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Ep.25 Blooming Success: Mastering Peonies and Sustainable Flower Farming with Melissa Hessney Masters, Tanglebloom
2.1k Plays6 months ago
In this episode, Melissa Hessney Masters, of Tangleboom Flower Farm, takes us on a heartfelt journey that began with a simple yet profound desire to find local flowers for her wedding back in 2010. This quest sparked a passion that led her to establish Tanglebloom in 2013. As we delve into her story, you'll hear about the myriad challenges she faced in the world of flower farming and how she gracefully navigated them.
Melissa also shares her innovative shift towards Agritourism, a move that has not only diversified her farm's offerings but also brought the beauty of Tanglebloom to a wider audience. One of the highlights of our conversation is the creation of Vermont's very first flower CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program, a testament to her pioneering spirit and commitment to community engagement.
Throughout our discussion, Melissa emphasizes her dedication to sustainable farming practices, a topic that resonates deeply with many of us. We also explore the undeniable charm and popularity of peonies, a flower that has captured the hearts of many. Melissa even offers a sneak peek into her comprehensive digital course on growing peonies, designed to equip you with the knowledge and skills to grow these stunning blooms successfully.
This episode is packed with valuable insights and practical cut flower advice that you won't want to miss! So, grab your garden tools, find a cozy spot in your garden, and tune in to hear the full conversation with Melissa from Tangleboom.
In This Episode You’ll Hear About:
- Melissa's journey to flower farming (00:02:30)
- Starting a flower CSA (00:07:18)
- Transition to agritourism and education (00:14:30)
- Focus on peonies and perennials (00:17:23)
- Agritourism and Glamping (00:22:48)
- Niche Down to Peonies (00:26:11)
- Lessons Learned and Challenges (00:33:00)
- Peony Growing Tips (00:36:56)
- Favorite Peony Varieties (00:42:57)
- Controlling botrytis and other diseases (00:49:08)
- Harvesting peonies and preventing thrips (00:57:52)
- Relocating and dividing peonies (01:02:25)
- Harvesting peonies in the first season (01:03:38)
- Harvesting and Marketing Strategy (01:04:49)
- Peony Course (01:07:44)
Show notes: https://thefloweringfarmhouse.com/2024/06/15/ep-25-growing-peonies-with-tanglebloom-farm/
Learn More About Melissa & Tanglebloom:
- GrowAndSellPeonies.com - The Peony Course
- Tanglebloom.com - Learn more about Tanglebloom Flower Farm & Stays
- @tanglebloom - Follow on Instagram
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New episodes every Tuesday to help keep your garden blooming!
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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 Galitzia of the Flowering Farmhouse. I'm a backyard gardener turned flower farmer located in Hood River, Oregon. 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. From growing your own backyard garden to supporting your local flower farmer, 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.
Meet Melissa Hesney-Masters
00:00:54
Speaker
Welcome back to another episode of the Backyard Bouquet podcast. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Melissa Hesney-Masters, the founder of Tanglebloom, a flower farm that's been adding beauty and sustainability to Vermont since 2013. Starting with a simple patch of overgrown grass, Melissa has nurtured Tanglebloom into an acre of vibrant field and greenhouse flower production. supplying sought-after blooms for weddings, events, and local shops. Melissa's commitment to eco-friendly practices and her desire to tell stories through her floral arrangements have not only shaped her business but have also led her to pioneer Vermont's first flower CSA program.
00:01:38
Speaker
An award-winning leader and educator, Melissa has inspired many through her workshops and popular internship programs. Alongside her farming, Melissa and her husband Mike have captured imaginations worldwide with their unique tingle bloom, Tiny Cabin, a celebrated vacation spot nestled in the woods featured in major publications like Travel and Leisure and Forbes. Today, Tanglebloom focuses on offering unforgettable experiences and education, catering to sustainability-minded individuals and hosting special events right here on their farm. Join us as Melissa shares her journey and how she continues to influence the floral industry and beyond. Melissa, welcome to the show. We're so excited to chat with you today.
00:02:26
Speaker
Thank you so much, Jennifer. It's wonderful to be here. I'm so excited. Well, thank you so much for carving some time out of your day to join us. I know you're probably in full on harvest mode over there. Yeah. Peonies are, we're in the thick of peonies right now. Yeah. Those are your primary crop. Is that correct? That is correct. Yes. So can you take us back in time to 2013, how did you get your start with flower farming?
Melissa's Flower Farming Journey
00:02:53
Speaker
That's before it really became popular. Yeah. So actually, the real seed was planted in 2010. I was getting married and had a really hard time finding a florist who would source the flowers locally. So I ended up going to my favorite local flower farm and buying buckets of flowers and doing all the flowers myself with the help of some friends. Oh my goodness.
00:03:18
Speaker
um I knew absolutely nothing about what I was doing at the time, um you know total DIY bride. But um something about the experience really stuck with me. And you know I started researching you know growing flowers and flower farms. That's when I came across that statistic that says you know almost 80% of the flowers that we buy in the US are imported. And I couldn't really get that out of my head. and that that basically became the catalyst and the inspiration and the mission behind starting my own flower farm, Tanglebloom. That's amazing. So you probably have a soft spot for those DIY brides now. I do. I do. Yeah, because I was one, so I get it. Yeah. Yes. I love working with the DIY brides and providing the buckets. So in 2010, a seed was planted. You had this realization that
00:04:14
Speaker
80% that's a huge number of the flower world and i don't know how many of our listeners are aware that so many of our flowers are imported from outside the area still today i hear i always think when i hear people say oh there's too many flower farmers i'm like not really when you look at how many flowers are still being imported. It's true that statistic hasn't budged very much, not as much as you would expect. Yeah. No, it's starting to move, but I'm sure we still have lots and lots of room for growth and opportunity. So 2010, that seed was planted. Did anything happen from 2010 to 2013 to get the wheels in motion for you to start your flower farm?
00:04:56
Speaker
Yeah, that was definitely like the dreaming phase, the research phase. I discovered Erin Benzecane, a florette during that time, um signed up for one of her workshops, I think around 2012. You know, went out to her farm and learned everything I could. And at at that point, like I was in deep. I was in it. um Yeah, we had my husband and I had just purchased you know our first home. We had about six acres total. It was definitely not historic farmland. And you know I joke that that basically means it's a lot of rocks because no one in their right mind would ever really try to farm here. So yeah, it was really building everything from the ground up at that point. Yeah. And are you still on that same land? We are, yes. You're still on those same six acres.
00:05:48
Speaker
Same rocky six acres, yep. Oh, I'm just, I can relate. My wrists are hurting today. I'm cultivating land that has lots of rocks, even three years. Well, I guess I'm four years into some of this land. And it's amazing how it's a long process to get those rocks out. Yes, yep, yeah. So you bought land, you bought six acres. And did you just dive right in or how did you get started? It started as, you know, a side hustle initially. So I was, you know, working a full time job. And um I started just had a few rows of flowers, just field grown that I would sell to our local natural food store to local co-op. And, you know, they were really doing well there. And there was a lot of support from the communities. So then I branched out into a CSA.
