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Ep. 53: Growing a Cut Flower Business & Preserving Heirloom Mums with Jessica Hall of Harmony Harvest
2.1k Plays14 days ago
In this episode of The Backyard Bouquet Podcast, Jennifer sits down with Jessica Hall, co-founder of Harmony Harvest Farm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. What began as a simple question during a family beach vacation—“Where do florists get flowers?”—sparked the beginning of a 20-acre flower farm that now ships bouquets and heirloom chrysanthemum plants across the country.
Jessica shares how she, her sister, and their mom grew their passion into a thriving business rooted in sustainability, technology, and a whole lot of heart. From saving the last U.S.-based flower frog manufacturer to building a farm that blends heritage blooms with modern tools, this is a conversation full of wisdom and inspiration.
Whether you’re just getting started in the garden, knee-deep in flower farming, or dreaming of building something special with your family, Jessica’s story is packed with real-life lessons, encouragement, and the kind of flower talk that makes you want to dig in and grow.
🌸 Highlights from the episode:
- How a family conversation led to launching Harmony Harvest Farm
- The power of mentorship and why it’s worth investing in
- What makes heirloom chrysanthemums so special—and how to grow them
- Behind the scenes of their flower frog business, Floral Genius
- Using tech tools to manage a high-volume flower operation
🛒 Shop flowers, chrysanthemums, and flower frogs: hhfshop.com
📸 Follow along: https://www.instagram.com/harmonyhrvst/
📌 Please Subscribe to The Backyard Bouquet Podcast for more flower farming insights!
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Transcript
Introduction to Backyard Bouquet Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Backyard Bouquet Podcast, where stories bloom from local flower fields and home gardens. I'm your host, Jennifer Galizia of The Flowering Farmhouse. I'm a backyard gardener turned flower farmer located in Hood River, Oregon.
00:00:17
Speaker
Join us for heartfelt journeys shared by flower farmers and backyard gardeners. Each episode is like a vibrant garden, cultivating wisdom and joy through flowers.
Podcast Goals: Advice and Tales
00:00:28
Speaker
From growing your own backyard garden to supporting your local flower farmer,
00:00:32
Speaker
The Backyard Bouquet is your fertile ground for heartwarming tales and expert cut flower growing advice. All right, flower friends, grab your gardening gloves, garden snips, or your favorite vase because it's time to let your backyard bloom.
00:00:55
Speaker
Hey
The Dahlia Patch Community
00:00:56
Speaker
flower friends, before we dive into today's episode, I have something exciting to share. If you've ever dreamed of having a garden full of stunning dahlias, or if you already grow dahlias and want to take them to the next level, you'll love the Dahlia Patch.
00:01:13
Speaker
It's my online community where flower farmers and gardeners come together to learn grow, and get expert guidance for having the most beautiful blooms all season long.
00:01:24
Speaker
And guess what? Doors to the Dahlia Patch are reopening soon. You can join the waitlist now at thefloweringfarmhouse.com to get first access. Check out the link in today's show notes.
00:01:38
Speaker
Today,
Jessica Hall's Flower Farm Journey
00:01:39
Speaker
we are delighted to welcome Jessica Hall, co-founder of Harmony Harvest Farm, a 20-acre family-owned flower farm nestled in Virginia's picturesque Shenandoah Valley, established in 2011 by Jessica, her sister Stephanie Duncan, and their mother Chris Avil, this dynamic trio has transformed their shared passion for horticulture into a flourishing enterprise.
00:02:08
Speaker
Together, they've cultivated over 200 varieties of specialty cut flowers with a particular emphasis on heritage chrysanthemums. Harmony Harvest Farm is more than just a flower farm.
00:02:21
Speaker
It's a testament to the power of family, community, and a deep connection to nature. Their mission goes beyond growing flowers. They aim to build connections between people, strengthen their community, and help others rediscover the wonder of Mother Nature.
00:02:37
Speaker
By shipping mixed bouquets and bulk flowers nationwide, as well as offering local agritourism experiences, they've made American-grown flowers accessible to everyone, everywhere.
00:02:49
Speaker
In
Sustainable Floral Design
00:02:50
Speaker
2017, Jessica and Stephanie expanded their venture by acquiring the last U.S. manufacturer of sustainable floral design mechanics known as flower frogs, leading to the creation of their own line, Floral Genius.
00:03:05
Speaker
This endeavor not only preserved a piece of floral history, but also sparked an idea. If flower frogs could be shipped from the farm, why not flowers? That question set them on a path to make to making their fresh-cut blooms accessible nationwide.
00:03:22
Speaker
Since then, Jessica has continued to push the boundaries of sustainable agriculture, combining innovation with a deep-rooted passion for floriculture. Her journey from horticulture graduate to pioneering flower farmer and entrepreneur has not only enriched her local community, but has also set a benchmark in the industry.
Origin of Harmony Harvest Farm
00:03:43
Speaker
I'm so excited to dive into the story behind Harmony Harvest Farm and hear more from Jessica about their journey. So let's go ahead and get started. Jessica, welcome to the podcast.
00:03:54
Speaker
Oh, thank you so much for having me. Pleasure to be here. It's such an honor to have you here today. Thanks so much for joining us. So we're going to go back in time.
00:04:04
Speaker
Tell us, how did you decide to start Harmony Harvest Farm back in 2011?
00:04:11
Speaker
Well, we always like to say that my family's best ideas always start at the family ah vacations at the beach. And it was at one of those family beach vacations um where sitting on the beach between my ah my mom and my sister, where my mom was asking my sister what she was going to do with the rest of her life.
00:04:36
Speaker
And she was a young 20-something located in Charlotte, North Carolina, trying to get kind of um her beginning wings spread and understand what she was going to do with her life, kind of in those beginning years, um struggling to find her identity.
00:04:52
Speaker
And she turned to me and she said, okay, You're on a farm now. What are you going to do with your time and with the land? And i had planted an absorbent amount of green beans.
00:05:05
Speaker
I had spent that entire summer with my one child, ah harvesting green beans and thought that I was going to be a vegetable farmer and was very disappointed to realize that was not my calling. um And i told her i I simply didn't know. i didn't know what I was going to do i wasn't sure that that was the right path for me.
