july 2021

July swooped in with absolute abundance. There were so many blooms and herbs and foliage you could smell them on the wind. Rich spicy smelling basil, lemony vanilla snapdragons and citrusy climbing sweet peas filled the bouquets for the flower cart.

One of the most enjoyable parts of the annual garden was trialing our experimental blooms and foliage. To be able to see which things we really loved and which things we would either grow less of or not grow at all. We had been so excited to use scented herbs in the bouquets such as blue spice basil (smelled divine) and dill foliage but found they wilted no matter what we tried! Some flowers we thought we would LOVE were very underwhelming to us like Mignonette and Chaubad Carnations. There were some clear winners that grew and bloomed like crazy such as Snapdragons and Rudbeckia. It was also an unusually hot and dry year, most mornings consisted of making sure the drip irrigation was soaking the ground well enough and filling soapy buckets to collect Asian beetles.

One one of our favorite flowers that blew us away with their paper thin, delicate petals were the ruffly wonderfulness that are poppies. There’s no real reason to grow them…they aren’t useful as a cut flower, they don’t last long in a vase. The poppy was the most loved flower by all who toured the farm, we will definitely grow them next year just for enjoying their beauty in person for any of those who choose to tour the flower farm.

Watching the farm come to life despite the persisting heat and the lack of rain was inspiring. It persevered and continued to grow and become lush. We were thankful we had learned how to install drip irrigation, we couldn’t have kept up with watering without our irrigation system!