00:06:42
Speaker
At that point, I went down to working my day job four days a week, which I was really lucky to receive that accommodation. um So I did that for a year or two. And um then I think it was year year two or three somewhere in there that I i left the day job and and moved into farming full time. Okay, so let's go back. You started a CSA. When I was looking over your website, I saw that you were the first person in Vermont to start a flower CSA program. How did you have that idea to start a flower CSA?
00:07:18
Speaker
So Vermont is very well known for its farms and agriculture. And you know I think we there's some statistic that says something like we have the highest per capita amount of farmers markets like in the US. So there's a lot of support for local food. and But there wasn't much going on with flowers. There were a few growers for sure that you know some of them had started you know back in the 70s and they were still going. And that was wonderful, but they were really sort of scattered and spread throughout the state and mostly doing farmer's markets, not really, you know, event design or, or anything like that. Um, and no CSA. So, you know, and a lot of my research, which besides floret, there, there wasn't a whole lot related to flowers. So I was looking to vegetable farms a lot of the time to see how they structured their business and.
00:08:10
Speaker
It seemed like CSA was a really popular way, especially for a startup farm. And, you know, you have the buy-in early, so you get that cashflow in the winter when you really need it. And so I decided that that could be a good way to sort of start building the business, you know, to dive in full-time um and also, you know, just really be, have my pulse on what the community was interested in. And so, yeah, that's what I did. It definitely people, you know, it it took some education to get them to understand what a flower CSA would look like. um But yeah, it was very exciting to be the first one in Vermont. Yeah. That's awesome. So do you still offer a flower CSA? So I don't anymore. No, i don't shift it, but um we did it, you know, for a good like seven, seven or eight years. Yeah.
Challenges and Team Dynamics
00:09:06
Speaker
It's a time commitment. I mean, I know I have scaled back my CSA this year um as I'm really niching down on certain areas of my farm because I mean, you harvest the flowers, you have to make the flowers, especially I had didn't ask, are you a one person team or do you have a team of employees? So this year I have a small team. There's two other people besides me, but I've done it, you know, with five people and I've done it with just myself. Yeah. Okay. And when you started your CSA, was it just you running the farm? Yeah, it was just me. And you know, my husband's sort of helping me after work and on weekends for the first few years for sure. Yeah. So when you did offer your CSX, I know a lot of our listeners have a CSA offering or are thinking about starting a CSA. What did your CSA subscription look like? So it was, there were two options. I had either a bucket share or a bouquet share. The,
00:10:05
Speaker
Bouquet was was the more popular one, but the people who did sign up for the bucket share just really loved it. um Some people would split it with a friend, you know, so they would get this big bucket of flowers. And so that was a good way for someone to be able to share a share. um And it was, I want to say it was 12 weeks, it's been a while, but I think it was 12 weeks, a 12 week program. And so we basically went from June through, gosh, it's hard to remember. I think it was, I think one time I went into early October and then I learned wow that was really, really went risky in our climate. So I dialed it back to September. What growing zone are you in? So I'm in zone five. I think we've just been sort of upgraded to zone five, B from A, but um yeah, zone five.
00:10:59
Speaker
So you're in a colder zone. So that, so to go into October would be really risky for a CSA. Yeah. I mean, I had a high tunnel, but even that was just, you know, things produce so much more slowly that it was, you know, you're not getting the bounty that you get and say August. Yeah. Sure. yeah So when do you on average get your last season ending frost? Um, so the first full fall frost, you know, it really ranges when I first started, it was usually around, you know, somewhere between October 5th and 15th. Since then in the last 10 years, we've had them as early as September 15th. So it's, wow yeah, you know,
00:11:40
Speaker
I'm sure you know a lot of your listeners can relate. you know The ways we're seeing the impacts of climate change right now are just really extreme weather and unpredictable weather patterns. And that is something even in just 10 or 12 years on this property that I've really noticed, it can really fluctuate by weeks. Yeah. that's That's interesting that yours has moved up because my first year we had, and this was 2019, we had our first frost. I'm sorry, this would have been, yeah, 2019. It was September 28th. And then the last few years it's been either the last week of October or the first week of November. But I still have in my mind that we could get that September frost date. So I'm never wanting to promise anything after that date in the year. yes yeah And so when do you start your planting season? If you are in zone five, when are you past that last frost date for the spring? You know, it's it's technically around the middle of the month, around the 15th.
00:12:44
Speaker
but I have been pushing it later and later, partly because you know i the labor involved with covering and then the stress of losing things, is just it's I'm just kind of at the point where I need a little more ease in my life. So i' you know I'd rather, what I do is I start plants in bigger cell packs so they can grow on a little more. So I'm putting out larger transplants. So this year I didn't plant out until um the last week of May, which is the latest I've ever done. um Interestingly, we didn't have a frost after like May 7th or 10th, so it could have been like the earliest ever that I actually did plant out. But yeah, it's just tricky. Last year, we had a really devastating late frost in May. In the middle of the month, we got down to about 26 degrees, which was wow really devastating. Orchards in the area lost 80 to 90% of their crops.
00:13:43
Speaker
And I think that really was like a wake up call to everyone. And I've you know noticed even around me that people are just planting out later and later that that extra week you might get just kind of doesn't seem worth it. Yeah. yeah I'm finishing planting my dahlias right now um because we've had so much rain. It's been unseasonably wet and I have friends up in Washington that had a frost two weeks ago and they're normally done in April. So yeah its yeah it's definitely keeping us on our mother nature is keeping us on our toes as farmers. Yes.
00:14:17
Speaker
So let's go back to your CSA. You had a CSA, it sounds like your business has evolved over time. How did you know when it was time to end your CSA and refocus your business?
Shifting Focus to Weddings and Education
00:14:30
Speaker
Yeah, so a few things, you know, came into play. So over the course of the 10 years, um you know, I had a baby, my we had a global pandemic, my partner's work shifted from, you know, he had an off-farm job, um you know, working 50-ish hours a week ah to being self-employed in the last few years, which has been really wonderful with a more flexible schedule. um So every few years, honestly, I have always just been really fluid and pivoted the business in response to both you know the market and what my customers were interested in, and also just what I needed at that stage in life. So um you know around the time
00:15:17
Speaker
I would say 2018, 2019, I think we took a pause from CSA because weddings had really become the main um sales channel for the farm, which was really wonderful. um Then the pandemic happened and all the weddings either, you know, canceled, postponed, or really shrunk down and became elopements. So we brought the CSA back. So that was you know a really wonderful thing to be able to do. It felt like kind of getting back to our roots and getting really scrappy to get through the pandemic. We also, at that time, we constructed a farm stand because we had you know all these flowers and peonies, which I know we'll talk more about. um That was the year that the bulk of my crop was maturing and
00:16:02
Speaker
yeah I was like, okay, nobody's like, what am I going to do with all these flowers? You know, like, sure, I could just let them bloom, but I just, you know, I wanted to find a way to get them out. And of course stores shops were really buying because we had, um you know, all those restrictions in place. So yeah, in 2020, we brought back the CSA and we built a farm stand and sort of pivoted in that direction. So we did the farm stand and the CSA and those types of things for another couple of years. And then um once things really started to you know not normalize really, but um you know shops were buying again, weddings were happening again, we we did no longer did the CSA or the farm stand. And that's when I pivoted more into education because the other piece that happened during the pandemic was that I was able to do
00:16:58
Speaker
consulting and education, which I'd had requests for for many years. I just never had the capacity to do it because you know we were so busy with but the farming aspect and the weddings. So once you know all those, it's kind of like this combination of of forces that came together and um you know resulted in that shift. So what does your business model look like today? So today we focus mainly our main crop is peonies. We also are very perennial heavy otherwise. Um, this year I've only planted one 50 foot row of annuals, which is really hard. Um, but it's what makes sense for us. And then, um, I'm developing more perennial plantings and a perennial cutting garden in addition to the peonies.