00:05:29
Speaker
and I was feeling very deflated. And there was a long pause, and I'm not sure why she even said this, but out of the blue, she looked over at me and she said, "'Jess, where do florists get flowers?' And it was a light bulb moment. At that moment, I literally saw the entire industry kind of flash before me.
00:05:52
Speaker
and I said, that's it. That's exactly what I'm going to do. she kind of looked at me and said, do what? I said, I'm going to grow flowers. That's exactly what I'm going to do. I packed up my beach chair and I went back into that beach house.
00:06:05
Speaker
And I spent the remainder of our family beach vacation at the little public library And on my computer researching the industry and fell head over heels in love with what I found to be kind of a revival moment in floriculture and in flower farming.
00:06:25
Speaker
I found that there was a real thirst for it and a real missing piece of it in our local area. that it was a piece of agriculture that wasn't being served very well.
00:06:38
Speaker
And it was something that I really felt that I could find my footing in.
Childhood Influence on Gardening
00:06:42
Speaker
And so we went home from that family beach vacation. And the first thing I did was find myself a mentor and jump right in.
00:06:50
Speaker
That is amazing. I've got goosebumps. I love that story. It's amazing how many people I've talked to on the podcast that have started with vegetables so and realized that it wasn't for them.
00:07:02
Speaker
And they've found this calling for flowers. And I love that you discovered this calling in your life before the real, I'd say, American flower movement kind of took hold.
00:07:15
Speaker
I grew up in a very rural area, and um I vividly remember spending Sundays after church following around my mom. um We would go and visit some of her friends, and my mom would walk around her friend's backyard sloshing glasses of sweet tea, and her friends would point out different plants in their yard, and they would hand me a shovel, and they would tell me to divide a clump,
00:07:44
Speaker
and give me a grocery sack and tell me to take part of it home and telling my mom how to plant it. My job was always to take these plants home and to put them back into my mom's landscape.
00:07:59
Speaker
And i would tend to them and i'd learn about them and fall in love with them right alongside my mom. And then When my mom's friends would come back, it was learning the stories. i I knew where all these plants came from, all the different friends that had gifted them.
00:08:16
Speaker
I'd learn about the plants. And i kind of grew up in all of these neighborhood gardens and then in my mom's garden. And there ah might have been history tests that I would fail, but I would always remember the plants.
00:08:31
Speaker
Yeah. um I really found um myself in the gardens from a very early age. And so sitting on that beach when my mom said, where do florists get flowers?
00:08:43
Speaker
It truly was a light bulb moment. At that point, it all made sense why I'd spent so much time in the garden my whole life. It's where I really was meant to be. And so finding a place for me to be able to spend and build a career that really kind of became full circle moment for myself.
00:09:04
Speaker
I love that so much. It's those seeds that were sown so long ago in your life that didn't maybe make sense at the time, but looking back have literally led you to where you are today.
00:09:16
Speaker
So that's a really beautiful story. So that was in 2011 that you took that beach vacation. yeah And did you go home and just scrap all the vegetables and start water farming?
00:09:28
Speaker
We were done. i i ended up not even to this day. i
Significance of Mentorship
00:09:33
Speaker
still don't have a vegetable garden. i lean on my poor father to still feed me out of his vegetable garden.
00:09:40
Speaker
um Yeah, I came right back and immediately jumped head over heels into ah cut flower garden. farming. And um my my very first rows of flower fields are now our parking lot.
00:09:56
Speaker
um It's kind of, ah yeah, it's very interesting to see kind of the growth over the years. We we took those first rows um and have expanded now to being a 20 acre cut flower farm with seven high tunnels that we operate out of.
00:10:13
Speaker
So it grew very quickly and over the years. And ah the the smartest thing that I did was find myself a really, really strong mentor to kind of help guide me along the ways.
00:10:26
Speaker
And it wasn't just one mentor. I definitely found quite a few different resources along my growing career um to help me and to to learn from so that I could learn from others. I think that's one of the beautiful things about growing. There's just so many different people out there that can give you some real incredible resources that can set you up for success far beyond what you can um learn on your own. You only get one season to try something each year. And so being able to lean on other people's um vast resources of knowledge is super helpful when you're growing.
00:11:08
Speaker
That is such amazing advice. How did you find a mentor initially? So i am not a bashful person. i i actually went to an extension agencies um ah an extension agency put together a resource program that was in a neighboring state in Maryland.
00:11:33
Speaker
And it was a day-long cut flower program. And I went there. And when I went, they had a um full panel of experts.
00:11:45
Speaker
And one of the people that they had on their panel was Dave Dowling. And I had seen his name many, many, many times in just reading up on different things going on in the industry. And I knew that he was such a great wealth of information and someone that I could really turn to um if I could just get in front of him.
00:12:09
Speaker
And so um i went ahead and got right close with him and asked him if he would be able to help me And I was really lucky because the first thing he said was, yep, I would be able to um ah help you with that. And so he um he offered to help.
00:12:30
Speaker
And here we are. That is amazing. He is such a wealth of knowledge and has contributed so much to the floral industry that what an incredible mentor to have as you were starting out on your business. We were lucky.
00:12:45
Speaker
So did he come to your farm and help you or did you have conversations Yes. So Dave Dowling has come to the farm many times to help me with different growing problems or struggles, or even just to celebrate some of our successes, which is always fun when you have a mentor that wants to jump right in to celebrating your successes. Because a lot of times we want help problem shoot all of our trials and our tribulations, but it's even more rewarding when they jump in and help to celebrate some of the biggest achievements that we have. um
00:13:21
Speaker
achieved and our successes as well. And so one of the things that I've been most excited about is to see him come to some of our big events that we've had at the farm.
00:13:31
Speaker
oh Every year we have a flower fair and we bring in hundreds of people from all around the community just to give them a day filled of flower fun.
00:13:43
Speaker
And ah he is one of the bright spots that I look forward to every year at flower fair. to see him come out and to be a super proud um mentor of mine ah to see all of the faces that just enjoy flower fair.
