Not super smooth sailing this spring so far…
This season has gotten off to a bit of a rough start, for some reason. Things just don’t seem to be gelling super well in the garden and I’m encountering more difficulties than in the past two growing seasons. I think I’ve gotten a bit lax and negligent about important things this spring, like monitoring the temperature forecast closely and studying up on fertility needs for certain crops. The plants are definitely letting me know something’s not right and I need to focus.
I grew some amazingly healthy, robust snapdragons and stock, planted them out a few weeks ago and they turned yellow and sickly. I did some triage soil amending when I noticed how bad they were getting—side dressed with blood meal and alfalfa for fast + slow nitrogen and foliar feed with liquid fish. It’s frustrating growing great seedlings just to watch them succumb outside. I don’t even want people to come to my garden and see how pathetic some of my transplants look. It’s embarrassing and I rarely ever say that! They did responded well to the nutrients and the new growth is much healthier now.
It also didn’t help that we got a frost one night the other week and most of my other new seedlings got fairly toasted. I saw that the temp was getting down into the mid-30’s but didn’t check the updated forecast that night thinking they’d be ok and left everything uncovered. ***Smacks forehead*** All my newly planted strawflowers got zapped along with feverfew, china asters, feathertop grass, even self-sown calendula. Ack! I was more prepared the next night when we got another harder frost. I covered everything with agribon which is supposed to give 4 degrees of added protection, and it worked. Nobody frozen! The seedlings seem to be growing out of it, but I’m checking the weather forecast multiple times a day now and am being much more proactive. I’ve learned that my real life garden temps are usually several degrees colder than the forecasted location. Sorry plant friends!
My garlic has also started looking crappy. Last fall I planted it into a winter-killed cover crop bed and mulched it with leaves. I thought I was so clever, that the cover crop would provide enough fertility/mulch and I’d just plant it and forget about it until harvest time. Clearly I didn’t do my homework about garlic fertility needs because it seems to be a heavy feeder and I was supposed to side dress with nitrogen in the spring. Oops! And apparently I’m supposed to pull the mulch back to amend the soil? Then some people leave the mulch off or some people just add amendments on top of the mulch. So again, more triage soil amending—I pulled the mulch off, side dressed with blood meal and watered with fish emulsion. Hopefully the garlic babes will be ok. Chris helped me with this task. I was venting about all my garden struggles and feeling frustrated about noticing the garlic issue late. He said ‘It’s ok, they [the garlic plans] told you. You listened. They feel heard.’ Haha! True. I’m doing what I can.
Then my f*ing phone stopped sending me missed call/voicemail notifications last week. Mother’s Day week of all weeks! I thought it was weird that I was getting zero calls for orders and when I finally checked I had 6 voicemails and had missed several customer inquiries for flower deliveries. Ugh! So I fell short on Mother’s Day, one of the biggest flower holidays of the year, thanks to my stupid phone. Come on world!
Plus my spring fresh flower availability is pretty sparse right around now and I’m feeling the pinch. This is by far the leanest time of the year for me in the garden. Since I don’t have a hoop house with blooms like tulips or ranunculus, I don’t have much to offer when people are in a flower feeding frenzy early in the season. I did make up some fun fresh + dried mixed bouquets for Mother’s Day. Yellow daffodils from my garden, foraged apple branches, blue forget me nots, and some funky dried materials (sun-bleached wheat, rat tail statice, dusty miller and rue pods). Originally I was turned off by the aesthetic of mixing fresh and dried flowers, but done tactfully, they look great together! I think it’s an under appreciated design technique and will be trending soon, if it’s not already.
The one good thing about all these difficulties is they’re not catastrophic and they’re good learning experiences. My farm hasn’t flooded or gotten destroyed in a windstorm or devoured by a herd of deer. I haven’t been evacuated due to wildfires or had to deal with anything serious that would cause my business to fold. I’m pretty lucky! I’m out in the garden every day monitoring, scanning for issues, noticing what’s changing and transpiring. The plants do tell me when they’re unhappy in subtle—and not so subtle—ways, like getting discolored or succumbing to aphids or stalling out. I notice issues cropping up then go down the rabbit hole researching how to resolve them and I always come away more knowledgeable.
This spring I just haven’t been as worried about everything as I have been the past two years flower farming. I’ve gotten lackadaisical. Normally I worry all the time about every little thing! Chris jokingly told me I wasn’t worrying enough this year and needed to worry more, haha! Somehow going into my third year I feel like a seasoned grower who’s got her shit figured out now and I don’t have to pay as much attention. Oi! I think nature is humbling me by throwing little curve balls to figure out. Just when I’m starting to feel on top of my game, another issue surfaces that I have to learn how to address. It’s equally maddening and refreshing at the same time and makes me appreciate the learning process more. My garden is a wise teacher and I’m reminded of that in new ways every year.
