My apologies for having not posted in so long! The summer is, of course, a busy time with the flowers and I just didn’t get out and take as many pictures as I would have liked. Now that the nights have gotten cooler, the flowers are starting to fade. They’ve performed beautifully for the most part though we’ve battled insects, heat and lack of rain! We also had the unfortunate timing of a major bridge closing for reconstruction which resulted in our road being closed. Not having road noise has been appreciated, but the flower cart was basically rendered useless as we just weren’t getting any traffic. Luckily, we had some private orders for flowers that we were able to fill!
The zinnias performed great all season though they have finally succumbed to powdery mildew. Next year I will grow more of the Benary’s Giant Series as I found that I liked the size of the flower, stem length and vibrant colors. Of course, the Queen Red Lime zinnia’s colors went beautifully with the celosia that I was growing as well.
I loved using the rudbeckia in arrangements as they added such a happy pop to each one. We got hundreds of stems, but, unfortunately, the grasshoppers loved them as much as we did. Therefore, we had significantly less usable ones, especially if we didn’t harvest right away.
The dahlias have been a frustration and a joy all at the same time. Some varieties are clear winners and are producing long stems and beautiful flowers. Others, have really struggled with stem length and battling the cucumber beetles. Can you tell we don’t spray our flowers?
I delivered 20 wildflower bouquets this week for a conference and in doing so I used up the last of many of our flowers. While I’m sad to see them go, I’m looking forward to working on getting the boutique up and running (the WorkShirts are in!!) and focusing on this part of the Flower Frog!