00:13:57
Speaker
Oh, that's amazing. I have so many questions for you. I'd like to ask a few more about the mentorship, if that's okay. I think there's a lot, especially right now, as the American flower movement is really kind of taking off at the moment, there's a lot of newer farmers. And so I think there's probably a lot of people listening to this conversation thinking, well,
00:14:17
Speaker
Oh, someone like Jessica, who's super well established, had mentor. Maybe I should get a mentor myself. And I've definitely had mentors ah as well. I think it's a super important thing. I mean, why reinvent the wheel or try and go at it alone when there's people willing to help?
00:14:33
Speaker
What advice can you give to someone who is newer and starting out and looking for a mentor? I think that it's really important to get a mentor. Uh, and I think being brave and asking, um, and I don't think that, um, looking for an official title,
00:14:51
Speaker
ah of a mentor is is something that we need to get real hung up on, just asking for some simple guidance and nothing more than just a friendship.
00:15:02
Speaker
um I put that mentor title on more people than they probably realize. um There's a lot of people that I have in my mentor catalog of resources than probably um most folks realize that they reside in that catalog.
00:15:19
Speaker
um Just for the fact that I know that they are really good at what they know. And I can always lean in and ask. So don't be afraid to ask folks for their insight and for their guidance on things.
00:15:31
Speaker
Don't be afraid to make those phone calls, to send those emails and to stop by and to see folks ah operations. And I think that that is kind of the biggest piece of advice that I can get give is to actually go and spend some time at folks operations.
00:15:47
Speaker
The biggest, um, piece of help that I've been able to give has been our in-person, um, um farmer um consultants that we've been doing on the farm where we have folks that come out and spend one hour with me where we walk the farm and we talk about kind of their headaches and their hang-up points that they have on their own operation or in their own gardening practices.
00:16:16
Speaker
And we walk around my farm and I point out things that might actually um help them specifically on their own operation. And that has been really drilled in pertinent information um specific to what they're working on. And I think that that is the most helpful.
00:16:35
Speaker
I love going in large groups, but a lot of times it feels like it gets a little too broad and it doesn't feel as relatable. So a lot of that one-on-one time can be hard to get, but as much of it as you can find time for or find access to is super duper beneficial.
00:16:55
Speaker
So anytime that you can get just a quick behind the scenes, let me just come and help you fill potting trays. um Always being a lending hand is always helpful for folks who never ask to pick ears, always ask to be a help, um is always worth its weight in gold.
00:17:14
Speaker
That's great advice. Now, I want to clarify, you've made the you've said the word consultant and you've talked about mentors. And I think it's important to talk about this because...
00:17:26
Speaker
people when they mentor or consult are giving of their time. So I assume you have probably set very clear expectations on this, but for helping people who are newer to this idea, should they expect that they're going to get all this information for free? Or is there usually a fee that is paid to have a mentor or a consultant?
00:17:48
Speaker
This usually comes with a cost to it. and Do expect to ah pay money for someone's expertise. It definitely comes with that value. If you are going to get something from someone that's going to save you years of time and effort and heartache, it's going to have a little bit of a price tag attached to it.
00:18:11
Speaker
And the more valuable the information or the more esteemed and respected the mentor, the consultant is, the higher that cost can be.
00:18:21
Speaker
um We like to keep everything reasonable at our farm because we like to make sure that everyone can afford those resources. But at the same time, it does eat our very valuable time. So there is a cost to it.
00:18:35
Speaker
And again, um like I said, saying that you just want to... um bend someone's ear or ask for some free advice. Free advice usually doesn't come with the best advice.
00:18:48
Speaker
So making sure that you are willing to pay for advice usually will give you better advice. I love that. Thank you for clarifying on that. We, I don't know if you're aware, but we have a 20 acre farm that we are building out right now in Hood River. And I have hired ah senior, I'll call her a senior farmer that has way more experience than me on a larger scale.
00:19:09
Speaker
And And so I have a farm consultant that we've hired this year and I have a soil consultant because like you said, versus reinventing the wheel, I would rather pay for someone's time and experience to help me get there faster than asking for free advice that may or may not be accurate. Especially if you look on the internet, there's so many conflicting things, but to find someone that has a proven track record that has already done it,
00:19:33
Speaker
If you can get that step up, it just moves your operations ahead so much faster and puts you ahead of the game. And I've seen other people that have been guests on the podcast that have done that, um that have invested in their business.
00:19:48
Speaker
And they they're moving so much faster than others that started at the same space or speed as them because they've made that investment. I was told once that you'll never regret, gosh, how does it go?
00:20:02
Speaker
It was Amy Porterfield said, you'll never regret the time that you invest in yourself and in your business. And it's so true. And so I love that you shared that. Thank you for talking about that subject.
00:20:14
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. It's important to invest in your business and invest in yourself in the right ways and also to respect the knowledge that other people are willing to share and the insight that they're willing to help give you to lean forward.
00:20:31
Speaker
And so um just understanding how that works and you can get a lot of value out of a mentorship or a consultant experience.
00:20:41
Speaker
if you understand how to broach it correctly. Yes. Do you have any tips on how to broach that correctly? Well, the first off is always to ask if someone is open to consulting or mentorship and if they have a fee structure available or a ah time plan available that they can um provide you. If they don't, um you can kind of collaboratively work on one together.
00:21:08
Speaker
um A couple of hours or even coming up with a flat rate fee is always advisable. That's great advice. Thank you, Jessica. Let's talk about your farm and what you're growing on the farm. So when
Flower Varieties at Harmony Harvest Farm
00:21:25
Speaker
you dove in, did you find that you were influenced by those original plants that you were introduced to as a kid? Or how did you decide what to grow initially on your farm?
00:21:34
Speaker
Well, I was influenced by every seed catalog that came in the bagel. Like every other flower farmer, I wanted to grow a little bit of everything under the sun. And for the first few years, we tried to do just that, and it about wrecked us.
00:21:50
Speaker
We definitely streamlined down over the seasons, and we focus on kind of our seasonal jewels of the farm. um We still grow a very large assortment because our mainstay, our bread and butter, are mixed bouquets that we provide. And so in order to have mixed bouquets, we need a a wide variety of different plants But we do focus on spring ranunculus.
