I'm not going to lie, I've had way too much time to myself in the past few weeks, but thankfully, this week I got to come back to the farm to work on some ranunculus and anemone planting!
December Re-Cap
The past few weeks in December we worked on revamping our proposals, call checklist, wholesale lists, website, and any business-planning we could think of! We also planned a few events on the horizon to bring farmers and florists together during this downtime, so we can get on the same page with how to provide locally-grown, farm flowers to designers in the area more efficiently. We are really interested in working with any other farms in the area so together we can fill wholesale orders and grow the slow flowers movement.
Side Note: Before I worked on the farm, I had no idea that there was even a difference of flowers from the grocery store (or a wholesaler) and flowers from a local farm. When I look at these bouquets side-by-side, I am astounded. There really is no comparison, and since grocery store and wholesale florists are everywhere, I can see why this is the preferred method for people getting bouquets, or booking their wedding flowers. But if you're going to spend the money on flowers, you're going to want the best product, right?
I digress and I am totally bias. Whoops!
The Start of 2018
This past week we sorted out all of our seeds, ordered some Sweet Peas from Floret Flowers, and soaked our ranunculus and anemones.
For anyone this is interested in growing these flowers (or any flowers from seed), it is usually very helpful to soak the seeds. Depending on the flower that may mean just placing the seed on a wet paper towel, or in the case of a ranunculus, soaking it in water for 7 hours. This pretty much tells the seed to "WAKE UP! We are ready for you to start growing!". After a good soak, we placed them in seed trays filled with fresh soil to begin growing their roots.
**Keeping them in good sunlight and keeping the soil moist from light sprays is very important! Do not over-water any seeds that have yet to show some greenery. They can easily drown :( BUT once they do start to grow, that is when you can give them a good water (as long as they have drainage).
(Pics are from me growing ranunculus last year around this time. You can see the white roots growing, even though they weren't completely underneath the soil. This is call presprouting, which you can also do with ranunculus. Once you see these roots, you can plant these babies for good.)
We will be letting these plants grow in our trays until they get about 2 inches big. We will then transfer them to our greenhouse beds to grow to their full potential.
January Outlook - Vague
I am not really sure what the rest of January will look like, but I am definitely excited to continue my own projects that I have for the upcoming year. I'm going to write a blog post next week on things I have been working on for myself and why. Stay tuned if you're all about doing things for your mental health, and planning for your future. I am almost done figuring out my 2018 goals and I can't wait to share with you how and why I chose them. Plus, I will definitely give you the links and prompts I use to create my goals so you can do the same. :)
xx,
Angie