Module 6 marked the end on the Floret Online Workshop and boy did I learn a lot. All in all, I’m glad I took part in this online workshop and feel like it was worth my time and money. I think if I wouldn’t have gotten a partial scholarship it might not have been as a lot of the information was things I learned in the Practices of Organic Farming program at The Evergreen State College. But is it really nice that I have access to all of these videos forever, as I’m sure I will need future reference on how to do things like divide dahlia tubers and build a caterpillar tunnel at some point.
Additionally, I did love all of the seeding and succession planting resources attached with module 2. This included an extensive excel spreadsheet template that does basically all of the math to plan out when to seed and transplant into the field for you. That will definitely be a great resource for me in the future. I also loved the random little snippets in there that I just had never heard of or thought about before. Some of these included harvesting tulips bulb and all, propagating dahlias from cuttings, and high intensity planting techniques.
This final module was all about how to harvest and properly care for your flowers to ensure maximum vase life. Especially the harvesting portion of this module took heavy inspiration from The Lean Farm; How to Minimize Waste, Increase Efficiency, and Maximize Value and Profits with Less Work by Ben Hartman. Erin kept emphasizing that you don’t want to be wasting energy, taking extra steps, or going out of your way to get a task accomplished. She also went over best time to harvest specific varieties, including dahlias, snap dragons, peonies, Iceland poppies, etc.
In the post-harvest handling section, Erin broke down flower food (they use sugar, acidifier, and biocide), including “Quick Dip,” Hydration Solution, Holding Solution, and Flower Food. Each one has a different ratio of the three ingredients, depending upon what you need/final destination of the flowers. For example, Holding Solution has very little sugar and would be used to hold flowers if their final destination is wholesale or grocery while Flower Food has a lot more sugar and would be used to get flowers to really blow open if you were using them in a wedding arrangement. Just as a note, you can’t use these products if you are certified organic.
All of the flowers cut on Floret fall into various categories as well and will dictate how best to treat them in order to increase vase life. Whimpy Drinkers or things that wilt really quickly (i.e. hydrangea, mint, scented geranium) would be dipped in “Quick Dip” and put into Hydration Solution. Woody Branches (i.e Crab Apple branches, Nine Bark) would get the same “Quick Dip” then Hydration Solution, but you would want to “X” the bottom to ensure water can get up into the branch. Sappy Stems or things that ooze sap upon cutting (i.e. euphorbia, daffodils) would be put in boiling water for 7-10 seconds, sealing the stem up so it would leak any longer and put into Hydration Solution. Dirty Flowers or flowers that turn the water murky or brown really quickly (i.e rudbeckia, yarrow) you would want to use a CCB (chlorine) tab or bleach in the bucket prior to harvesting.
Dahlias and Iceland poppies also can be tricky, but Erin shared some tips for them. Both need their stems heated. Dahlias, you would put them in boiling water and let the water cool. This will allow better water circulation through the flower. Iceland poppies can also react positively to boiling water, but you can also flame torch the tips of their stems.
In terms of packaging, consistency and quality is key. Because local flowers are way fresher than flowers brought in from South America or California, there is a huge niche market available to local growers. However, there is a standard of quality and consistency in the floral industry and if you don’t match (and exceed) that standard, it won’t matter how local or fresh your flowers are. Ensuring long stems, clean stems, and quality packaging will ensure long-term customers.
Finally, Erin went over how to make market bouquets (these make up 60% of their sales!) Elements of these bouquets include focal flower, filler (2-3 types), spike, disk, and air. They can make 60 bouquets in an hour by treating market bouquet making as a assembly line.
Market bouquets gettings ready to go to market at the Organic Farm at TESC Photo: Allie Kuppenbender
RESOURCES:
Floret Online Workshop, Module 6: Harvesting & Care for Cut Flowers
Hartman, Ben. The Lean Farm; How to Minimize Waste, Increase Efficiency, and Maximize Value and Profits with Less Work. Chelsea Green, 2015.
Sale Breakdown for 2014
(copyrighted images removed)
You grew all those flowers now how do you actually sell them? This is what Erin tackled on this week’s module of the Floret Online Workshop. She went into depth, including pros and cons, of all of the different avenues one can take to sell the flowers. These included weddings (both DIY and full service), farmer’s markets, farm stand, bouquet CSA, wholesale, grocery, direct to florists, to name a few.
They also broke down some of their finance numbers, such as Annual Sales, Annual Earnings, Specific Crop Sales, Crop Earnings per Square Foot, and Crop Demand. While all of these were for years past (generally 2012-2014), it was helpful to get a breakdown and better understand what sells best and what crops earn the most versus what crops are demanded most.
This module also went into social media and websites–and the importance to have and use both. Erin gave some tips like invest in a professional photographer, have your contact info easily available, and tell your story. Especially because flowers are so aesthetically appealing, taking really quality pictures is important to share with customers and potentially appeal to new clients.