00:22:17
Speaker
um We focus a lot on our um our summer annual or our summer perennials. And ah we focus on our dahlias. We focus very heavily on our peonies.
00:22:30
Speaker
ah And we love our fall chrysanthemums. And we do a lot of seasonal greenery in the um winter months. So we've really been able to kind of keep the seasonality of the farm, but we mix in a lot of different um seasonal tidbits as well.
00:22:52
Speaker
And we do a little bit of our own seeding, but we also really like to work with a community base to our farm. And so we work with another farmer to do or to grow out most of our spring bedding plants.
00:23:10
Speaker
So next week I get to pick up our first round of all of our little babies. I'm very excited to have some stock and some snapdragons and things back at the farm to be tucked in.
00:23:22
Speaker
oh that's amazing. So you work with another farmer, not like a plug wholesaler to get your starts. So we do get some of our things from a plug wholesaler. Our lisianthus came in a few weeks ago and we've got all of those tucked into the ground and we grow. i think this year there is about 7,500 lisianthus that got tucked in. It's a lot.
00:23:44
Speaker
It's a lot of lisianthus, but we love them. And then we work with a local grower to start out all of our spring bedding plants. For us, that's what they are really, really good and efficient at.
00:23:58
Speaker
And it frees up some time for us when we are in mum um production mode for starting out all of our little babies for our chrysanthemums. And so we can kind of divide and conquer our skill set.
00:24:13
Speaker
And it works really well for us. I love that. So instead of trying to do it all, you've it sounds like you found what you're good at and then you've outsourced some of the other items. And i'm not that you're not good at it, but what makes the most sense for your farm?
00:24:27
Speaker
And I think we all really need to focus on doing just that. we We can all be great at everything, but you can't be great at everything all the time and at the same time.
00:24:39
Speaker
And we all want to be. And I think it's really good if we can kind of focus on one or two things and find other people who can kind of balance out our skill set and let them take on other pieces of the puzzle for us.
00:24:54
Speaker
And so for us, it's really nice to have another grower who is going to deliver all of those little babies. And we know that they're going to look absolutely wonderful. And we can just pop them in the ground. And they I don't have to worry about even the sowing schedule.
00:25:11
Speaker
um That used to give me such anxiety and just heartache. And now I don't even have to do it. I just have to deliver my seed and tell him when I want them delivered. and he makes everything happen in between.
00:25:24
Speaker
That's incredible. h It really is. It takes a lot of stress off of me. I can only imagine. And I'm curious because you've mentioned 7,500 lisianthus. You're obviously growing on a large space. Are you utilizing all 20 acres of your farm?
00:25:40
Speaker
So we're not actually, um we grow on about seven field acres. And then in addition to that, we have our seven tunnels. And so majority of our farm is still in hay.
00:25:52
Speaker
We run our seven field acres pretty tight. And a lot of those are also opened up to, we do season pick your own on the farm. So we are harvesting for our nationwide shipping program because all of our bouquets ship out nationwide off of our website um over top of our Pick Your Own, which has been a really interesting um kind of model and way of putting it together, but it works well for us.
00:26:23
Speaker
um We have become a very technology savvy flower farm, and we ah kind of trained up our entire team to operate pretty tech savvy, um which sounds kind of opposite of an agriculture operation, but it does work for us.
00:26:43
Speaker
um Our website runs probably 98%
00:26:50
Speaker
of all of our farm, from sales to everything. And so is... it is It is a very tech heavy operation.
00:27:01
Speaker
We also run a lot of project management. So we work in just a ah basic, it's Basecamp is what we use, but a project management software to operate the entire farm from um harvest requests to to design table, to inventory flow, to everything um so that the entire team can kind of internally communicate and at a rapid fire level ah and make sure everything seems very fluid and seamless.
00:27:34
Speaker
And we have great, you know, communication all the way down to our customer level that way. That's amazing. You can grow a lot of flowers on seven acres. Yes, we do.
00:27:45
Speaker
We tuck a lot into the seven acres, but again, it all is because we keep everything very tightly drilled in um from a technology framework. Can you talk about that technology framework? Because I think there's a lot of farms that could benefit from that. and Yeah.
00:28:01
Speaker
Probably mine too. So like I was saying, everything kind of runs um centrally around our project management system. um And we keep all of our scheduling and everything in our project management.
00:28:15
Speaker
We... um we communicate internally and externally through that as well as using air table, which is kind of like a keyed up version of Excel, um, to manage all of our real time data.
00:28:30
Speaker
Um, whether that be inventory or, um, just kind of like spreadsheet accounting. Um, we have everything integrated through, um Shopify and then, um run every, all of our um website runs through um Shopify and ShipStation for um all of our web-based shipping.
00:28:56
Speaker
So yeah, it's, It's a lot of apps. It's all self-built. So if
Tech in Farm Management
00:29:03
Speaker
anybody but yeah if anybody's like, wow, you guys must work with a lot of developers. No, we have built the hamster wheel ourselves.
00:29:11
Speaker
So it might be a little rickety behind the scenes, but it works pretty well for us. um It's been ah quite a learning church um curve for us because none of us were trained in this. We are all self-trained. So it's been quite a journey.
00:29:29
Speaker
ah But it's pretty ah amazing the breadth of the machine we've been able to create. And like I said, it works really well. We um have a pretty fluid system.
00:29:41
Speaker
um We operate on a pretty tight weekly structure. Tuesdays, um we have a full team meeting. And from our team meeting, we'll do what we call a crop walk, where we walk the entire farm.
00:29:58
Speaker
And from that, we'll kind of come up with what our availability will look like. From that, we do state of the cooler. The state of the cooler will... come ah the design recipes. The design recipes turn into a harvest request.
00:30:16
Speaker
Our harvest requests tell our harvesters what needs to be harvested on what days of the week. um From those, they start checking in inventory. Inventory is cycled into our cooler And then every day it's allocated or removed from the cooler. And we do one big weekly cooler clean out to turn our inventory and cycle through. So it's a really fluid um weekly rotation that kind of turns the entire farm um over.
