Welcome to the Old Time Flowers blog!
My goal for 2023 is to share more of my flower farming journey with folks. In this blog I’ll be offering a behind-the-scenes look at my little operation: planning, growing techniques, thoughts on small-scale flower farming and business. Plus posting about some of my travel adventures too.
It’s hard to believe this is my third season growing cut flowers in Vermont! Every year I learn new skills, hone my growing and business chops, make improvements, work on becoming more efficient, and strive to have better work/life balance. I’m already going into this season feeling more organized—thanks to many spreadsheets in google drive!—and excited to incorporate new changes into my business throughout the year. I’ll be sharing more about new things coming up for OTF in future blog posts.
Small-scale crop planning: how I decide when to start seeds…
This is Week 11. Last week I started snapdragons and icelandic poppies! I’m in zone 4b in central Vermont and my last expected frost date is May 20th. Since I don’t have a hoop house, I rely cold hardy annuals (and perennials!) for my early season field-grown blooms. I’ve found cold hardy annuals can be planted out several (2-3) weeks before my last frost date. Definitely not 6-8 weeks like Lisa Mason Ziegler recommends in her book Cool Flowers. That’s way too early for field-grown flowers where I’m at in Vermont.
The past two years I transplanted my snaps and poppies 4 weeks before my last frost date, under row cover hoops. From keeping field records, I know that we’ve gotten a heavy, wet snow on April 20th, and it was a pain going out to brush snow off the hoops so the seedlings didn’t get crushed. This year I started my early flowers a bit later and plan on planting them out 3 weeks before last frost, hoping to miss the big late snow. We’ll see how this works!
Seed starting…
Since I’m growing on such a small scale (1/10th acre) I start all my transplants indoors under grow lights. I have two metal bakers racks from Lowe’s and they each have 4 shelves. They’re 4 ft. long x 2 ft. wide, so each shelf can hold 4 standard size plug trays. There are 2 grow lights per shelf that are attached to chains so they can be raised and lowered to be close to the seedlings. For lighting I use a combo of 1) fluorescent shop light fixtures with replaceable T8 6500K LED bulbs and 2) regular built-in 5000K LED light fixtures from Lowe’s.
For soil mix, I use Vermont Compost Fort Vee and mix in extra perlite myself. I’ll probably just switch to Fort Light next year.
I sow seeds in row trays, cover with plastic wrap and put on a heat mat. When the seeds start to germinate, I take them off the heat mat, remove the plastic wrap, and turn on the grow light, raising up the tray so it’s a couple inches from the light. Once the seedlings get a set of true leaves in the row tray, I prick them out to 128 plug trays. This ensures that each cell has a viable seedling (compared to sowing seeds directly in plug trays and ending up with some empty cells where seeds didn’t germinate). Pricking seedlings out is a bit time consuming but has worked great for me at my small scale and allows me to maximize my limited space to the fullest.
I have a 10 outlet power strip plugged into a wall timer for the lights. The lights are programmed to stay on for 14 hours/day (7 AM-9 PM). I should probably keep the lights on longer, but this worked well for me last year.
To water when the seedlings are super small, I mist with a spray bottle. As they get bigger I bottom water by putting the trays in a plastic painters tub with a couple inches of water in it. The trays soak up water and I know they’re ready to take out when the soil surface of the plugs starts glistening a little.
I’m using Winstrip trays from Neversink Farm this year for the first time. They’re air pruning, which means each cell has empty slits cut out of the sides. When the seedlings’ roots hit the air they branch and create more roots, which supposedly makes for a stronger, healthier root ball. We’ll see how these trays work; they were expensive but apparently last 10+ years! Regular cheapy plastic trays only last a couple seasons before they fall apart and end up in the dump, so I’m happy to reduce my plastic waste with durable trays. I haven’t really been keen on or tried soil blocking, though some growers are really into it.
I’d love to hear how other small scale flower farmers have their seed starting systems set up! Shoot me an email, DM on Instagram or leave a comment below.
