This summer was much busier than I expected, so I have definitely fallen behind on my regular blog posts. A lot has changed since I last shared on here, so I thought it’s time to update everyone on what’s been going on with our family.
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The lavender is blooming on the farm again, so I thought it would be a great time to show everyone how we harvest lavender bouquets. Enjoy!
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Time has flown by so quickly this year, and I can hardly believe we are just a few weeks out from our lavender fields being in full bloom again. This is one of my favorite times of the year on the farm and I never tire of walking through the rows of fragrant lavender. We are looking forward to sharing this experience with everyone and have several events happening during June that we hope you will be able to attend!
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One of the big projects on the farm this year has been putting in a native perennial cut flower garden. This project combines several things I am passionate about: growing cut flowers, supporting healthy ecosystems, and sharing my knowledge with others. As a flower farmer, not only do I care about growing flowers, but also ensuring that we are supporting the environment where we grow our flowers, which will in turn help us grow better flowers. Native perennials are a great solution here!
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There has been so much going on the last few weeks between releasing new courses and getting ready for our summer flowers and events. I thought it would be a great time to do a quick recap of everything that is going on at the farm right now and let you know about some fun things that are coming up!
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There are several flowers that will always be in my garden! My top five annuals for the cut flower garden love full-sun and tolerate our hot summers remarkably well. I also love that these can be directly sown in the field, which makes them even more low-maintenance and easy to grow. And as a plus, all these flowers pair well together, making for some beautiful bouquets.
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Seed starting indoors is a great way to get a jump on the season and enables us to put small plants in the ground once we are past the last frost date in our area, resulting in flowers earlier than if we had waited to directly sow the flowers instead. This is especially important for growing flowers that have a longer time between planting and harvesting. In addition to getting a jump on the growing season, there are also lots of seeds that either require light to germinate or are really small and could easily get washed away with a heavy spring rain. Planting these seeds indoors gives us much more control over the growing conditions and gives us a substantially better germination rate. Each year I generally start seeds indoors around the first week of February, but begin the majority of my seeds around March 1. Seeds that I sow indoors include: snapdragons, feverfew, rudbeckia, marigolds, hibiscus, statice, jewels of opar, scabiosa, and gomphrena.
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It is National CSA Week, so I thought I this would be a great opportunity to talk a bit about what CSA’s are and why they are so important for the farming community!
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We started our farm in 2017 with a single lavender field, and our most frequently asked questions are about how to grow lavender in Tennessee. So, we thought a book detailing how we grow lavender in our hot and humid climate would be a great first step into educating others. This will be the first of several courses we are planning to publish over the next year. We are also planning some in-person, educational tours and classes too!
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While flower farming has a growing season and an off-season, running a farm is a year-round job. Depending on the farm’s location, the weather that given year, and what is being grown, the schedule of tasks my vary slightly from one farm to another, but overall are pretty similar. Here at Menkveld Farm we grow lavender, sunflowers, dahlias, and over 45 other varieties of flowering annuals and foliage
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It’s planning season on the farm (yes, planning, not planting)! For me, planning the next growing season starts when flowers are still in bloom the year before. I make notes about what I want to grow again, new things I want to try, how much I want to plant of each variety, and then order my seeds. I have most of this done before Thanksgiving and give myself permission to slow down for the rest of the year to focus on family. However, now that the new year has come, I am gearing up for warmer weather and looking forward to having flowers on the farm once again - and I have a long list of things to plan out before spring arrives. So here is what’s going on at our farm these days!
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