00:30:49
Speaker
That's amazing. How many people are on your team? So our full team is, it fluctuates, but ah consistently it's about 10 full-time year-round.
00:31:01
Speaker
Wow, that's amazing. You must have really good standard operating procedures to be able to do that We do. There are manuals everywhere, um and they are a lot of times updated, and some of them aren't as up-to-date as we would like them to be.
00:31:16
Speaker
But for the most part, we have a really, really solid team. ah One of the best things that we did was really drill in kind of to what our mission, vision, and values were for running the our operation. and I think if you stopped anyone on our team at any point in time, they could tell you without hesitation what we stand for, what we believe in, and why. um It's pretty pretty consistent that we all feel the same way about why we're here.
00:31:48
Speaker
And um I think when you have those firm beliefs that are that consistent throughout the entire group, that it's easy to kind of keep on the same page and to stay really checked in and really focused.
00:32:04
Speaker
And that's kind of been our beacon So we're really, really blessed group. And we have a great, great team. You know, unfortunately, and when you work in today's society, you tend to spend more time with your coworkers than you do your own family, which is such a pity.
00:32:25
Speaker
you really need to enjoy and love the people that you work with just as much as you enjoy your family. And I... I'm a big believer that you need to have a life outside of work and that work should not be all consuming. So we work really hard to give people ah full balance and to make sure that they are seen, heard and treated as such.
00:32:48
Speaker
And our team is our family ah for every account there is. That's lovely. I love that so much um because you do spend so much time with the people you work with.
00:33:01
Speaker
Yeah. Have you always had that big of a team or has it grown over the years? Oh, it's definitely grown over the years. I can remember the very first person I hired. And you know, it's interesting. You go back. um I've grown a lot too, as I have hired people over the years.
00:33:18
Speaker
um You never think that you will be someone who is hiring. You never think that you will ever have to let anyone go. You just never think that, um,
00:33:30
Speaker
ah some of the things that come your way as being an owner of an operation that that you'll have to sit into some of the situations that you do. But you learn a whole lot about yourself and about how to work with other individuals.
00:33:45
Speaker
And I've been really blessed um with the folks that have walked through Harmony Harvest over the years. We have had such a dynamic an incredible group of individuals that have kind of um blessed the the business throughout the years and very few that have been real lessons for me um over the course. And those I wouldn't even change if I had to because I learned so much through their tenure here as well.
00:34:16
Speaker
So were your sister and your mom your first hires? um Not my first. My mom and I started the whole operation. So I don't know if she hired me or I hired her.
00:34:28
Speaker
Interesting fact, my mom and my mom used to run a healthcare company. And before um before we worked together in this business, I worked for her in the healthcare company and she fired me.
00:34:45
Speaker
Twice. No way. Yes. And then we decided to start a business together. So I don't know what that says about her, just that she loves me a whole lot and I've grown a whole lot.
00:34:56
Speaker
um um Yeah. So ah we never thought we would be family that would work together. And yet here we are. um It's interesting how things kind of unfold.
00:35:09
Speaker
um I always wanted a family business. I just didn't realize i was going to be the one that started it all. I just really wanted to work in a family business and there wasn't one. And so I said, well, I guess I'm going to start it.
00:35:24
Speaker
ah Mom and I work really, really, really well together. But we were kind of like missing our third leg. And it took some serious convincing for a few years ah to get my sister back home because she was in Charlotte, North Carolina for a while.
00:35:42
Speaker
And um when we got her back home, I couldn't imagine life without her. It has been the best time. She really does complete the full circle. Like we are the trifecta and it makes life so much easier to navigate. The three of us just seem to click and get it.
00:36:03
Speaker
And we can get a lot of stuff done when the three of us are putting our heads down. That's amazing. How fun that you get to work with your mom and your sister on a daily basis. It's the best. I would not change that for the world.
00:36:17
Speaker
That's amazing. So I know you started out with over 200 varieties of flowers and you said you still have to grow a lot because your bread and butter is bouquets. Is that
Chrysanthemums: A Nationwide Journey
00:36:28
Speaker
help us understand what is your business model look like? You're selling these bouquets that are shipping across the country. What else are you doing?
00:36:35
Speaker
So we ship bouquets nationwide. But in addition to that, one of the biggest pieces that we're really passionate about are our chrysanthemum plants. And so we, a few years ago, actually, I'll take that back.
00:36:49
Speaker
One of the very first flowers that I fell in love with, one of the very first plants that I grew were chrysanthemums. And I know that they sound really basic because when I fell in love with them, i I was first told, oh, you have to grow these chrysanthemums. And I was like, yeah, yeah, I've heard about chrysanthemums.
00:37:09
Speaker
Those are really basic, but they're not. I went to another flower farmer when I was first getting going and she was teaching me. So this is one of my mentors and she was teaching me all kinds of things. And before I left, she said, here, I'm going to give you these couple of plants, take them home and grow them.
00:37:30
Speaker
And I said, Oh, what are they? And she said, these are heirloom chrysanthemums. And I said, Oh, I've grown chrysanthemums. And she said, not like these. So I took them home. And that first year I was killing stuff left and right. I mean, if there was a plant to murder, I was doing a good job of killing it.
00:37:47
Speaker
But I wasn't killing those. Those were making it just fine. And so I was learning how to get my growing legs under me. And I was kind of getting my wheels up going and I was finding my rhythm and the moms were doing great.
00:38:03
Speaker
And I vividly remember that first fall when the killing frost came and I wasn't ready to be done because I had really just started to get myself going. I was like, you can't be done yet.
00:38:15
Speaker
I just started. And I looked over and the mums were gorgeous. It was the only thing that looked beautiful when everything else got bit by the frost. I was like, oh my gosh, I don't have to be done. I have these mums.
00:38:29
Speaker
And so I went out and I sold those mums and people were falling in love with them. Like I was falling in love with them. was like, these are so great. So I went back to that grower and I said, Kate, these are so great.
00:38:39
Speaker
I'm in love with them. Where do I get more? And she said, oh, well, you can't. They're hard to find. don't like that answer. And so and she told me how to find very hard a few more plants. And so I went after her directive and got a few more plants.