00:17:49
Speaker
So we are more education and experienced focused at this time. So we have a farm stay that's really popular. We welcome guests to the farm between May and October to stay in this. um It's like a glamping style open air cabin set back in the woods on the farm. We also hold a pick your own peonies event and then also do some more like classes and workshops. So all of those things are you know for for the public and like retail focused, right? And then I've started serving more growers, especially newer growers, pivoting growers um who are interested mainly in agritourism or peonies. And so that's where I spend the rest of my time right now is working with them. Amazing. So how many peonies do you grow?
Farm Flora and Agro-tourism
00:18:40
Speaker
So in production that we're cutting off of right now, we have maybe 125 to 150. And then we have another planting that's not mature yet that will be, it's less than a hundred, maybe 75. And AI just can't stop. there's more There's plenty of more space. So it's just kind of, you know, every few years we we add a little more. Okay. And then so, and then see your main crop is peonies and then you have perennials. What kind of perennials are you growing? So there's a lot of, you know, woody things that I used to use when we were doing mainly weddings. Like we have lots of physo-carpus, nine barks. We have, um, I think five different varieties of pussy willows, um, smattering of things like forsythia and viburnums.
00:19:32
Speaker
Baptesia, different comb flowers, perennial campanula, geum, grasses, like so many things. I love it. And vines. I'm really into vines right now. All the different calamatas are kind of stealing stealing my heart right now. Oh, I would love to add some of those to my garden or to my farm. um You mentioned agro tourism. Do you do that through your glamping or how do you promote the agro tourism on your farm? Yeah, so the agro tourism, it definitely started with the farm stay with the glamping. And um when I think it was around the pandemic, when
00:20:19
Speaker
you know, the peonies, the bulk of the peony crop came into production and people were just, you know, really excited about them. And the number one request that I've received over this last 10 or so years is from people that wanted to visit the farm. um They wanted to pick flowers or learn how to make a bouquet. They really wanted to like come be part of it. And it's something that we you know, didn't really do for so long because, you know, it is a relatively small property. It's, you know, where we live. um So creating those boundaries has been a little tricky. But also, you know, once and again, like pandemic happens, you slow down, you know, I'm interacting with CSA members again, meeting people at the farm stand kind of thing. And once I saw the impact this was really having, I was like, all right, we need to find a way to make this work.
00:21:11
Speaker
Um, so what we've started doing is basically, um, you know, holding an event. So in contrast to say, like a Berry farm, right? Where they have open hours, sun up to sun down during the season, you come, you pick, you pay by weight or whatever. We had to boundary it a little more. So it's basically like a ticketed event or an event by reservation so that we can control, you know, not only the number of people that we have so that we can make sure we have enough flowers for everyone who wants to come. But also, you know, as you know, be able to predict when things are going to be blooming and ready, right? It's a little different. um So yeah, that has been a really wonderful piece that has, it's just been wonderful in terms of both satisfying what the market is asking us for, right? And then, you know, so post pandemic, I'm sure we've all seen this, but especially as someone who
00:22:09
Speaker
has a lot of guests that come from urban areas. So many of our farmstay guests are coming from New York City, Boston, and it's just another world to them. And to be able to see that firsthand and listen to their stories and see the impact it has on them, it's like, all right, it almost feels like something we have to do. like You know what I mean? like This is like a very purpose-driven thing at this point. It's something that we take pretty seriously, is to create this space that people can come unwind, slow down, be close to nature, go up to a flower and like touch it. Cause that's another thing that people were always, even when we first opened the farm, they're like, I don't want to mess it up. I don't, ah you know, I don't want to do it wrong. Is it okay to touch it? So, you know, we would have specific areas where people could cut and you know, it's, it's, I just let go, you know, it's, I don't want to be policing people. Like I want them to have that experience of just really interacting with the flowers and the surroundings.
00:23:10
Speaker
That's really neat. I keep hearing about agro-tourism. And i ah here in Hood River, we're a very and agro-tourism-focused destination. Also, we have lots of orchards. We're huge apple and pear producers and cherry producers. And I keep thinking and feeling like that trend is definitely moving into the flowers and people are wanting to experience it. How did you get the word out about your opportunity with the glamping and the agro tourism? Yeah, so you know, we first started just listing it on Airbnb and hip camp, which is kind of like the Airbnb of camping. So that's really how it started. And I then had, you know, would have some photographers reach out to me, they would ask if they could come stay. um And we would trade basically, they would take photos, and they would
00:24:07
Speaker
be able to you know get a little getaway and be able to build their portfolio. They were mostly you know newer photographers. And so when that happened and you know we started sharing that content you know via Instagram, social media, email, all those things, it kind of blew up really. we The cabin itself went viral on social media during the pandemic. um And so at that point, we were like booked solid. you know You couldn't get a reservation. So at that point I was like, okay, I need to you know build an email list and like do all these things. And so we built an email list just with the idea of being able to send out cancellation notice so that people could have an opportunity um to come stay. And yeah, so it started you know through those those travel platforms and and kind of grew
00:25:03
Speaker
Um, as interest grew and now, you know, we have a separate website, we have an email list, we have, you know, all those things to be able to market it and promote it. Yeah. It's a whole nother business to manage. It is, it it is. ah It's like, I have like four email lists now or something, but yeah. Oh my goodness. It's good. So are you and your husband, the ones that manage the Airbnb? It's yeah, it's primarily myself that manages it. And then we have two wonderful folks who help with the the turnovers as well. Okay, because that would be time consuming when you're also out trying to harvest and work. Yeah, that sounds like a really neat opportunity. I wish I lived closer so I could come stay. Yeah, totally believe you call it the tingle bloom tiny cabin. Yeah.
00:25:56
Speaker
Maybe we could include a photo in the show notes of the cabin. yeah That would be fun. um So your primary crop, let's go back to that, is peonies. How did you decide to niche down on growing peonies?
Choosing and Cultivating Peonies
00:26:10
Speaker
Yeah, so um going back to just before the pandemic, the you know the business had really grown. We had up to five people working with us at the height of it. And this is you know at this point, we're doing three service levels of weddings. We have the CSA. um We were still doing bouquets to shops and grocery stores. um you know there was There were so many different things we were doing, right? Very, very diversified. um And I started to get a little burnout and it started happening more often um instead of like once a year at the end of the season, which is like, okay, kind of understandable.
