*The van, absolutely jam-packed with flowers!*

Greetings!

It’s been quite a chaotic week on the farm. We always anticipate a summer slowdown, but it sure hasn’t happened yet. Our crew was in the fields harvesting for florist orders until 3:15 on Monday, despite the official end of our workday being 3:00! Tuesday’s delivery van was packed to the brim, we couldn’t have fit a single additional stem inside. We sold just about every single stem we could this week.

We’re a bit behind on planting as a result of our busy harvests, but we’re hoping to catch up next week. That said, the impending heat wave has us concerned about how our transplants will fare. It’s always difficult to plant when it’s hot out, but when temperatures soar into the hundreds, it’s even more challenging. We had to stop planting into black landscape fabric last year because it was frying the plants. This year we purchased white landscape fabric to use during the summer months, in hopes that it will actually help cool the soil. Unfortunately we haven’t yet had a chance to burn holes in the fabric, which we’ll need to do before we can use it.

The rainy season has been challenging to navigate, but up until this week we’d managed quite well. Last weekend’s storms unfortunately battered some of our crops badly, and the damage worsened over the course of this week. Our larkspur, poppy pods, and bachelors buttons were all knocked down and suffered from bent stems. All of our more delicate flowers (cosmos, agrostemma, nigella, and larkspur especially) are suffering from water damage on their petals, and I fear that we’ll see that some of this week’s blooms have a decreased vase life. We try to get all wet crops under a fan once they’re harvested to dry off the blooms. This helps keep the flowers from rotting and allows us to better identify any rain damage. That said, it’s not a perfect system and quality control becomes a vastly different, more challenging game when we’re inundated with rain.

As I’ve said here many times before, farming in a changing climate is hard and it seems to get harder every year! The weather is unpredictable and our bodies, plants, and land all struggle to adapt and adjust. We’re always working to build a more resilient ecosystem, but there are many factors outside of our control. We persist, learning from each season and each new challenge.

Giant poppy pods! Our former employee Meg gifted us one poppy pod last year and now we have about 10 feet of these glorious giants. The rain knocked them down but they’re still out there getting bigger.

Sunday Market

We’re back at the Baltimore Farmers’ Market this Sunday, June 22nd from 7:00-12:00.

The build your own bouquet bar is around for the summer, enjoy it!

We’ll also have bouquets and assorted bunches of blooms.

Thanks for reading, and, as always, we appreciate your steadfast support.

Wishing you all the best,
Amelia, Elisa, and the Two Boots Crew

Stormy Struggles

Sunday Market