00:38:58
Speaker
And I spent the next couple of years building up some stock and becoming a better grower and growing more mums and every fall falling back in love with them.
00:39:09
Speaker
And it became a thing where every fall our mum bouquets became the shining star. People went nuts over them. And then they started asking, where can I get these plants?
00:39:22
Speaker
And I got really tired of telling them the same thing that I was told. Well, you can't or they're really hard to find, yada, yada. And so I said, you know, maybe we should just try to offer these plants available.
00:39:35
Speaker
And so we did. We started offering the plants. Now, I didn't know what I was doing, but I felt like maybe maybe we can figure out how to offer these. And we offered dormant bare roots the first couple of years.
00:39:51
Speaker
And we sold so many plants. And I was shocked. It covered our winter months payroll without sneezing. And I was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I just did that.
00:40:08
Speaker
l I knew that there was a better way than dormant bare roots. So I started really studying up about plug production, about propagation, about how I could ship live plants.
00:40:22
Speaker
And so a few years ago, we got really invested into production of propagated plant material. And I went back to the same growers that grow out all of our spring material because they are excellent propagators and have a big propagation facility.
00:40:42
Speaker
And I said, would you partner with me? And they said, absolutely. So we work with them now. And each spring we propagate about 20,000 plants and mail order these plants all across the U.S. to share them. And what I think is really special is these are true perennial mums. So a lot of the mums that we see at the big box stores nowadays aren't true perennials. They're made to be disposable plants.
00:41:14
Speaker
they've lost the specialness to them the ones that we are carrying these are old plants from the 30s from the 40s these are plants that long lost plant scientists spent many yeah decades researching and getting to the proper stage just to make sure that that would last in your garden and they were close to extinction. These plants are were almost completely, virtually wiped out of existence.
00:41:46
Speaker
And here we are saving them. So keeping them in your home landscape keeps them preserved, helps us to create little ways of preserving them in home landscapes all across America. And I find that just amazing.
00:42:02
Speaker
And this is a lot of how preservation efforts and movements happen all across Europe. But I think it's really cool that here we are in the U.S. doing the same thing with chrysanthemums, preserving them in our home landscapes and on our flower farms all across the U.S. Plus, it doesn't hurt that these are really profitable flowers come the fall months.
00:42:28
Speaker
And if you start propagating because they are non-licensed material, which means everybody can do this, they provide a really nice cash crop for all of us that are in production.
00:42:42
Speaker
That's amazing. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about chrysanthemums. Who can grow them? So the chrysanthemums that we offer are hardy to zone four.
00:42:52
Speaker
And this means that they can be available for home gardeners. They're great for flower farmers. These are available for even people who don't have a lot of room. So if you're looking for them in containers, if you're looking for them bonsai, if you're looking for them in hanging baskets, because we now have...
00:43:14
Speaker
ah Oh, yes. We have different ones that do um different trialing varieties. No way. Yes. There's so many different options with these.
00:43:26
Speaker
That's why I like that. i consider them a world of consanthemums. There's one that will literally fit everyone. So they are hardy down to zone four.
00:43:37
Speaker
who Now, what about with frost? do you need to have them undercover? So it depends. Certain ones you do, certain ones you don't. And this is variety specific.
00:43:49
Speaker
I will tell you that the lighter the color, the more frost sensitive they will tend to be. The darker the color, the least or the more hardy they are to the frost.
00:44:00
Speaker
Okay. So if someone doesn't have hoop houses, they could still grow them. Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We also plant ours outside a lot of times to see how well they will do.
00:44:12
Speaker
and we like to, we we do the tough love technique. So we put a lot of stuff outside. I put a lot of my light colors and my whites out just to see how well they would do.
00:44:23
Speaker
And we were finding things were not sensitive until we were hitting about the 26 degree mark. Okay. Our area is so hard because sometimes our first frost will be 20 degrees.
00:44:35
Speaker
Don't you love that? And it's like, oh, I just want that light frost. So they keep going. But um right now I thought that I could only grow them under cover. Yeah. So that's exciting because I don't have a hoop house this year.
00:44:49
Speaker
So I could still add some. You can grow them. Yes. And we do have different ah classifications of the mums. So there's earlies, there's mids, and there's late. And if you are concerned that you're not going to be able to get it to bloom in time, then you can go ahead and opt for an early or you can opt for a mid versus the real late.
00:45:10
Speaker
Yes. Okay. And when do the earlies typically start blooming? You can see them bloom as early as the first part of September. Awesome. Yeah. Okay. So early blooming chrysanthemums, you can see blooms as early as September. Yep.
00:45:27
Speaker
How long can they continue blooming? So your early bloomers will probably finish up ah about the mid of October, which is about when you'll start seeing your mid bloomers start to begin.
00:45:40
Speaker
And they're going to bloom up until about the 1st of November, when you're going to see your lates really start to crank out blooms. Those lates will bloom right up until about the 1st of December. So wow it's a really long bloom season across all of them.
00:45:58
Speaker
Amazing. So if I have a frost, though, usually in October, I probably shouldn't be buying the late if I'm growing them outside. Correct. Yeah. It may be a little bit of Russian roulette unless you really want to baby those. Now, I have seen people who love to baby theirs and cover them with lots of blankets and protect them.
00:46:18
Speaker
That's not me. all the All that to those who want to, but that's not me. It's a lot of work to do that. It can be. No, we yeah we grow our lates in tunnels and with a little bit of minimal heat.
00:46:33
Speaker
And then we have December blooms. Okay, that's amazing. So you can pretty much go up through the holidays with kids. Yeah, we we actually try to time up our lates so that we can have our um cuts right up until Christmas time.
00:46:48
Speaker
Wow. And since you are taking cuttings and propagating your chrysanthemums, do you have to dig them or do you leave them in the ground to take your cuttings? So what we do is we actually will take our mother stock. So we don't use the flowers that we're cutting for our cut blooms for our bouquets are not the same ones that we'll use for our babies.
00:47:11
Speaker
The ones that we'll use for our babies come from what we call our mothers. So our mothers make our babies and those are grown in containers. We grow those in a one gallon stock container and we keep those in a different greenhouse and we keep those at a nice cool temperature in the winter months. We kind of emulate weather.
