2020 was a tough year for everyone, for so many different reasons. It was by no means the ideal year to begin our flower farming journey. On top of all the pandemic related challenges, we were navigating our new roles as parents of a child with a developmental delay, commuting back and forth between Salt Spring Island and the Lower Mainland, and figuring out how to juggle our day jobs, farming, and parenting. It's been a wild year, and even with all the challenges we've faced, we are so grateful for the opportunities and successes we've had so far. Our flower farming season is officially over for the year, and with the slower pace we're enjoying lately, we thought it would be the perfect time to reflect on our successes and failures from our first farming season. Here are just some of the flower farming lessons we learned in 2020:
Slugs love zinnias. And sunflowers. And marigolds. Pretty much anything that is recommended as an easy-to-grow cut flower. We severely underestimated how much of an issue slugs would be for us, and hearing about how seasoned flower farmers were also struggling with slugs this year made me think that maybe this was just a particularly bad year for slugs. However, we're still changing our growing plan for next year to focus on the blooms we know that slugs avoid.
Landscape fabric and drip irrigation are worth the investment. The amount of time we saved through not having to weed because our crops were growing in landscape fabric was well worth the money to purchase the fabric. And if well taken care of, both fabric and irrigation can be used for years to come.
Don't start seeds too early. In the middle of winter it's easy to want to get a jump on growing. And some seeds are definitely worth starting early, like Colibri poppies. However, some seedlings (ie: cosmos, zinnias) grew a lot faster than I was expecting and by the time we got round to transplanting they were outgrowing their soil blocks or plugs. Now that we've been through the whole seed starting process once, I think next year we'll have a better game plan for when to start different seeds.
Direct seeding isn't necessarily the easier option. I had very close to zero success with direct seeding this year. I direct seeded hundreds of sunflowers, orach, and amaranth, and only had one amaranth plant grow successfully. I'm still not sure what went wrong, but I do know that I prefer having more control over growing conditions when starting seeds indoors.
You only need to grow a fraction of the cosmos (and nicotiana) that you think you'll need. Seriously. By mid-summer our cosmos plants had gotten so out of control I could barely get down the aisles to harvest them. See photo evidence below!
Harvesting flowers is more time consuming than anticipated. You have to make sure you harvest at the right time of day and clean tools. Different flowers need to be harvested at different stages and treated differently after harvesting. It's a lot to learn.
You CAN grow dahlias in clay soil, but if you don't have do then you shouldn't. This year we grew most of our dahlias in our native clay soil, and only a handful in raised beds. While all of our plants produced reasonably well, the dahlias in the clay were so much more labour intensive to dig and wash in preparation for winter storage. The amount of time (and water) that it took to wash off all of the clay clinging to the tubers felt like such a waste.
And finally, you can do hard things! Farming isn't easy. Starting a business isn't easy. Starting a flower farming business during a pandemic isn't easy. Take pride in the small successes, like harvesting your first handful of colibri poppies, your first overflowing bucket of blooms or making your first sale to someone who isn't related to you. Even if your growing year doesn't turn out like you had imagined, it is still worth celebrating!
This list just barely scratches the surface of what we learned this year, and I easily could have written several more lessons to add to it, however I don't want to make this post too long! Thanks for reading and I hope you too learned something from this list!
- Kristen
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