Module 4 was all of the tips, tricks, and tools needed to successfully grow the flowers out to harvest. The categories this week were tools (hand, machines, gear), mulch, landscape fabric, supporting your flowers, transplanting, the benefits of pinching, season extension, irrigation, and putting the farm to bed. Clearly a lot to learn with a wide range of topics. For the most part, all of these topics and the tasks shown (i.e. mulching, setting up netting, irrigation, hoop houses, tools used, transplanting, etc.) were very similar or the exact same as the practices used on the Organic Farm at the Evergreen State College.
The one thing that I knew about, but have never had hands-on experience with before was pinching (cutting the tip of the plant to promote branching rather than straight up growth). Pinching is done on “cut and come again” flowers–things like dahlias, zinnias, amaranth, marigolds, cosmos, scented geranium, etc. Anything that is a single-stem flower (i.e. stock, single-stem sunflower) you do not want to pinch. If possible, do it before the plant sets buds. This makes perfect sense to me–similar to why pruning is necessary for fruiting trees. Auxin from the apical meristem will prohibit side branching and give you one tall monster stalk rather than many branches to cut from. Erin pinches before she puts netting on.
At Floret, they use HortiNova branch netting (ensures flowers are supported) just like the Organic Farm. This can be used horizontally, for things like asters or snapdragons, to help the plants grow long, strong, and straight stems and are protected from strong winds. It can also be used vertically, as a trellising system, for things like sweet peas. Floret also uses a post-and-string corralling method for taller, bulkier plants like dahlias or chrysanthemums.
90% of Floret’s annuals are planted into landscape fabric. They pre-burn holes into the fabric with a propane torch with precut templates for their plant spacings. The exceptions to planting into landscape fabric are sweet peas, anemones, and ranunculus who don’t like their feet too hot, opting instead to use paper mulch covered with 2 inches of compost. Dahlias are also not planted in fabric (too difficult to lift tuber clump through the hole when digging them up) but the dahlia pathways are covered with fabric. They also don’t plant any perennials, vines, woodies, or shrubs into fabric as they have major vole populations who will overwinter underneath the fabric. All of these are sheet mulched, using cardboard and mulch over top. A tip I learned about sheet mulching from the videos was to wet down the cardboard before you mulch over top. While it’s probably not so important in the rainy PNW, it’s a great idea for drier climates.
Side note: it’s funny every week what I do at Thistlehook ends up being somehow touched upon within the Floret Online Workshop. This week it was sheet mulching!
I loved learning more about Floret’s greenhouses/hoop houses. Some of them were even It helped me start to think about logistics for farming in Minnesota (the ultimate goal). Round hoop houses will not work for the snowy, icy winters there, which not something I had thought about before. But you could just take down the hoops for the winter and still use them spring-summer-fall for some sea some extension. They do have a gable or gothic-style greenhouse that has a pointy rather than round top, which would be good for a more permanent structure.
Perfectly enough, the first week we really got to work on propagation at Thistlehook was the same week Erin talked about propagation techniques and best practices for the Floret Online Workshop. There were sections about starting from seed in a greenhouse and direct seeding, as well as propagation from cuttings, bulbs, corms, and tubers. There was also a section on soil fertility, including how to perform a soil test, how to prepare your soil, and how to create/utilize compost tea.
Erin went into depth on specific flowers that are a bit more tricky to propagate, including softwood cuttings, smaller seeds (i.e. Iceland Poppies, foxglove, snapdragons), dahlias (cuttings, digging/storing, dividing), pre-sprouting in cold climates (i.e ranunculus, anemones), bulbs (i.e. tulips, daffodils, etc.), and direct seeding (i.e. millet, sunflowers, cress, larkspur, etc.)
As a die-hard tulip lover, I found the 30 minute video devoted solely to bulbs to be fascinating. I learned a ton of tips and tricks for growing, harvesting, and storing flowers grown from bulbs (but especially tulips). For example, at Floret when they harvest tulips, they take the entire plant, bulb and all. This keeps the flower attached to its food source, allowing them to be kept in a cool for up to onemonth! They don’t need any water either, just the bulb to stay attached. I also liked this idea because it gets the bulb out of the ground immediately after harvest so they don’t sit for weeks and become rotten.
Harvested tulips (with bulbs attached) at Floret Farm in Mount Vernon Source: Floret Online Workshop Module 3
Additionally, there was a video on how to build a simple grow light if you don’t have a greenhouse on-site (which is exactly what we did at Thistlehook this week!) See Thistlehook Internship (Week 3) for photos.
I also really appreciated them going over soil fertility and compost tea. It was really cool to see a compost tea brewer in action and get step-by-step instructions for how to brew compost tea. For some reason, I was always intimidated by brewing compost tea because it seemed very complex, but this video made it seem really easy as long as you have all the right equipment and materials. Apparently, they try to compost tea all their crops at least once a week, with certain crops like dahlias and sweet peas getting even more applications. I definitely want to try it in the future.