00:26:54
Speaker
it was happening you know every month or so. And I was unable to really recover from that. So I decided to dial it back a little bit. And I think that's at the time where we sort of paused the CSA and um you know was mostly just doing weddings, but doing much less weddings. And it's really when I had that pause that I had the time and the space to kind of look around and like see the forest for the trees, you know, instead of just everything being a blur and rushing right through. And, um you know, I started growing less annuals just out of self preservation and just kept seeing these peonies that were so dependable and just came back every year and if I didn't fertilize them, they were fine. And if I didn't water them,
00:27:51
Speaker
They were okay. And I could pretty much ignore them except for, you know, a month or so of the season and they were just fine. And then also people loved them and were familiar with them and were in demand. It was, oh, so I was also selling to florist at the time. Peony and I still do with peonies. Peony is the only crop. I don't even get to send out an availability list until I'm halfway through the season because I have people reaching out to me asking Peony's ready, like what do you have? Can I come? um So it was just kind of like one of those things where it's like, all right, pay attention, follow the breadcrumbs. This this could be a thing. This could be the answer to you know having a better balance. um I'm all for working really hard for a short amount of time. Like my energy level really allows me to do that. But then I do have to step back and recover a little bit. And I just wasn't able to do that you know farming full on from,
00:28:48
Speaker
you know When we were going full-on in the high tunnel, it was like you know April through Thanksgiving. We used to produce flowers until. So that became too much. So it was really just stopping to notice you know how amazing this crop really was. um Didn't have to dig it up and divide them like dahlias. I didn't have to put organza bags over the blooms like dahlias. I could store them in the cooler. It was almost like one of those things that was like too good to be true, kind of a moment. Yeah.
00:29:20
Speaker
And they're so popular and beautiful. I went from growing like, Oh boy. I think at one point I was so proud to say I had over 70 varieties of annuals growing and it about killed me because everything needed a different kind of attention. Yes. Yeah, exactly. So yeah. yeah that having the fort not the foresight, just having the ability to look at your business with a CEO mindset and say, what do I need?
00:29:52
Speaker
to stay sane yeah and to be successful and really niching down on that one category seems to be working really well for you, both as a business and probably for being a mom and a wife as well. Exactly. You know, it's like, ah you know, a lot of us start our own business to have that flexibility. I know that was part of my you know, there was the mission, right, of like getting local flowers into the market. But the other part of that was to have flexibility and to be able to be present for my child. And it's like I got kind of consumed by the mission of the business and forgot about the mission of my personal life. So yeah, having to step back and also to have the courage to do that, you know, it was really scary. So if there's anyone else out there right now that's in a similar place, I totally feel for you.
00:30:41
Speaker
It's a scary place to be, but I promise that if you can work through that and just remember why you're doing this and that it's okay to build a business that supports you, that's it's going to work out. like i just I'm such a firm believer in that taking you know a copy and paste approach to a business model, I've learned the hard way, is not the way to go. It's okay to start that way, but then you've got to have the um courage and the ability to just really read the room of what's going on and be able to adjust.
00:31:17
Speaker
I couldn't agree more. It's so true. I found it so much simpler to niche down and really focus on what you can do well yes and do a handful of things well versus trying to semi do 70 things really well. I failed miserably. Well, I'm not sure I would say I failed miserably, but I was definitely letting my family down. It was so consuming that I couldn't be the mom that I wanted to be or the wife that I wanted to be because the farm was taking all my energy and it burnt me out like you were mentioning. So thank you for that honest conversation and for sharing that because I think there's a lot of people out there that feel that way because you see people, I especially, I always go back to the quote, comparison is the thief of joy. I'll see someone on Instagram doing something and I'm like, Oh, I could do that too. And then it's that stepping back and going,
00:32:09
Speaker
I probably could do that, but should I do that? And does it make sense for me? Yeah, that's another one of my favorite mantras to remember is just because you can doesn't mean you should. Yes, that's a great one. to Repeat in my head. I've been having to try and remind myself of that. Yes. Um, we only get so much time in the day. One I heard recently was when you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else. So what are you saying no to? Exactly. Can we talk about some of the lessons you've learned? You've been farming for a while now. I mean, if you started in 2013, you're what, 11 years in? You're past a decade into being a flower farmer, which is a long time for a newer industry. For those that are newer and starting out, can you share some of the hard lessons you've learned or learned too maybe?
Building a Flower Farm from Scratch
00:33:00
Speaker
Sure so yeah this is a really great question and I'm so glad that you're asking it because I don't think that we talk about the challenges enough and I think the result is a lot of people feel like they're they must be doing it wrong so thank you so much for asking that and there have been many but sure to pick one or two the first one was you know just the Building literally from scratch on a non-historic farm property, so meaning no infrastructure, right? No soil that had historically been cultivated, you know, all of those rocks was so, so hard.
00:33:39
Speaker
um
00:33:41
Speaker
I feel for people, ah you know, farmland is so unaffordable and inaccessible to a lot of people. One of the great things about flowers is that you don't need a lot of land. So that's definitely a plus. You can turn you know a backyard or a small amount of land into a productive flower farm, as we both know. um But it's difficult if you don't have any sort of infrastructure. you know I had no ah studio space. there was I was working out of my garage for years, and I would have these moments designing these
00:34:15
Speaker
and weddings that were like bringing in you know one wedding sometimes would be like 20% of my revenue for the year and I'm in this dingy garage and there's like chipmunks running over my feet and like I'm just like oh my gosh you just have that moment of of um imposter syndrome um but that's just that's how it is you know sometimes that's just how it is you make do with what you have you know it was really important to me to not go into debt. yes know I was comfortable taking on debt for like a season right to like buy peony roots or um the only thing I really took a loan on was a tractor, but it came with 0% interest. So that was something I was comfortable with. And again, everyone has a different sort of risk tolerance, you know needs, business model idea, that kind of thing. But so if you are in that similar mindset, which I think there's a lot of benefits to that,
00:35:09
Speaker
um It's hard, you know, because there's a lot of pressure to grow big, maybe before you're ready, maybe before you have proof of concept or your market developed or know what your life is going to look like, you know, if you do want to have children or might be caretaking for aging parents or whatever life could throw at us. you know um There's a lot of pressure to just kind of have blinders on and go forward and grow big really quickly. So yeah. Thank you for sharing that. So as you have grown through the years, we mentioned that you
00:35:51
Speaker
have now niched down into peonies.
Peony Planting Tips
00:35:54
Speaker
I'd love to, now we've heard a little bit of your story, I'd love to really dive into the peonies because we're in peony season. I mean, I maybe have a few stems left to harvest and to be honest, it's been a really hard season for peonies in the Pacific Northwest. Mine in particular, many of the listeners know that I had to move my farm in February. So my peonies are living in crates right now and I have people reaching out, oh, you're growing your peonies in crates? not something I would recommend. um i I have about peony plants. They're all in crates. They're all very unhappy.
