; growing things is satisfying. As this season began, I imagined that the joy would follow the abundance of the flowers grown in direct proportions.

As it would become evident as spring waxed on, there is even more joy to be had in growing flowers for others. Growing for oneself is a happy indulgence - a pretty garden that invites butterflies, windowsills full of flowers... Growing for others is like preparing a meal for friends - full of intention for the nourishment and pleasure of the recipient.

I have delighted this season in the connection to others that our flowers have afforded us. In the middle of the never-ending Pennsylvania January, people who have followed us along on this journey were willing to give us their trust and money for the flowers we hadn’t yet even started growing yet, as they joined our first bouquet subscription. To deliver those bouquets in July to the folks who believed in us in the dead of winter based on our scrappy garden and some Instagram posts truly warms my heart.

On a whim, we offered a bouquet bar for a community event. Watching others light up at the opportunity to touch flowers, choose their own colors and textures, gave me more joy than I had considered it might. Being in the presence of those who appreciate flowers is much like being in the company of friends with whom the pauses in conversation have long-ceased to be unsettling.

As this season continues, and as many more follow it, thank you for coming along for the ride.

It is truly my pleasure to grow for you.

Reflecting on Perfection

Learning to Farm Flowers

And to Love Imperfection…

I have long existed within the walls of perfectionism. I can recall being 5 years old and weeping over one of my drawings because the image on the paper did not match the photographic image of it in my mind. I often was too embarrassed to try or participate in things with which I was unfamiliar or in which I did not naturally excel. 

I started growing flowers 6 years ago, beginning with a pollinator garden in my back yard. I grew seedlings in tiny Styrofoam cups in a sunny window without any lights. They stretched and struggled, the better half of them died before they left the house.  I planted the ones that survived in a small corner of my tiny yard sheltered by a fence and a wall of the garage. The garden that grew was far from the immaculate image I had planned, but it brought bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds to my yard. And much joy. 

My first small garden sent me down the rabbit hole of desire to grow and design with my own cut flowers. The first year I devoured information, read books, took a very popular and romantic online course about flower farming, and built raised beds in my back yard. I grew a few nice flowers, and in my daydreaming managed to painstakingly overcomplicate every next step. A topic for another post, one should not plan every step of a flower-growing empire without putting shovel to soil, lest she find herself with unworkable heavy clay in a town devoid of compost. The back yard flooded later that year, washing much of the soil away. The following year, the back yard was no longer my own, and I grew in plastic bulb crates on a concrete shuffleboard pad in a rental down the street. The next year, in my 4th season of growing cut flowers, the pandemic meant another move and a new garden. My partner and I set down roots and mapped out our first market garden.  Most of the seedlings I started that year didn’t make it. A fair number of the seeds I sowed never germinated. But there were flowers. And joy. 

I have not naturally excelled at growing flowers. Some of the more glaring errors I have made along the way have been humbling. I have learned to slow down my noisy brain that has previously had me paralyzed with over-analysis. My gardens will always have weeds. Some plants will die. There will be bugs. But if it weren’t for trying, I would miss all of the beauty. 

The glass is not half empty. It is waiting for flowers to be put in it.  

Starting a No-Till Market Garden

How We Started a 40x100 foot No-Till Flower Garden

Our journey into no-till farming began with an idealistic dream but was first executed as a matter of necessity. We knew that we wanted to use sustainable, soil-building methods on our farm when first dreaming and scheming. We had a plan. We were going to farm on family land, 10 minutes from the house we were renting. Then 2020 happened, and the pandemic railroaded our perfect daydream. The pandemic real estate market boom pushed us out of the rental and into homeownership well before we had planned. The trays of plants that we had started in the rental basement with plans for our first commercial season moved with us to the new property, struggled from neglect during the interior renovations we made, and mostly died. We planted some new seedlings, but they struggled along as well. Our new property had a giant yard, perfect for a market garden, but we had moved and lost our plants at the ideal time for planting. We own a tiller, from previous gardening trials, but knew that breaking sod for a garden the size we desired would be a giant pain. So, we pivoted. Taking notes from Jennie Love, of Love n Fresh Flowers, we “broke” ground for a 30x100 foot market garden without turning on the tiller. We ordered corrugated roll cardboard, had spent mushroom substrate delivered, and spent quality time rolling and wetting cardboard, then topping with 4 inches of mushroom soil one wheelbarrow load at a time.

