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Ep.3: The Art of Flower Farming: Lessons in Letting Go and Embracing Nature with Paul Matalucci of Apple Core Farm and Cut Flowers
3k Plays2 years ago
In this episode of the Backyard Bouquet Podcast, host Jennifer Gulizia is joined by Paul Matalucci of Apple Core Farm and Cut Flowers. Paul shares his journey from corporate communications to flower farming and offers valuable insights for both backyard gardeners and aspiring flower farmers.
Learn about the challenges and joys of flower farming, the importance of choosing the right flowers for your climate, and the benefits of buying locally grown flowers.
Paul also talks about his passion for growing irises and shares tips for growing and harvesting these beautiful blooms.
Whether you're a flower enthusiast or considering starting your own flower farm, this episode is filled with wisdom and inspiration. Tune in and let your backyard bloom with the Backyard Bouquet Podcast!
For a list of Paul's favorite Iris, be sure to check out the show notes here: https://thefloweringfarmhouse.com/2024/01/06/episode-3-the-art-of-flower-farming-with-paul-matalucci-apple-core-farm-and-cut-flowers/
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Learn more about Apple Core Farm and Cut Flowers
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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,
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.
Meet Paul Mattelucci and His Journey into Flower Farming
00:00:55
Speaker
Welcome flower friends to another episode of the Backyard Bouquet. Today I am joined by my good friend Paul Mattelucci of Applecore Farm and Cut Flowers here in Hood River, Oregon. Welcome Paul. Thank you. I'm so glad you invited me. Oh my goodness, it's my pleasure. And what's so fun about today's podcast episode
00:01:16
Speaker
is Paul is actually sitting here at my dining room table with me, because Paul, like I just said, lives here in Hood River, and we are fellow flower farming friends that have come to rely and support each other over the last few years. So I'm really excited to have you share your story with our audience today.
00:01:37
Speaker
Again, thank you for being here and I would love it if you would take a moment and introduce yourself and share a little bit with our listeners about your journey into flower farming.
00:01:48
Speaker
I would be happy to. I describe myself as a flower floozy. I've loved flowers since I was a 10-year-old boy. And it's been my pleasure that I've come to a point in my life where I can actually be a flower farmer. Before this, I was in corporate communications. And I had a career for 26 years. Wow. And I loved it. And I enjoyed it. And I was good at it. But I've always in my heart felt like I wanted to grow flowers.
00:02:14
Speaker
been very grateful that I found a circumstance where I could actually make that happen. That's amazing. So you had a corporate career.
00:02:24
Speaker
But flower farming maybe is your second career, but in the meantime, you've been gardening all your life. Is that correct? I have. There have been times in my life, for example, when I was in college where I didn't have access to a garden. But for most of my adult life, I had been able to find either a community garden patch or work with friends who had gardens. So I've always found some way of connecting back with plants and growing things. And so before you became a flower farmer here in Hood River, where did you have a garden?
00:02:54
Speaker
My garden was in San Francisco. It's a neighborhood called Diamond Heights. And it was 10 feet by 10 feet square. Wow. So very small. But the exciting thing about it was I'm a little bit of a control freak. And when you have a garden that small, I could basically manicure it to death. So I spent a lot of time perfecting every bloom, making sure every plant was healthy.
00:03:18
Speaker
There probably wasn't a weed insight. There wasn't a weed insight. What's funny is that when we then moved to Hood River and I had four acres, I could tell people I spent the first two years hyperventilating because it was so much more space than I'd been growing before and didn't really know how to adapt to. But two years later, I'm actually quite comfortable with that much space.
00:03:38
Speaker
I love it. Well, I think that you are the perfect person to be joining us today because you can relate to so many of our listeners. We have backyard gardeners joining in and we have flower farmers. So I think that your experience on both ends of the spectrum will be super helpful to all of those listening today. So when did you start flower farming?
00:04:00
Speaker
So we bought the farm, my husband and I bought the farm in 2018 and we were for two years going back and forth between San Francisco and Hood River. So essentially I started building out the farm in 2018, but it wasn't until 2020 when the pandemic started
00:04:19
Speaker
that we made the decision to sell our property in San Francisco and permanently relocate to Oregon. And just as a side note, we told everyone that we were Canadian when we moved up here. That's a joke. But we wanted to basically be the good neighbors who people didn't look at with a cross eye. But we bought the property and I started farming in 2020 in a real way because we were here year round. And so most of the development of the farm happened in the last two to three years.
00:04:47
Speaker
Okay. Paul has a very impressive farm in Hood River. You just installed two hoop houses. Is that correct? Or greenhouses. They are now officially greenhouses. So for people who haven't done this before, a hoop house is technically an unheated structure. And a hoop house is great for growing things in the fall and in the spring, sort of at the edge of the winter season.