RESOURCES:
Floret Online Workshop, Module 3: Getting a Good Start
Module 2 dug in deeper to the nitty gritty of flower farming, namely planning out the farm both physically (i.e. where to grow what and when) and chronologically (i.e. what will be grow at what time of the year and successional planting).
In terms of physically planning out the farm, Erin gave us 5 things as top priority over the first few seasons of the farm. These are:
Place things that need the most attention closest to your living space (if you live on the farm)–similar to zones system in permaculture. (copyrighted images removed)
Standardize your bed length and width
Invest in slower to establish crops (i.e. woodies, shrubs, trees) right away
Plant windbreaks (will make your flowers grow longer, stronger stems)
Establish permanent paths and roads
(Floret Flower Online Workshop, Module 2)
In terms of chronology, Erin broke down how to think about planning the entire year based upon the flowers you’re growing. Put another way, what flowers will you be harvesting when and what work do you need to do beforehand to ensure you actually will be able to harvest those flowers. Included in week 2’s resources was an excel spreadsheet helping to do a lot of that back planning for you as the farm (i.e. when to seed in a greenhouse, when to transplant, succession planting planing, etc.). It would have been so incredibly helpful last quarter in Practices of Organic Farming’s crop planning assignment. It is definitely something I will take with me into the future and utilize often.
(copyrighted images removed)
Floret does a really unusual way of planting in a grid rather than rows within a bed so all of the plants are very tightly spaced. I was wondering about this method and the pros to planting this way. These pros would be (duh) you get way more flowers and way less weed pressure since you’re growing a virtual canopy cover of your crop to block out the weeds. It seems like a really great way to maximize yield on a small farm. I do wonder about disease and pest pressure in the model and would have to do some digging into that, but it seems like it would be worth trying.
RESOURCES
Floret Online Workshop, Module 2: Planning the Farm
Module One of the Floret Flower Online Workshop was all about clarifying and setting goals. What are your goals? How can they be broken up into smaller, more doable steps? What inspires and/or motivates you? How do you effectively achieve these goals? These were all questions we were encouraged to ask yourselves. Through this lens, Erin answered all of these questions for herself and outlined how she achieved her goal of creating and running a successful flower farm and floral design business.
Vision Board 2018 Created by Allie Kuppenbender
Additionally, we “visited” nine different flower farm/floral design businesses to get a better understanding of the wide variety of potential business models out there and how different people are growing flowers and cultivating relationships around the United States. This businesses include:
North Field Farm, owned by Geraldine Kildow and situated on 1.5 acres in Ferndale, WA where she grows peonies for wholesale.
Triple Wren Farms, owned by Sarah and Steve Pabody and situated on 6 acres also in Ferndale, WA where they grow a variety of flowers for wholesale and mixed bouquets for grocery stores and direct to DIY weddings.
Little Boy Flowers, owned by Angie Tomey and situated on 1 acre within a larger 15 acre organic vegetable farm (Mountain Bounty, owned by Tomey’s husband) in Nevada City, CA. Tomey grows for weddings, wholesale, and as an add-on for her husband’s CSA.
The Flower Hat, owned by Julio Freitas and situated on 1/4 an acre in Bozeman, MT. Started as a floral design business, Freitas began growing flowers when he was unhappy with the selection from the wholesaler he was previously working with. All of the flowers grown are used for weddings he is commissioned for or sold to other florists in the area.
3 Porch Farm, owned by Mandy and Steve O’Shea and situated on 3 acres in Comer, GA where they grow for farmer’s markets, florists, and weddings (and are entirely solar-powered and use waste vegetable oil to power their delivery vehicles with the intent to be entirely carbon neutral).
Whipstone Farm, owned by Shanti and Cory Rade where they have an 18 acre vegetable farm with 3 acres designated to flowers in Paulden, AZ. They sell their flowers at farmer’s markets, within their larger vegetable CSA, and some wholesale for DIY weddings and florists.
Shoving Leopard Farm, owned by Marina Michahelles and situated on 1.75 acres in Barrytown, NY where she sells her flowers in a u-cut CSA, for DIY weddings, and to charities.
Tarrnation Flower Farm, owned by Vanessa and Reggie Tarr and situated on 2 acres in Sugar Hill, NH where they del at a farm stand, to a CSA, wholesale, and to DIY weddings.
Sassafras Fork Farm, owned by Stephanie Hall and J. Ed Hall, this father-daughter duo has 40 acres on land devoted to pasture for a meat and egg business, with 2 acres for flowers and located in Rougemont, NC. The flowers, Stephanie’s passion, are sold at farmer’s markets, wholesale to grocery stores, and for onsite weddings.
