Autumn's Arrival
Greetings, friends!
Autumn rolled in with a sudden drop in temperatures, an afternoon rain, and a crew of farmers thrilled for the seasonal transition. On Thursday we sent out an absolutely jam packed van full of florist orders, and fortunately our flowers really provided for us this week! Sometimes the demand for our flowers is much larger than what we have available, but we somehow managed to pull everything together this week and were only short a few stems here and there! The dahlia field certainly loves the cooler days and nights; we’ve seen a huge jump in production in the past week. Hopefully that will keep up for a couple more weeks and get us through the final stretch of wedding season.
This week we harvested the first of our heirloom mums, a sure sign of autumn’s arrival. We typically grow heirloom mums as a perennial, but we lost a large portion of the crop to last year’s cold winter which means we’ll have fewer flowers available this year than we have in the past. Early in the year, we took cuttings from our remaining plants and propagated those for this year’s crop, but we lost a few varieties completely. Unfortunately it’s been hard to get your hands on heirloom mum plants this year, and so we’ve been doing our best to build up our supply by taking cuttings of the plants we have on hand! We’re hopeful that the situation will improve in the coming season and we’ll be able to get our hands on more of those glorious, giant, truly unique mums that we adore. Losing so many mums taught us to be more diligent about digging up mother plants in the fall, and maintaining their well-being in the greenhouse over the winter. We’re historically not the best at taking care of things in the greenhouse in the dead of winter— since we shut down daily production for the season, we simply don’t want to bother with too much time in the greenhouse!
Elisa, showing off a nice cluster of pawpaws and a large harvest of salmon zinnias.
Pawpaw season continues, and this is the final week for our popup markets. We’ll be at Dupont Circle this week. Thank you to all who visited us at the popups this year! They’ve been a great success.
The dahlias are incredible right now!
Pawpaw Popups
Sept. 25th - Dupont Circle Farmers' Market
@freshfarmdc
We’re back at the JFX market on Sunday from 7:00-12:00.
This week’s market stand will feature bouquets, bunches of celosia, cosmos, dahlias, eucalyptus, millet, and sunflowers. The produce selection will feature Asian pears, edible flowers, PAWPAWS, shishitos, and basil.
Thanks for reading!
Take care,
Amelia and the rest of the Two Boots crew
Meg and Dave, jumping on a silage tarp to remove the air.
Caryopteris! A favorite of farmers and pollinators alike.
Dave and Karen, in the zinnias.