00:36:30
Speaker
and there's three and four year old plants. Most of my stems were unusable this year due to thrips and being unhappy with the move. I would love to get some of your insights and hear your knowledge and your success with growing peonies. So for someone that's listening that's starting out, is this a good time to be going and buying peony roots and planting peonies? So traditionally what you would do, and I'm sure your listeners know is like, while your current crop is blooming, that's when you're ordering for the next season, right? So when your tulips and bulbs are blooming in the spring, you should be placing your orders for the next year.
00:37:12
Speaker
Which honestly is really hard. like I don't know who came up with this, right? Because it's like, I'm so busy. I don't know. Can you just give me a few more weeks? um So this is a good time of year to, yes, be making your wish list, to be planning you know how many plans, developing your site. ordering your roots and then the fall is the traditional time to plant. I've done both fall and spring planting. I do prefer fall for several reasons. um The biggest is probably just that there's less things to do on the farm so it's kind of nice to spread out that labor. The other big ah benefit of a fall planting is that usually
00:37:51
Speaker
you have more rainfall so you don't have to worry about irrigating. When we spring plant, we have to you know really focus on keeping those um baby plants watered. um And yeah, it's just a little bit nicer weather to work into in the fall. Usually it's a little cooler instead of you know we've had like 90 degrees and a lot of 80 degree days already in Vermont in May and June. It's just wild. So if it's stressful for the farmer, it's also going to be really stressful for a baby plant. Yeah. Oh, that's good advice. I like that. If it's stressful for the farmer, it's going to be stressful for the plant too. yeah We're supposed to be 91 today. So I'm i was putting a pause. I'm putting some of my plants in the ground. seem them be happy in the situation No. um Okay. So now is a great time to be making those wish lists.
00:38:42
Speaker
Before we go into more of the growing of peonies for those wish lists, I'm going to tell our listeners to grab a pen and paper and I'm going to put you on the spot here. What would be some good peonies to put on a wish list right now? Oh goodness. Okay. Great question. So the first thing I'll say is it really depends on your market. So think about, are you doing, you know, mixed bouquets and selling buckets and maybe farm stand, farmer's market, those, those sorts of like mixed bouquet applications, right? Or are you doing more arranging? So maybe more events, um maybe you do,
00:39:20
Speaker
um arrangement deliveries, you know, daily orders, that kind of thing, more high end, you know, so that's the first place you want to think about. And honestly, a lot of growers do a little bit of everything or a little bit of both. So for those more casual things and making mixed bouquets, my advice is to get you know, a lot of those workhorse varieties that are bright colors that are economical to purchase. So varieties like Sarah Bernhardt, Festiva Maxima, Kansas, those nice, bright, productive varieties, right?
00:40:00
Speaker
And then if you are doing more design work, you might be looking more at like the form of the flower, right? If you're doing weddings, you're going to be really interested in the form of the flower. and the color, maybe some more of those like muted tones. um And maybe vase life probably isn't as important. So you might look at some more of the single varieties, which don't don't usually last as long or have as good of a vase life as some of the doubles and the bomb types. um So for that, some of my favorites are Zuzu, which is Zuzu is a semi-double. It looks like a garden rose when it's first opening. it has this
00:40:41
Speaker
really nice very soft pink almost blush this sort of fades to white. It has this lovely minty fragrance and it actually has a pretty good vase life for a semi-double. So Zuzu is a favorite for design and arranging Another favorite for design and arranging is um crinkled linens, which is a single white and the petals literally look like crinkled linen. It's very pretty gold centers and the flowers get huge. That's like, ah you know, my husband always refers to them as like a dinner plate peony because they just they get so big. um And they also have a pretty good vase life and, you know, perfect for for wedding work has that lovely um white color.
00:41:27
Speaker
Another favorite for design work is etched salmon, which is beautiful salmon color, again, has a little bit of that garden rose vibe going on when it first opens and people absolutely that's a favorite on the farm, no matter what we're doing. um If we're doing an event or a workshop or people are just cutting in the field, that's the one that always really stops people in their tracks. And then the other thing to look at for design work is the Ito or intersectional varieties. which are basically a cross between an herbaceous and a tree peony. So those are going to give you really unique color combinations. You'll be able to find, you know, more of the like yellow and apricot tones, more of like those rosy mauve colors that are reminiscent of like a rose and brown lezianthus. So if that's your style, like definitely look at the Ito varieties.
00:42:19
Speaker
they do have a shorter vase life and the stems are a little bit shorter but for event work, design work, they are just wonderful. I grew Julia Rose is one of mine and she actually was one of my tallest stems last year. She's not super happy this year ah in crates um and when I had to dig her up her roots, they were three years old And literally I had to cut them all back to fit one in a crate because the roots were so big. That's awesome. Very productive one. Nice. Do you have, of all the peonies you grow, do you have one that just stands out? That's like your hands down favorite. That's hard. Julia Rose is definitely up there. Julia Rose and Hillary for an Ito. I'd probably have to go with Etch-a-Salmon. It's between Etch-a-Salmon and Zoo-Zoo. Those are kind of my go-tos. Yeah. For the herbaceous.
00:43:10
Speaker
I'm going to have to, what about of any variety of peonies? It's so hard to pick. I know it's like that classic asking you to choose your favorite child. Yes. It would probably be etch salmon. Yeah. Yeah. but That's a beautiful one. I don't grow that one yet. It's on my wish wish list once I have a permanent spot to put them in the ground. And that zuzu, I've never heard of that one. Now I'm really anxious to look it up. So good. That one sounds really, really pretty. So fall is when we want to plant them. Is there anything people should be doing now to prepare their soil? Yeah, so you can get your site ready. So there's many different ways you can go about this depending on how many plants you're putting in. So when we put in you know our main planting, we did like 100 at a time.
00:44:01
Speaker
um Again, the soil, very rocky, very sandy. So instead of tilling and having, you know, just millions of rocks to remove, we opted to dig individual holes. So we literally, and when I say we, I should give a shout out to my husband because it was mostly him, spent the summer digging, you know, a hundred something holes by hand and picking out the rocks. And so then because our soil is very sandy and rocky, we added a lot of compost.
00:44:32
Speaker
So you can prep your site now, you know, with with your compost, get your holes ready. It's totally fine to do that and let it sit. It's actually better to, you know, do your soil amendments and then just kind of let it chill for a while because the soil is going to settle, right? So what I usually tell people is if you're prepping your holes is to overfill it a little bit. So it's like a little bit mounted on top because once you get, you know, precipitation and soil settles, um it's gonna dip a little bit. And one thing that's really important when planting peonies is to not plant the roots too deeply. If you plant them too deeply, they won't flower or they won't flower well. So you really want to have a nice, prepared, settled site to put them in. So that's, you know, how most people do it if you're doing like a big planting or you have rocky soil.
00:45:23
Speaker
Um, now what I do is I kind of add a row at a time. So right now what I've done is I've just rolled out landscape fabric. So a four foot wide roll of fabric is just sitting on top of, um, you know, grass where we're making a new planting. And so that in the fall, I can go back and roll that up and then I'll dig my individual holes along that row. It'll be, you know, much easier at that time. um to do that because the the grass has has died back. So again, it really depends on like how many you're putting in. That wouldn't be really practical if you were putting in 100 roots at a time. you know um So yeah, those are a couple of ways you can do. But yes, definitely do it now. Do a little bit at a time so that when your roots come, you're ready to go. Your plants will thank you later. Yeah.