00:47:33
Speaker
And we let those go dormant in December. And then right after Christmas, we begin to wake them up. We start to warm up the temperatures, get them up to about 45 at night, put them under a little bit of um light at night so that we interrupt the nighttime um day length. We want to make sure that they think that it's longer day length. so that the growth that they give us is not trying to create a flower, but that it's trying to create fresh green growth.
00:48:03
Speaker
So we want to wake them up slowly, and give them a little bit of heat, and then we start taking our cuttings in February. Okay, that's great to know. Yeah. And can you use that mother year after year or do you start the new mother each year?
00:48:18
Speaker
We start a new mother each year. She gets retired. And when we retire her, we put her in our landscape so we can love and enjoy her. Now, most people think that that means she's going to just bloom forever and ever. Amen.
00:48:31
Speaker
But a perennial just means that she's going to give us a few seasons worth of love and enjoyment in the landscape. We find that most of our true chrysanthemum perennials will give us about three to five years in the landscape before they die out.
00:48:46
Speaker
Okay. So every year you're replenishing what's growing for your cut flowers. And then in the landscape, you get about three to five years of enjoyment and then you need to have another mother to replace them with.
00:49:00
Speaker
Yep, absolutely. It's a fun cycle and it's a really beautiful way to fill the yard, fill the landscape with beautiful plants. and one of the other thing that I have noticed as well is planting so many chrysanthemums around the farm has really lowered our pest problem because the chrysanthemums are naturally filled with pyrethrins, which is a natural um insecticide that a lot of chemicals are derived from.
00:49:29
Speaker
So the chrysanthemum naturally wants to repel a lot of insects. Now that does not mean that she does not get insects. She just naturally repels them.
00:49:40
Speaker
They still will come guys. So don't come at me telling me that there's no, the insects are all over the place. um But she does have a natural buffer. So I have noticed a nice decrease across the board on the farm.
00:49:53
Speaker
just because of having such an abundance of the chrysanthemums. I have also noticed that with a lot of the single varieties, um so this is the ones that we see the big daisy-eyed center on, that they are heavily, heavily used with our pollinators.
00:50:11
Speaker
So you'll see a lot of pollination happening with the daisy-centered chrysanthemums in the late season. Now, they are not native, but because they are so late in blooming, there's not a whole lot else around for the pollinators at that time of the year.
00:50:27
Speaker
So it's a great way for them to find something to pollinate and to um to use when there's not a lot of other options available. That's amazing.
00:50:38
Speaker
Okay, tell us your favorite chrysanthemum varieties that we should be checking out. Oh, my favorite ones. Let's see. Coral Cavalier is absolutely gorgeous.
00:50:50
Speaker
It is a beautiful color, a really, really strong, strong stem and a big ruffly head. So I definitely would look at Coral Cavalier. Um, cheerleader is another really great one. I love cheerleader.
00:51:05
Speaker
um Gertrude is just a really unique one. It almost looks like her petals are sparkling. Um, and let's see, let's give you one other really good one. Chiffon. Chiffon is a good one.
00:51:18
Speaker
Chiffon can imitate a dahlia. um And she's an early. i have that one. That's a good one. and She's a good one. Yes. Fawn's really great. I love her.
00:51:30
Speaker
um They're all really great. I'm going to tell you, I don't think you can go wrong with them. Oh, I will say kevin Kelvin Mandarin is another really, really strong um mom. If you are making um market bouquets,
00:51:46
Speaker
you have to have Kelvin Mandarin or Kelvin Tattoo. It's a smaller um sized flower and it's more like a spray, but it has such straight stems and such good bloom sizes and sprays.
00:52:04
Speaker
It's so easy to work in bouquets and it fills your bouquets so quickly. And the color works so well against all the other colors. You just can't go wrong with it.
00:52:15
Speaker
So those are my top That's today's top. You ask me tomorrow, you might get a different batch. Totally. It's always changing based on what's probably blooming, I bet. Yeah, absolutely.
00:52:26
Speaker
Okay. I do have one other question about chrysanthemums. I have heard that early season, once you've got them going, it's like June or July, you want to pinch them. You do. You do.
00:52:37
Speaker
So what you're going to do is you're going to want to plant them. And I would say the earlier you plant, the better off you are. um We're trying to get everything in the ground in like May.
00:52:49
Speaker
Then you're going to want to pinch them. June, July is a good time start pinching. You're pinching back to two sets of leaves. You can even do um a late pinch again, late July.
00:53:01
Speaker
um reason for doing that is if you don't, you will end up with six, seven eight foot tall plants and then you won't be able to reach your beautiful blooms.
00:53:12
Speaker
Now, if you want to grow a chrysanthemum forest, by all means, you absolutely can. Most people are really trying to grow blooms and not really tall trees.
00:53:25
Speaker
So that's why we do the pinching. ah You can also use plant growth regulators, which is a PGR treatment that you can apply to them. But from all intents and purposes, just pinching the plant does the exact same thing and just prevents the plant from getting too tall too quickly and allows you to still get enough stem length to enjoy a nice cut flower.
00:53:49
Speaker
And they're not really a cut and come again. Is that correct? Correct. You're not going to get a second flush from them, but you are going to get multiple branches from one plant. And so the more pinches you do the more breaks and the more stems you're going to get. So if you plant early and you can get a couple of pinches in, you're going to have more breaks, more stems on your plant.
00:54:12
Speaker
Now, every time you pinch, you are going to be stunning the growth. But remember, I said eight foot tall plants. So we can afford to do a few pinches and be okay. I have actually seen those eight foot tall plants. We went to Tokyo this last fall and there was this garden display of chrysanthemums and every plant was a single stem and taller than me. And I was like standing on the curb trying to look into the plants. And I mean, I'd never seen such huge chrysanthemums in my life. it was amazing.
00:54:45
Speaker
It was a fun site, but definitely wouldn't make sense for growing for cut flowers. Yeah, it's a wild science experiment. Like you can do it for the fun of it, but you would never want to do that for cut production.
