Flower Farming This Summer
Hello friends,
One day while I was doom scrolling on Instagram, I came across a reel from a local flower farmer, searching for local flower growers to sell their excess flowers to her for her floristry business. Since I was at the time in the middle of completing Floret Flower Farm's online Flower Farming Workshop, I thought this was a good opportunity to do some practical work for the workshop, by harvesting my flowers and foliage and selling them.
In summer my home garden is full of many flowers including varieties of dahlia, hydrangea, zinnia, scabiosa, cosmos, calendula, as well as many other precious goodies including my grown from seed dahlias. Most of these flowering plants are used in the floral industry for selling as cut flowers, and also many of these plant varieties that I grow do not travel very well over long distances, meaning that local florists need to find local growers to provide them for their floral work.
I contacted the flower farmer, and within a few days she came to my home to look at my garden, and also to pick her first bucket of flowers. She was impressed with my flower varieties, and especially my dahlias and Floret zinnia plants, and she quickly got to work photographing the flowers, and also harvesting them for use in her floristry business.
One of her favorite dahlias to harvest was a Floret Petite seedling dahlia of mine, which is currently named FP6, and it is an unusual anemone dahlia in shades of pink, red and yellow. I'm very happy with this dahlia, and intend to grow this as a second year seedling dahlia next year.
It wasn't long before she contacted me again, with the intention to buy more flowers from me, which I was very happy to do. This time she taught me how to harvest all the various flowers in the garden, so in the future I could harvest flowers for her myself.
This came in handy the next week which was Valentines Day week, the busiest time in a florist's year. For the first time I harvested all the flowers and foliage by myself, and I really enjoyed the process, harvesting the flowers that usually just flowered in my garden, and then processed them ready for her to pick them up.
I had so much fun harvesting zinnias, dahlias, hydrangea, and also filler flowers like calendula, cosmos and coreopsis. I also picked foliage plants like rosemary and dogwood for her. When she came to pick up all the flowers up after they'd been harvested, she asked to pick some more, as she planned to make over 100 bouquets for Valentines Day. By the time she left, my garden had provided her six buckets of flowers and foliage, and I was so pleased to have the experience under my belt.
From here on out, she is happy to buy flowers from me whenever she has the need for flowers, and I'm willing to sell them to her. I'm very pleased with this arrangement because it's a way for me to do some flower farming without committing myself to owning a full on flower farm, and all the commitments that come with it, but it also means that any income I receive from this means I can invest it into more plants for my garden, and most likely more dahlia varieties...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Pressing Flowers and Leaves This Summer.
Hello friends,
This summer I undertook the process of pressing my own flowers and leaves, with the intention to arrange them in specimen frames.
For years I've seen this done on Instagram and also Pinterest, and I wanted the opportunity to try this myself. I already own a flower press thanks to my husband making me one back in the days when I was pressing and drying leaves and flowers for my New Zealand Certificate in Horticulture, and I've kept the flower press all these years just in case I needed it once again.
So over the summer I wandered around the garden every now and then, picking out flowers and leaves that appealed to me, and then set up my flower press for pressing them.
My flower press is made out of plywood which is sealed with polyurethane, and measures 20 cm wide by 30 cm deep and 10 cm tall, and has 7 sections to press flowers. The flower press is held in place with screws, washers, and wing nuts to apply even pressure over the plywood sheets.
I cut up a large number of newspaper pages to fit the flower press, and got to work laying out the flowers in the sections.
I separated out the flowers and leaves into groups based on what flower and leaf type they were, and also how deep they were, so that similar depth flowers and leaves were pressed together in the same section.
Once the flowers and leaves were separated out, I placed them face down on two pieces of newspaper, making sure the flowers and leaves weren't touching. Two sheets of newspaper were placed on top, and then a plywood board was placed above them to form the next section.
Once all the sections were filled, I placed the last plywood layer on top, and then tightened the screws using the washers and wing nuts to begin pressing the flowers. With all the wing nuts screwed down evenly with the same pressure, the flower press was left in our dry garage for up to two weeks to press and dry the flowers.
When the flower press was finally opened, it was time to remove the flowers and leaves from the paper layers. It can be a little tricky to remove the flowers and leaves without breaking them, but the best method I've found is to pry the paper away from the flowers and leaves (instead of prying the flowers and leaves away from the paper). For more tricky specimens, I used a pair of fine and flat tweezers to slide between the paper and flowers to break the seal.
With the flowers and leaves released from the newspaper, I threw out or recycled the used paper, as sometimes the paper can develop a fungal infection from drying plants, or the paper becomes uneven afterward, making it unsuitable for pressing again. The resulting pressed flowers were laid flat in between tissue paper layers in a cardboard box for storage.
My plan for now is to continue collecting and pressing flowers and leaves, and later on in the year I will begin crafting my specimen frames...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Making Apricot Nectar
Hello friends,
Back in late December 2025, a neighbour turned up on my doorstep with a very large bowl of apricots in her hands, an entire bowl of unripe apricots she had harvested off the apricot tree outside my home. The tree had been planted by our local council on public land, with the intention that any fruit produced would be shared among the neighbours in our street. The fruit had just begun to ripen and fall, and I had been keeping an eye on the tree, and picking up the first few apricots dropping onto the grass each day.