00:46:13
Speaker
So do you use landscape fabric over your peonies? Once you plant them, do you put landscape around for weed pressure? So we do. We have landscape fabric both um that the peonies are planted into. We cut an X rather than a big hole. The X is nice because you can, the plants will come up through it when they are small and so you'll have less weeding and then you can kind of tuck in the flaps as they get bigger. So I love doing that. That's a great tip. And then in the pathways in the main planting, we did also put landscape fabric and then we put bark mulch over it. So this is like free or cheap mulch bark mulch that we get from um tree companies in the area. And we do that because more for aesthetics because the main patch is where we hold our events. So we wanted to have nice wide pathways and you know something that was really well maintained.
00:47:06
Speaker
um the other planting we have, which is more of um like Ito varieties and more specialty varieties. I'm just using landscape fabric to plant the plants into, and then the pathways will actually be grass, so we'll we'll just mow there. So again, lots of different ways you can do it. There are plenty of growers who just landscape fabric everything, pathways, and they don't cover it with mulch. I'm a little bit hesitant to do that just because, you know, It just keeps getting hotter and hotter. And I i do see like the spring planted peonies that I've done that are just in fabric before I get mulch over it. They get pretty wilty. And um it's just my feeling that this is just going to become more common, unfortunately. So I like to try to think ahead a little bit and and find a way to not stress those plants out, especially when they're little. yeah But it'll depend on your climate and your weather.
00:48:03
Speaker
I've noticed with the heat that mine and the crates are getting wilty very quickly. So I need to get mine out ASAP. um How far apart do you space your peonies? So we do, the plants are three foot on center and then our pathways are, we do nice wide pathways. We do three to four feet in the areas where we you know hold events and have other people going in there. um Also because airflow is really important with peonies. And again, peonies, you know, it's great that they are so long lived, right? So you could potentially put them in the ground and like never see that root again. But also that's like pressure to really set yourself up and do it right the first time. So I liked, because we have plenty of space, I like to err on the side of of more space. And, you know, airflow is just so important, especially if we have a really wet season
00:48:57
Speaker
um disease pressure can keep kick up. So yeah, I like to, I wouldn't do any less than three foot on center in most cases. What kind of disease do you tend to see with peonies? So botrytis is the most common. um You know, it's, we've had it on like individual plants and Because this is our main crop, you know, these plants are really babied, you know, someone is out there with eyes on them pretty much every day, especially spring through mid summer. So we are able to really catch things quickly. And so we don't spray. um There are plenty of
00:49:35
Speaker
you know There's an organic spray that you can use. And you know I tell my my students, like don't hesitate. if that's If you're seeing it show up a lot or you can't get out there often enough, you have you know a whole diversified flower farm going on, like don't hesitate to do what you need to do for your plants. So botrytis is the most common. and But it is something that you can can control. So even if you miss it and it shows up, you can spray. a Copper fungicide is the most common. And it's not going to cure it for that season, but it will help knock it back and and not let it spread more. And if you notice that happening a lot, then you might just make it a routine. So in the spring, you just go ahead and do an application because what happens is it lives in the soil. So if you have it and it's kind of spread throughout your block, when the plants start to emerge in the spring, they're growing right through that and kind of bringing it up on
00:50:34
Speaker
on the foliage. Yeah. What is a sign of Botrytis on peonies? What would someone want to look for?
Identifying and Managing Peony Issues
00:50:40
Speaker
Yeah. So it looks usually like a black black mold. um Sometimes it can be a little more grayish or fuzzy, but yeah, it's going to look very fungal, very fungal looking. Yeah. Okay. So if someone has peony buds that are more brown, is that going to be Botrytis also, or what would that be a symptom of? That, it it could be, um you know, I kind of have to see it. The other thing that can happen is what's called bud blast. And bud blast is basically something that made the bud stop um growing or stop um lost for the word right now. But um it's it's not gonna bloom. A lot of times it can look okay from the outside or it might turn brown. And that could happen for so many reasons. It could be,
00:51:30
Speaker
disease or it could be um temperature, it could be like ah a cold snap, a late frost, something like that. Okay. That's probably what happened with a lot of mine then is we had a really late cold snap. And so I've got a lot, I was thinking it was botrytis, but talking with you, I'm thinking and I have bud blast because I don't have any fuzzy mold or anything on them. Yeah. And it can also be bud blast. Say if you have a cold snap in the spring, it often will just affect like your earliest varieties, the ones that we're going to bloom right then. So If your mid and late season you know varieties are okay in bloom, then it it very well could be bud blast. The other way to tell is if you have you know a branching um stem and you didn't pinch off those lateral side buds and they are okay, then that could be another indication that it was just bud blast on that main terminal stem, on that main terminal bud. Can the side buds get bud blast? They can. It just depends how developed they are. That's the word I was looking for. okay
00:52:31
Speaker
I've developed today are when that cold snap happens. yeah Gotcha. Okay. And do you remove the lateral buds or do you keep them on? Oh, it's one of my favorite topics. A little of both. i i I love to experiment with this. So I used to remove all of them, right? Because that's like what you do. That's what people say you do. and Um, but now I've started really playing around and as a designer, I actually really like having the side buds sometimes. Um, I also think that it's a good strategy for, you know, dealing with wild weather. Here's an example. Say you have flowers that are starting to open and then there's a hail storm, right? So you're going to lose all of those, all of those blooms.
00:53:18
Speaker
But if you had left the side buds, you could basically just deadhead that first main terminal bloom and then you would have those side buds that would bloom. So it's kind of a strategy. You can be really strategic with it. So it's it's kind of fun. I would say as a rule, we will pinch off like half of them and then the other half will let be a nice branchy stem. I'm glad you shared that. That's been helpful to me and I hope it's been helpful to others. I have some where I have the bud blast on the center. So now after this call, I'm like, I'm going to go out and I'm going to pinch off the top and see if I can still get some blooms out of the others. I've been so busy, I haven't had a chance to cut them back. So I'll have to report back and let you know if that worked for me.
00:53:58
Speaker
Um, I want to ask you one other question and I don't know if you'll know the answer that to this or not. I've seen a lot of posts on Facebook and I have had the same issue myself this year is I have had buds and primarily this was heartbreaking to me. It was my pastel elegance, which for those listening who know what that one is, it's this beautiful kind of creamy antique very expensive peony. I think I paid $120 a route wholesale for them. They looked perfect. And I always cut one before I sell them and I put it in water.
00:54:36
Speaker
And within 24 to 48 hours, the leaves turned, or the puddles turned brown. And so I experimented with another, same thing happened. When I asked about it on the AC, I'm going to say it wrong now. I always get the acronym wrong, but the Association of Specially Cut Flower Growers ah Facebook group, I asked. and I got mixed responses. Some people were like, well, maybe it's your water. And I'm like, no, I've used, I've tried different sources of water. And then other people were saying it's thrips. Can thrips cause that kind of damage? Or do you think that's a fungal? You know, I haven't heard of thrips causing that kind of a damage, but maybe I don't know.
