Crawford Road Autumn Seed Haul
Hello friends,
Last spring I grew from seed a large number of flowering plants, in order to fill my garden with colour throughout the growing season. Some of the plant species I grew and harvested are used as dried flowers, and include plants like Calendula, Love in the Mist, Statice, and Strawflowers.
I enjoyed going out into the garden to harvest these flowers, and spent some time drying them using both the hanging, and flat lay techniques.
I'm not quite sure what to do with all these dried flowers as yet, but for now they're safely stored away in cardboard boxes waiting for the coming colder months, when I will have time to craft with them.
After enjoying growing and harvesting these flowers, I wanted to prepare for next spring by buying some more dried flower seeds from Crawford Road, a New Zealand boutique seed company.
I purchased some new to me plant species, including Ammobium Winged Everlasting, Gomphrena QIS Pink, Gomphrena Raspberry Pink, Helipterum Pierrot White, Helipterum Red, and Persian Cress.
I also purchased Matricaria Magic Lime Green, Matricaria Vegmo Snowball, Verbena Bonariensis Vanity, and two zinnia seed varieties, Zinnia Jazzy Mix and Zinnia Persian Carpet. Zinnias are not only great as fresh cut flowers, but they also dry well, and they keep their colouring for months as long as they are stored properly.
And finally I bought some more Strawflower (Apricot Peach, Cranberry Rose, Creamy White, Purple Red, Silvery Rose) and Statice seed varieties (Forever Happy, Pale Blue, Pink Pokers, QIS Lavender, and QIS Rose).
All my new seeds are now entered into my seed database, and stored in my seed storage boxes.
My plan was to sow some of them this autumn, but life has been busy, so they will now have wait until spring. I'm looking forward to seeing all these new flower varieties next growing season.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Tomato Seed Saving In Late Summer
Hello friends,
Late summer and early autumn is the perfect time of the year for seed saving in your garden. One of my favorite plants to save seed from are tomato plants. After a number of years of finding the perfect tomato varieties for us to grow, I like to save these seeds, as they have become acclimated to our growing conditions.
Each year I harvest the most squishy and ripe Pomodoro, Juanne Flamme, Hera, Grosse Lisse, Italian Island Bay, and Lebanese tomatoes off the vine, and then I bring them into the kitchen to process. My best advice for doing this is to label each tomato with a sharpie as you take each tomato variety off the vine, as otherwise, I promise you, you will forget which tomato variety is which...
The next step is to squish each tomato over a kitchen sieve to catch all the seeds, and then scoop out any seeds which are still attached to the tomato flesh. Once all the tomato seeds are in the sieve, wash them with water to remove the protective gel coating. Using your fingertips to pry the seeds from the gel coating really helps a lot with this step.
Once the seeds are as clean as they can be, hit the sieve containing the seeds onto a paper towel which is labeled with the seed variety. Spread the seeds out onto the paper towel and leave them to dry overnight.
The next day peel the dried seeds off the paper towel and pop them into a paper seed envelope (or whatever system you normally use). Store them over autumn and winter until it's time to sow seed once again.
Seed saving really is a great way to not only save money while gardening, but also to grow plants which are acclimated to your growing conditions.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Rearranging the South Side Garden
Hello friends,
This summer I wasn't very happy with my south side garden. The blueberry bushes weren't getting enough sun, and didn't produce many blueberries, and the gooseberry bush as always didn't produce very nice fruit for us to eat.
As I was tidying up our blackcurrant bush after we finished harvesting its fruit, the gooseberry bush beside it poked me in the butt for the very last time. I was sick of getting attacked by it, and also since it wasn't producing any good fruit, it was time to pull the whole thing out from the ground. Before you can say "where's my garden fork", I had started cutting the gooseberry bush back so I could access the inner part of the plant.
I did indeed get out my garden fork, and dug out the gooseberry bush within in a matter of minutes. The hardest part was shoving all the gooseberry bush cuttings into a green waste bag without getting stabbed by it as I did so.
With the gooseberry plant out of the ground, I turned my attention to the blueberry bushes. I dug them out and transplanted them into large orange pots which recently held dahlia seedlings (before I made the decision that I didn't want to keep them in my breeding program). After filling up the pots with potting mix, planting the two blueberry bushes, and giving them an appropriate blueberry fertiliser (acid based), I moved the pots into their final positions on the patio.
Now the blueberry plants get all day sun, and they are much happier, even putting on new growth within their first week. Their small amount of fruit from this season have finally started changing colour, after staying green all summer long. I now just have to keep remembering to water them regularly so they don't dry out.
As for the empty spaces in the south side garden, I used some of my flower farming earnings to invest in two hydrangea bushes. The south side garden gets more shade than anywhere else in the garden, and also we need some privacy on that side of the house due to a nosy neighbour. I chose the paniculata hydrangea, Limelight, for the gooseberry spot, and it has conical shaped lime green/cream flowers which are popular in the floristry industry, and as a bonus it also reaches up to a height of 2 m tall.
In the blueberry bushes position, I planted the paniculata hydrangea Sundae Fraise, which has creamy flowers which transition to strawberry pink flowers in autumn. It is a stunning hydrangea which reaches 1.5 m tall, making it perfect for giving us some more privacy on that side of the garden.
This wasn't a planned gardening project when I started out pruning the blackcurrant bush, but I'm very pleased with how it has turned out. Hopefully in the future I will get bigger blueberry harvests, and the hydrangea plants will provide us both privacy and flower farming income in the years to come.
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.
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
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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