00:05:11
Speaker
But a greenhouse is fully powered and so it has electricity and it has heat. And with that, we can now grow throughout the year, all winter basically. That's amazing. So people in Hood River and the Gorge can benefit from flowers all year round. That's what I'm hoping. That's incredible. So let's first talk a little bit about where you are now.
Zone 7B Flower Farming and Greenhouse Benefits
00:05:31
Speaker
What growing zone do you grow in right now?
00:05:33
Speaker
We are in 7B. 7B. So for those of you that are not familiar with growing zones, the USDA publishes a hardiness map. And what your growing zone tells you is the average coldest temperatures your region
00:05:50
Speaker
can experience and where that is helpful is because it lets you know what plants can grow in your area that might otherwise not survive if it gets too cold for them. So with your greenhouses I imagine there's some plants you can now grow indoors that would otherwise have not survived a winter here in the gorge. Absolutely. That's awesome. So what do you have growing in your greenhouses right now?
00:06:13
Speaker
So I have a couple of things. I have a Renunculus and these are Renunculus that I actually planted in the spring in the greenhouse, but I was late getting them in the ground. So we left them there and much to my surprise, they've actually been sending up bloom stalks for the last five weeks. So we're going to potentially have Renunculus blooming at least until the new year. That's amazing. I'm very excited about. So I have to tell everyone, I actually went out to visit Paul the other week and
00:06:40
Speaker
His ranunculus are about three feet tall in his greenhouse right now. I had a little bit of envy when I saw those. I thought, oh my goodness, mine are little tiny sprouts because we are recording this at the end of December when most ranunculus would not be blooming traditionally in this area. So I would love to know what inspired you to start gardening and flower farming?
00:07:04
Speaker
So I feel like I've been a farmer, a flower farmer my whole life. And then I took a detour into corporate communications for 26 years. So the honest truth is I feel in my heart that I've been a flower farmer all my whole life. But what really changed for us was having the land and the space to be able to make it real.
00:07:23
Speaker
And so we feel very fortunate that we found this property that we have now and that there was enough room for us to cultivate it and to build something beautiful, we think. And so really for us, it was the time and the place that made it possible. That's awesome. So one question I love to always ask is, do you have a favorite flower to grow and work with on your farm?
00:07:49
Speaker
That's a tough one, because every time I tell people my favorite flower is the last one I looked at. But the truth is I have sort of a lifelong passion for iris, tall bearded iris in particular. But as it happens, tall bearded iris are not ideal as cut flowers. They are spectacular as blooms, but they can be fragile. And so unless they're picked in a bud and put into a bouquet as a bud,
00:08:14
Speaker
and then open when they're still, they can often be damaged. So because I love iris so much, I've looked at Siberian iris as a different type of iris that I also love, but that actually works better as a cut flower. It has longer, straight, strong stems and smaller blooms that can actually transport much better.
00:08:35
Speaker
Interesting. So are there multiple varieties of Siberian iris just like bearded iris? There are. There are thousands, thousands and thousands. So I will tell people if you've never grown a Siberian iris before and you want one for your garden, that's the one to start with. There are a couple of reasons for it. One is because the flowers and the flower range is so beautiful.
00:08:56
Speaker
But they also have a very handsome plant habit. They grow with nice, strong stems, as I mentioned, flower stems. But for the entire season, they have this beautiful sort of grassy, strap-like foliage. And if you've grown tall bearded before, which are also my favorite, tall bearded iris can tend to look ratty toward the end of the season as the leaves get brown and unattractive.
00:09:19
Speaker
They look like they're dying almost. They do look like they're dying. So you get a wonderful springtime of bloom. But then for the rest of the season, you're trying to disguise it and hide it in your garden. Siberian iris look great year round.
00:09:31
Speaker
So for those listening that have never grown Siberian iris before, what are your, let's see here, what are your top three favorite varieties of Siberian iris? I'm gonna put you on the spot here. Oh boy, it's always hard to think of the cultivars on the spot, but I will say, let me back up a second. I am discovering that there's a difference between what my favorite flowers are and my favorite color and what other people who buy flowers are looking for.
00:09:57
Speaker
So for example, I've never been really particularly interested in pinks as a color. But I'm discovering very much, especially since I do wedding work, that pink and blush and white and ivory, these are colors that people, other people who want to buy flowers are really craving. So I've sort of adjusted in that direction. And so the one that's really popular and famous right now is a white Siberian iris called swans in flight.
00:10:22
Speaker
Swans and flight. Swans in flight. Oh, swans in flight. Yes. What a pretty name. It's a beautiful name and it's a really spectacular cultivar. It's one of the only, if it's not the only Siberian to win the Dykes Medal, which is the number one award in Irishdom for quality. And it's a plant that is just, it's vigorous. The blooms are spectacular. It's disease resistant. If you were to start with one Siberian iris, that's the one I would say start with.