00:55:15
Speaker
um The other thing that is sort of coming to mind when you're speaking about this is something that happens to some of the coral varieties. um I don't know if you grow any corals, but something like coral sunset or pink Hawaiian coral. i have that one yeah um They, they remind me of like the same sort of petals as pastel elegance in that You know, it's almost, it's just like a different feeling and i'm I'm not going to be able to describe it well right now. But basically what it means is like corals, they don't really like the cooler, right? So a lot of times if you put a coral in the cooler, if it's beyond a hard bud stage, um they turn brown. The other thing that I've noticed just recently um is if you don't harvest them, you know, a little bit before marshmallow,
00:56:02
Speaker
and say they start to open in the field a little bit and then you get some really cool nights and maybe there's some moisture, whether it's a heavy dew or rain and you have that cold happening, I've noticed the same thing. I'll bring them inside and they turn brown. So I wonder if it could be, I wonder if it could be the same sort of thing. I don't know. um I think with pastel elegance, it's kind of you know newish as far as production. So I think we you know we have a lot to learn still about that and some of the other specialty varieties. It's fascinating that you say that because I did cut all of the pastel elegance and I put them in the cooler. And we've we've had so much rain compared to normal normally. We don't get rain this time of year. And I harvested them all in the marshmallow stage. I did have one
00:56:56
Speaker
open up just fine and I cut it outside and I brought it inside and it never went in the cooler and that was fine. And the ones that bloom on the stem are fine um because after I had somebody turn brown, I left them on the stem. So now I wonder, is it something that's happening in the cooler? Because my cooler is at, I think i I turned it up a little bit because I was worried about them maybe freezing. So it's at 35. her Yeah, I think it could be it really is sounding very similar to what happens with the corals. So it could be I think it's that combination of you know, cold temperatures and moisture and something just happens with those pedals that
00:57:38
Speaker
They don't dig it. Yeah. Interesting. Thank you for weighing in on that. yeah um If it's okay, I'd like to ask you just a couple more questions about peonies before we wrap up. Sure. So you mentioned marshmallow stage. Is that the stage you harvest years at? Depends on the variety. it's It's not really, I mean, you know, as a rule, sure. Like when we have people visit the farm, that's the the explanation we usually give. It's a good, a good standby, right? um But it depends. So especially if I'm trying to store something like a coral, I'm going to pick it when it's a little more hard, not like marble stage, not like super hard, but sort of between marble and marshmallow um for storage. And that's true for most varieties that you want to dry store for, you know, long term for a few weeks is to pick them before that marshmallow stage. But yes, if I am going to, you know, right now we're harvesting for florist orders. So yeah, we we shoot for marshmallow stage for them so that
00:58:35
Speaker
They're tight. They're easy to transport. Florists can have them in their cooler for a couple of days before their wedding, but they're also going to open for them really easily when they need to. Perfect. And so for those listening that don't understand what a marshmallow stage is, can you explain that real quickly for us? Yeah. So it's kind of just how it sounds. If you go up to the bud and you just give it a little squeeze, you're going to feel some, some give, and that's going to like kind of puff right back up like a marshmallow. um And it's something that I tell people it's good. So once you know what marshmallow sort of looks like, right? Like you you're going to feel a few buds and you're like, okay, Sarah Bernhardt, when it's marshmallow, this is kind of what it looks like. This is the size of the bud. Then go ahead and pick by sight. You don't need to squeeze everyone. In fact, there are some people who say you might be doing some damage if you are going to you know squeeze every, every bloom.
00:59:27
Speaker
um But it's one of those things that once you do it a few times, you you can tell by sight you don't actually have to have that tactile response. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you for that clarification. Now, also I've heard from lots of growers this season, both flower farmers and backyard gardeners, that thrips have been horrendous worse than ever before. Have you had any problems with thrips this year? Knock on wood, we have not. It's a little early though, so um we usually escape most insect pests with the peonies, which is just basically pure luck in our cold climate. um But I'm sure that once the dahlias start blooming, that they will just be covered in thrips, yeah.
01:00:12
Speaker
Do you do anything to prevent thrips on your peonies? um I don't. I don't do anything to prevent them. you know If I have a dahlia or something, you know one thing the dahlia is I just stopped growing a lot of those lighter colors, a lot of the whites. But the other thing you can do, again, especially if you're you know a gardener or a backyard grower, is du dunk your flowers in a bucket of water. um Change it every few dunks once you see start to see a lot kind of floating on the surface, and that'll get rid of most of them. That's a good tip. So one of the things that I did to prevent thrips this year is um I release, and I do this for the Dahlias, but I released, and I'm probably going to butcher the name, so I apologize for anyone who is a stickler for pronunciation, but it's Amblicious Cucameris,
01:01:00
Speaker
which is a small little beneficial insect that comes in basically a little plastic jar and you sprinkle around your plants. I've always done it for dahlias. I've never had a problem with thrips in my peonies until this year, so I released them early this year. And then I also love my new pirate bugs and I released a ton of those for my thrips. So for anyone in the Pacific Northwest that's pulling their hair out, um that was something that has definitely, I've noticed a reduction in the thrips since doing that. So I just wanted to throw that out there and I'll keep knocking on with it. You don't get that problem in Vermont.
01:01:37
Speaker
We do have a... um you know We've done some plantings that are more wildflower focused and um to attract beneficial insects. So yeah, I get really excited when I see the pirate bugs around. So I don't know, maybe that's like enough to sort of knock back the the low pressure that there is right now, but you know I won't be surprised if if they show up, especially as seasons get earlier and earlier and the bugs can get earlier and earlier too. Yes. It's always keeping us on our toes. There's always a new surprise. Okay. So I think my last question for peonies would be in terms of relocating them. I've had a lot of people ask because I moved my peonies.
Peony Division and Relocation
01:02:18
Speaker
When is the best time to, if you have a peony plant that's established and you want to divide it or move it, when should you do that?
01:02:26
Speaker
in the fall. um Same idea along the lines of dahlias. So once you know ideally once you've had your first fall frost, um you know you can trim back the foliage. I like to not trim it all the way to the ground. I like to leave a little bit of the stem as sort of a handle, kind of like people do the same thing with dahlias. And you can dig them up. I like to use a fork to dig them up. Again, same ideas as though you're digging up a dahlia. And then it's actually a very similar process as well. You can sometimes you'll notice some natural division points on the plant and ideally you want to leave, you know, you need at least one eye for it to be viable, right? When we divide, we try to leave at least two to three. um If we, you know, for some reason needed a more developed plant or maybe we have like a lot of a particular variety or it, you know, it was very good at making big clumps, then we'll leave three to five eyes.
01:03:25
Speaker
Okay, I actually have one more question if that's okay about the peonies. When you plant them, Do you harvest the following season or do you wait the two to three years that is recommended to harvest? Another great question. I love the controversial ones too. So my first planting, I went by the books and I disbudded and I didn't let anything bloom. And there was something to be said for that. That third year I was getting a lot of stems, a lot of harvestable stems. So that was great.