00:54:57
Speaker
No. Well, that's such great information about the chrysanthemums. So you grow chrysanthemums to ship around the country. yep
Future Plans and Life's Beauty
00:55:06
Speaker
And you can ship to anywhere in the U.S., s is that correct?
00:55:09
Speaker
Exactly. And when is the best time for people to buy chrysanthemums? Right now is always a great time to buy chrysanthemums, but right now is the best time to go ahead and get those ordered. and We like to ship them in the spring so that you have plenty of time to grow them and enjoy them.
00:55:26
Speaker
And then we always start i'm talking about them being available again in the fall. Awesome. Thanks for that information. And we, I kind of hinted at this in the introduction, but we haven't really touched on it. So I'd love to ask you real fast.
00:55:40
Speaker
You started shipping flowers because of flower frogs. Is that correct? That is exactly right. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. So the flower frog business is a really interesting business.
00:55:56
Speaker
My sister and I kind of stumbled across the old Dorothy Biddle Company, which was the last standing maker. of flower frogs, which are metal floral design um tools used to make flower arrangements. and we decided that we could not see that taken away to the scrap yards. We were going to save this amazing U.S. made sustainable business.
00:56:25
Speaker
And so we moved it down to from upstate New York, down to Virginia, and began making these frogs on the flower farm. And while we were making them, we were watching the UPS truck come and pick up the flower frogs that we were making each day and take out the packages that we were mailing.
00:56:46
Speaker
And that was when i was I had the epiphany, well, if they can pick up the frogs and take them, and they were delivering a wedding flower order, So why can't the flowers go out the same way? And so that's kind of when we decided to start shipping flowers was watching the delivery vehicles coming and going.
00:57:08
Speaker
And it was kind of ah an interesting marriage of both businesses kind of growing at the same time. And Floral Genius kind of grew up right beside Harmony Harvest right on the farm.
00:57:21
Speaker
And today, ah Floral Genius still resides on the farm at Harmony Harvest. And we um we ah still ship from the farm through Amazon and export to 36 different countries.
00:57:37
Speaker
So it's a pretty, yeah, it's a pretty big operation. We're really excited because this weekend our flower frogs are being used at the Oscars. No way.
00:57:48
Speaker
Yes way. give you credit. Well, we know that they're there. That's all that matters. Now all flower farmers know. so Now all flower farmers know that the flower frogs made it to the Oscars.
00:58:01
Speaker
That's incredible because you see those huge, gorgeous displays and you're like, I really hope they're not using floral foam. They're not. At least this year, they're not. That's so exciting. That is phenomenal. And people can buy those on your website.
00:58:15
Speaker
They sure can. Yeah, absolutely. We love to tell people about how important it is to be completely sustainable from bottom level up. And we really care about what we're out there um talking about, which is why we have gone full throttle from the flowers to the design tools of preaching the power of sustainability.
00:58:37
Speaker
I love that. That's such an important topic right now and one that we could continue probably on another podcast episode because I know we have talked for a long time already today. It's been so much fun getting to learn more about you, Jessica, and your Farm Harmony Harvest as well.
00:58:54
Speaker
Before we say goodbye today, I'm curious, is there anything I haven't asked you about that you want to share with our listeners today? Well, I think it's always important to remind everybody that we don't get very long on this earth. So make sure that you take a moment and do what we sometimes forget to do.
00:59:14
Speaker
Stop and smell the flowers. Enjoy the special, special time that we have. We're doing something really amazing with our lives. And even though it can feel like such a struggle at some points in this journey, remember how blessed we are to be living it.
00:59:33
Speaker
That's really beautiful advice. Thank you for taking the time to share that with us. um I know we've talked about a lot of the products that you offer.
00:59:44
Speaker
Where can people find your products? Yes, one easy, easy place. And that is hhfshop.com. That's a very easy one. We will also have a link in the show notes today for that as well.
00:59:58
Speaker
um And you're open to the public. Is that correct? at We are. Yes. Yeah, our farm is open to the public April through the first frost of the season. So we are gearing up quickly to get the farm ready to be able to invite everyone out.
01:00:13
Speaker
We can't wait to see you. We have a lot of fun and new things open on the farm this season with some new photo op opportunities and a whole schedule of online workshops and different events. So we look forward to seeing everybody this year at the farm.
01:00:27
Speaker
Awesome. And you're also on social media? Of course, we wouldn't miss it. So make sure you're following us on Insta and of course on Facebook. Perfect. Well, Jessica, thank you so much. Like I said, all of those links will be in today's show notes.
01:00:42
Speaker
And I'd love to leave the door open. Maybe we can have another conversation about the sustainability piece sometime. I would love that. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been an absolute delight to talk to you.
01:00:55
Speaker
And i can't wait to pleasureger I can't wait to add some of those chrysanthemums to my garden. I'm going to go shop your website and a few here. Oh, well, thank you, Jennifer. Thank you. Have a great day. Thanks.
01:01:06
Speaker
If today's episode inspired you to spend more time in the garden or surround yourself with more beauty, I have something special for you. The Dahlia Patch is my online learning community designed to help you grow stunning, healthy dahlias with confidence.
01:01:22
Speaker
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01:01:33
Speaker
Doors are opening soon and waitlist members get early access along with special bonuses. So if you love flowers and want to grow your best garden yet, head over to the Flowering Farmhouse to join the waitlist. You'll find the link in today's show notes.
01:01:48
Speaker
Can't wait to grow with you.
01:01:52
Speaker
Thank you, flower friends, for joining us on another episode of the Backyard Bouquet. I hope you've enjoyed the inspiring stories and valuable gardening insights we've shared today.
01:02:03
Speaker
Whether you're cultivating your own backyard blooms or supporting your local flower farmer, you're contributing to the local flower movement. And we're so happy to have you growing with us. If you'd like to stay connected and continue this blossoming journey with local flowers, don't forget to subscribe to the Backyard Bouquet podcast.
01:02:22
Speaker
I'd be so grateful if you would take a moment to leave us a review of this episode. And finally, please share this episode with your garden friends. Until next time, keep growing, keep blooming, and remember that every bouquet starts right here in the Backyard