Greetings, farm friends!

Time is flying and we’re feeling pretty overwhelmed with how much there is to be done these days. Right now the crew is pretty much solely focused on harvesting and potting up seedlings, but next week we’re hoping to be able to focus a bit more on field work, but we’ll have to see what we can get done. With a massive influx of florist sales next week and the annual chaos of seedling sale delivery and Flower Mart, we’ve got a lot on our hands. Hopefully we haven’t bit off more than we can chew. As chaotic and intense as these weeks can be, it’s nice to stay busy, and even nicer to see so many things that we’ve lovingly grown make it to their final homes.

*We’ve been so busy that Harry’s had to pitch in where he can!*

*Wren, knee deep in tulips. The crop is almost finished now!*

It’s been a strange start to the season, and we’re wondering what the next couple of months will look like. The tulip crop began weeks ahead of last year’s crop, and our ranunculus and butterfly ranunuculus are pushing out so many stems right now that we’re a bit concerned they’ll fizzle out far too early.

Our field crops haven’t really started blooming yet, but we’ve got our eyes out for the first peonies of the season. It looks like we’ll probably have them earlier than ever, but we can’t be too certain. That said, with temperatures soaring into the mid-eighties next week, it seems quite likely that we’ll have some stressed out plants.

Plants react to stress in many ways, but something we often see with spring heat waves is that they’ll enter a period of rapid blooming as the heat comes on and then shut down production shortly thereafter. We throw shade cloth over our high tunnels to keep plants a bit cooler, and will occasionally up the irrigation should we need to. Some of our spring crops also develop something called bud blast, which leads to deformed flower heads.

It looks like it is not supposed to stay too hot for too long, and we’re pretty well-accustomed to dealing with strange weather and various extremes. We’ve just got our fingers crossed that we don’t run out of blooms at any point!

*Crop Spotlight:* ***Butterfly ranunculus***
It’s a banner year for our butterfly ranunculus crop. Never before have we been able to get it to grow so tall! It’s a stunning crop. For years we felt underwhelmed by it, but now we know why people go wild for butterfly ranunculus. In the past, we’ve had heavy pest pressure from buttercup beetles, and so we decided to harvest the flowers when the buds were still partially closed, before the beetles could eat them. This year the beetles haven’t done too much damage, so we’ve been able to let the blooms open up a bit more. The flowers are still long lasting beauties, and the visual effect is just extraordinary!

*Jane came to help us make bouquets last week and we had a blast!*

We’re back at the Baltimore Farmers Market this Sunday, April 28th, from 7:00- 12:00!

It’ll be warm and sunny on Sunday, a perfect day to grab an iced coffee and meander through the market.

We’re planning to bring bouquets, anemones, poppies, butterfly ranunculus, ranunculus, tulips, and new Two Boots merch!

Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you at the market!

Amelia & The Two Boots crew

Spring Chaos