01:03:57
Speaker
The drawback to that was that my main plant team came from, you know, a big wholesaler quality was fine. But what happened was there were a lot of varieties in there that I didn't order. Oh, no. So I couldn't, you know, it had been three years, you know, I was, you know, I wasn't, maybe I could have said, I wasn't gonna say anything at that point. So my recommendation is, yeah, let one of them open the first year so that if nothing else, you can check that it's true to variety. And then if there is a problem, you take a photo and go to your wholesaler, get a credit replacement, whatever. If it's just one or two, no big deal. I had quite a few. you know My map says that I should have 10 of this one particular variety. I have none of them. I have a smattering of these random things. Some of them I still haven't identified. And some of them are great. And I'm like, I don't know what this is.
01:04:45
Speaker
um So yeah, that is one one reason. The other thing that you can do, especially if you know this investment is a lot for you, which it is for a lot of people, is in, say, year two, to harvest some of those stems, but leave them short. like you know Harvest a shorter stem, maybe half the size you would normally, and use them in you know something like if you do ball jar arrangements for a farm stand,
01:05:16
Speaker
Use your peonies there. like Start recouping some of that investment a year early. you know um What we would do you know once I did my second planting and I followed this strategy is I would also i would make a little arrangement and like give it to some businesses around town or you know some of our best customers and that kind of thing to start building anticipation and getting people excited about peonies and getting them to associate with me me with peonies because i I didn't have them for so many years, right? So yeah, there's there's a few reasons few reasons why you could do that. yeah That's great advice. You know, that made me think a few years ago, one of my florists, she asked me if I had some ranunculus and I said, well, they're really short right now. She said, well, how short? And I said, they're like 10 inches.
01:06:04
Speaker
She said, well, Jen, 10 inches is plenty long enough for a compote. She said, I have to make so many compotes for the wedding this weekend. I can totally use those. So it it changed my mindset that I don't have to have these 20-inch stems all the time. If I let the florists know that I'm selling to, they can often use those shorter stems. They just need to know they're shorter so they buy the right quantities for what they're using. So I imagine they could do that for the peonies as well. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's a great tip I learned before I had my own and I was buying them from another farm. Um, they actually had two choices. You could get the the long, you know, 18 to 20 inch stems, or you could get a stem that was like 12 to 14 inches at a discount. I almost always bought those shorter stems cause that's all I needed for, for design work. You know, if you're not making a mixed bouquet and you don't need that really long stem. So yeah, that's a great thing to do. And I think, you know, now that I grow them myself,
01:07:01
Speaker
um That's another thing you could do with a younger plant is to harvest a shorter stem so that you're leaving more foliage on the plant so that it can continue to photosynthesize and grow. And I'm sure that's probably why that farm had those two options is that those were younger plants they were harvesting off of. Yeah. And they were able to start recouping their investment that way sooner. which is always nice when you can recoup your investment and not have to wait exactly because they are they are expensive, but they are so beautiful and so worth it. yeah So in my intro, I said that you're an educator and you seem to be so knowledgeable about peonies. You have something coming up
Growing and Selling Peonies Digital Course
01:07:41
Speaker
with peonies. Is that correct that our audience might be interested in?
01:07:44
Speaker
I do. So I've spent the last year creating a digital course all about growing and selling peonies. So it's called the peony course. And it is a self paced digital course with live support, all about growing and selling. So basically, there are um two parts. The first is dedicated to growing. The second part is dedicated to sales and marketing. And it teaches growers everything that they need to know to produce peonies and to also be able to sell them. So the content is in mostly video form and each module is 30 minutes or less. It was really important to me to make this really digestible because I know how busy everyone is. I'm right there in it with you.
01:08:32
Speaker
So I wanted it to be something that if you just need to refresh yourself on say dry storing peonies and how to rehydrate them, you can go right to that module. um You could also use it like if you have a new helper and you can just sit them down in the office for half an hour to to learn this content. um you know I wanted it to be digestible and useful in that way. And then it'll also have the benefit of live support from me. So we have Q and&A sessions, live Q and&A sessions scheduled um seasonally. And there's also a member forum. So if you have a question or you know want to work through something at any time, you can post to the member forum and get a response from me and also the other members in the course.
01:09:18
Speaker
That sounds amazing. How many weeks does it take to go through your course? so the The content is about four hours long. so I've had people that will like binge it in a few days. and um you know When I think of myself going through a course of that length, I would probably take a month or two so that I can really digest it. It's something that I personally would do during the off season. So the winter, I'd probably go through the whole thing and then revisit it as needed. so And you know I had sort of this full circle moment this year because this is really just you know my records and everything that I've been doing and developed for our farm over the years.
01:10:01
Speaker
I had this full circle moment where I was doing my spring maintenance out on the peonies and I you know pulled up my own course and my workbook and said, okay, here's a checklist of what I need to do. So that's the other thing is making it so it's really accessible. There's a workbook portion and I designed that to be something that can, you know you can screenshot or pull up on your phone or print out into a binder or have on a clipboard on your design bench you know with a little quick photo tutorial. you know have the planting part, just one pager out in the field with you so that you make sure you're hitting all those steps. Yeah. Amazing. And who is your course designed for? Is it for the beginner, for the farmer? Who should who would benefit from taking your course? Yeah. So small scale producers, which you know could be, I would say most people in the course so far have less than a thousand plants.
01:10:52
Speaker
Um, some people have as few as 25. So we have some florists that are doing like a cutting garden that want to produce some of their own peonies. Um, I'd say probably the majority of people have between 200 and 400 peony plants. Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. And if someone wants to learn more about your course, where should they go? Yeah, they can go to grow and sell peonies.com. Perfect. I'll have all the information there. We will include a link to that in our show notes today. And if people want to learn more about you and your flower farm and Tanglebloom tiny cabin, where would they go for those? So they can go to our website, which is tanglebloom dot.com. And you can also find me on Instagram at Tanglebloom.
01:11:40
Speaker
Perfect. Thank you. Before we say goodbye today, is there anything that I didn't ask you that you would like to share or any parting advice you would like to leave for our listeners today? My best parting advice that we sort of touched on is just to, for any new growers or someone who's maybe pivoting to run everything through your own filter. So research is great, courses, all these things are great. Even the advice that I'm you know giving or sharing my experience here is is wonderful and useful. And you might just get one or two nuggets of wisdom and the rest to really put that through your own filter and ask, not only is this serving your business and your mission, but also your life.
01:12:27
Speaker
That's great advice. That's a reminder that I have to ask myself every day. So thank you so much for sharing that with us. And Melissa, I personally have learned so much from you today. It's been such a pleasure to chat with you. I'd love to leave the door open to invite you back to the podcast again. I would love that. Thank you so much, Jennifer. This has been wonderful. Yeah, thanks so much for joining me. And I hope you have a fabulous peony season. As we're wrapping up, you're just getting started, which is part of the beauty of local flowers is it it makes the season longer for peonies across the US. That's right. Exactly. Thank you so much. Thanks, Melissa. You have a great day. Thanks.
01:13:08
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. 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. 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.