My neighbour had decided to pick every single apricot off the tree in one go — they were not ripe, and were still very bitter. Her intention was to turn all the apricots into jam for herself, because she said she hated to have any fruit wasted. She thought it would be fair to give me a small amount of apricots because I had been looking after the tree throughout the year. So, she gave me a small bowl of apricots, and then went on her merry way to turn all the rest of the apricots into jam...
I have to admit I was annoyed with this occurrence, first of all it meant that no one else in the street could pick any apricots this summer, and two, I now had a bowl of unripe apricots which I now had to ripen. Luckily I had some ripe apricots for eating in my pantry, so I nestled them amongst the unripe apricots, and left them at room temperature with the hope they would indeed ripen.
Five days later, and with the majority of the apricots ripened, I broke them apart to remove the kernels, and then froze them away until I knew what I would make with them all. After taking some time to decide, I found a couple of recipes online, and chose to make some apricot nectar with the apricots, as I am very fond of drinking it on hot days, as it's very refreshing and cooling.
The first step was to defrost the 1 kg of apricots, and then I added it to a large pot along with 1 L of water.
I simmered it for half an hour, until the apricots had completely broken down.
To the pot I then added 500 grams of granulated sugar, and the juice of 1 large lemon, and then simmered the pot for a further 5 minutes while stirring.
At the end of the 5 minutes I took the pot off the heat, and let it cool.
The last thing to do was to pour the apricot nectar mixture through a fine sieve set over a large bowl, and push the apricots through the sieve until no more juice and puree came out. My mum happened to be visiting during this step, so she assisted me with this. She took the apricot remains from the sieve home with her, so she could put them on her Weetbix for breakfast, and she said it was very tasty.
With the sieving of the apricots done, the apricot nectar was ready to use.
I added a small dash of the concentrated nectar to a glass, and then topped it up with some chilled sparkling water. It was very refreshing, and it tasted just like the commercial bottles I had bought. Most of the nectar remaining was stored in the fridge for drinking over the next week.
I decided to dehydrate the remaining apricot nectar into fruit leather, using my dehydrator, and it was equally as delicious as a fruity snack. It was so tasty, that by the time it had dried properly, hubby and I had already started eating it straight off the drying sheet.
All in all, despite the frustrating start to this project, the resulting apricot nectar and fruit leather were very tasty, and I will look forward to repeating this with more apricots each year.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Shallot And Garlic Harvest for 2025
Hello friends,
Today I thought I'd share with you my recent shallot and garlic harvest, which happened in the third week of December in 2025.
All the way back at the end of May in 2025, I sowed shallots for the first time, along with three garlic varieties, Printanor (which I sow each year), Creole, and Fire. Every single year in early December my Printanor garlic gets rust, because in early December our spring weather pattern changes from sunny and dry conditions, to cloudy and damp conditions, which last until after the new year has begun. So in May 2025 I decided to grow two new garlic varieties, Creole, and Fire, with the hope that one of those varieties would be less likely to contract the garlic rust fungus, and give me a better garlic harvest for the season.
The first task was to harvest my shallots. It was my first time growing them, and they were very easy to grow. By the time I harvested them they had all flopped over, with each sown shallot producing 6 - 7 new harvested shallot bulbs. None of the shallot plants showed any sign of rust, even though they had grown side by side with the garlic varieties all throughout the winter and the following spring.
Next up was harvesting the three garlic varieties, which all had contracted the rust fungus in early December. The Creole garlic plants had the least amount of rust on their leaves, but they also had the smallest garlic bulb harvest.
The Fire garlic variety had contracted the worst case of garlic rust fungus on their leaves, but they also gave me the biggest garlic harvest.
And finally, the garlic variety Printanor contracted a moderate amount of garlic rust fungus on their leaves, but they also had a moderate garlic bulb harvest despite the fungus infecting the plants.
All in all, none of the garlic varieties were spared from being infected with the garlic rust fungus in early December, but the Fire variety of garlic did grow the biggest garlic bulbs despite the infection. Unfortunately this means that I haven't found a garlic variety yet that will resist contracting garlic rust in early December, but I can harvest a decent crop of garlic from the Fire and Printanor varieties at least. Garlic plants infected with garlic rust are safe to eat, but they do not store well, so the garlic bulbs have to be processed in other ways to preserve the harvest.
As a bonus while harvesting my shallot and garlic plants, I also harvested a rogue potato plant which had grown in the same garden bed, and we had enough potatoes harvested from this to feed us that night for dinner (and for leftovers afterward). It was our first potato harvest of the growing season, and we enjoyed the boiled new potatoes with a sliver of butter for dinner.
And as for deciding what to do this coming autumn at garlic planting time, first, I think I'll go hunting for some more new garlic varieties to try, and second, I'll grow the Printanor and the Fire varieties again with the hope that maybe, if I'm very lucky, this year my plants will be spared from the dreaded garlic rust virus.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky, and now also Facebook.
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