After laying out the plot, we tarped the field with a Farmer’s Friend silage tarp. Beginning closest to the house, we rolled back the tarp and planted struggling seedlings by piercing through the compost and cardboard to reach the ground underneath. We placed extra cardboard in the walkways between the rows and mulched with purchased straw. At the end of the tarp, we gave in to the necessity of tilling in order to plant dahlia tubers, which we had ordered the previous fall, not knowing that our location would change, as well as some thornless blackberry plants. The plants… struggled at first. Mushroom substrate can be either too woody (listen to the No-Till Flower podcast on compost here) or too high in salts. Ours was too woody, and repelled surface water from reaching our tiny seedlings. We watered overhead with a garden hose twice a day and watched the plants struggle along at a small size for too long. Once the plants were big enough to form a canopy over the soil, things changed. The plants took off and bloomed beautifully. We later fought some pests, Japanese and squash beetles, but were rewarded by an abundance of flowers (which we enjoyed and then mostly composted, in the experimental phase we decided that trying to find a sales outlet was an obstacle for a later time). We were not devoid of weeds with this method but did not have to weed at all to maintain the flowers in the no-till rows. We did lose the eucalyptus we planted through fabric in the tilled rows alongside the dahlias, as we neglected to till it. 

Positives: 

We grew some pretty heckin’ nice flowers that we got to enjoy ourselves. We were able to take some pictures that we used in making our website and gave away flowers to friends and local business owners. We dried what flowers we could and were able to make some amazing wreaths and ornaments for winter holiday sales, as well as for our website’s shop, making back what we spent on cardboard and mulch for the season. We identified some problem pests in the garden and were able to implement some integrated pest management (hand-picked adult Japanese beetles, employed Jack Dog to dig and eat grubs, and spread milky spore over current and future garden plots, and will bag early season dahlias to protect from cucumber beetles). We saved fossil fuel and some manual labor in avoiding 99% of the tillage we would have had to use otherwise.

Our garden gave us a lot in our first season. We were able to harvest several buckets of mixed blooms, such as those pictured here, on a given day in the peak of our productivity. Clockwise from top, rudbeckia “Indian Summer” and “Double Daisy”, basil “Aromatto”, cosmos “Daydream”, zinnia “Benary’s Giant Wine”, dahlia “Ivanetti” , zinnia “Oklahoma Golden Yellow”, and marigold “Coco Gold.”

Negatives: 

Cost. Because our time was at a premium, as we were doing our own labor for home renovations out of necessity and budget, we paid to have roll cardboard and mushroom compost delivered. We have a well, but city-water users would need to factor in the added cost of irrigation if using immature/woody compost. 

Glass Half Empty:

Japanese beetles were a disappointment, and are kind of gross to pick off by hand…

Glass Half Full:

Because we now know we have a high soil burden of grubs, we were able to use some pest control measures that we hope will benefit us next growing season.

Learn from our experience: 

If you opt to use the cardboard/compost method over sod but have the advantage of time, we strongly recommend seeding some kind of cover crop directly seeded to mellow the compost and do the work of digging into the soil below, or layer over the sod in the fall and allow to rest over winter. There are some resources available to source recycled silage tarps, and Jennie Love has used recycled billboard plastic signage. Mulch hay is often available for free or cheap and should be just fine for pathways (watch for the use of persistent herbicides). Free-sourced cardboards may be used in the pathways, and some municipalities offer free compost to residents (ours does not).  We love to hear how others are growing, please tell us your interesting stories in comments, or tag us on social media (@scytheandstem)!