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