00:10:49
Speaker
And white is great because it goes with everything. Absolutely. OK, so what is your favorite one that does not fall under white and pink? I have a question I have to think about the colors now. Because did you see Pantone's Color of the Year? No, not yet. It's Peach. It's a peach. I forget the exact name of it. Oh, I'm so glad. But I'm very excited. Yeah.
00:11:11
Speaker
I have to say that there's a lot of work being done to breed red as a color in Siberian iris, and they're not there yet. One interesting fact about iris in general is that red is the only pigment color that true red does not exist in any iris.
00:11:28
Speaker
Interesting. So they're actually, there are people that are working to try and figure out, is there a way to get red into the iris world? And they're working on it in the Siberian iris. There's one, I think I'm going to spell it or pronounce the name incorrectly, but it's paprikash or paprikash, or sour apple. These are varieties that they're trying to hybridize that are red, warm red, not really a true red, but they're spectacular, just beautiful flowers.
00:11:55
Speaker
Interesting. Wow.
Exploring Iris Varieties and Flower Harvesting Tips
00:11:57
Speaker
I am always fascinated because I breed dahlias. So it's really amazing what goes into creating a flower. So we're still waiting. One more or two more of your favorite Siberian iris names. Okay, let me think about this. It's so funny because the ones that I've been growing since I was a boy are tall bearded.
00:12:14
Speaker
And it's only that I've made the pivot to Siberian since I started flower farming. So, for example, in the tall bearded, my favorites are Gypsy Lord, which is an iris that was hybridized by a flower grower and a hybridizer in Salem, Oregon, called Keith Kepel.
00:12:34
Speaker
He's actually one of the hybridizers who's introduced incredible range of very successful iris. There's another one that's Hitano gypsy. That one is also one of my favorites. And those are the tall bearded iris? They're tall bearded. So it would take me a little bit of time to go back and think about which of the Siberians that I've recently acquired because those are relatively new for me.
00:12:57
Speaker
I'm going to give you just a minute to think about that while I tell our listeners a little bit. Um, last spring, I had the pleasure to come out to your farm when your irises were all in bloom and you opened up your farm for two weekends in a row for the public to come out and see all of your bearded Iris and Siberian Iris and full bloom. And it was spectacular. I felt like I was almost at Shriners Iris gardens on a smaller scale, but you have,
00:13:26
Speaker
a phenomenal collection of really beautiful bearded iris and Siberian iris. I have always loved bearded iris myself. It was something that I remember from being a little girl. And one of my memories was my mom and I taking my grandma to Shriners to see the bearded iris there. And so one of the first flowers I actually planted here for myself were my bearded iris. And my collection keeps growing, I think I'm up to.
00:13:54
Speaker
30 or 40 varieties now. And you're right, they are a harder cut flower, but I do love working them in when you can. And one thing that's really neat, and you probably know more about this than I do because they're not my specialty, but bearded iris have multiple blooms. So what's so unique about them is even though that first bloom starts to die back, you can pop it off and you're going to be rewarded with more blooms as it continues to open and
00:14:21
Speaker
They're huge, they're beautiful, they smell fragrant. And I don't know, maybe it's because it's the start of spring and everything has been dead and dry for so long and all of a sudden you're welcomed with these incredible blooms. They always seem to be one of the first to bloom in the garden, but do you have any tips for harvesting them or helping our viewers enjoy them in their home? How do they know when to cut them and bring them into their home for the longest base life?
00:14:49
Speaker
Absolutely. That's a great question. So I would say, first of all, if you're growing tall bearded iris, the thing to know is that they really require good drainage and full sun. So if you, I go to people's gardens and they tuck them away under a tree somewhere and they just never perform very well. So make sure that where you plant it, it has full sun and good drainage. But when you're ready to harvest, especially with the tall bearded cut them, when you see the color of the buds,
00:15:16
Speaker
There's a point at which the bud extends beyond the stalk. And when you see it at that sort of plump phase, there's kind of like this little tissue paper sticking out of the top. But you see that most of the bud has extended beyond that tissue paper, but it hasn't fully opened yet. That's the point at which you cut it.
00:15:33
Speaker
And usually what they've done now with the hybrids is they've developed some with branching so that a single stem will have three or more branches on the side and each one of those branches has two or three bud sockets. So as it's in your bouquet and it finishes blooming, as you just mentioned, pop off one of those dead blooms and there's another bud right behind it and many times that will continue to grow and bloom as well.
00:15:55
Speaker
And I found you don't really need to take scissors. You can literally just bend it backwards and it literally kind of makes a pop. Yes. And comes off. Exactly. It's very easy to do. And if you let them wilt on the stem, though, I've noticed they don't have the best smell. So pop them off and then let the next one open up and have its turn to shine. It does require you're on top of it. You can't sort of ignore them. They do require a little bit of attention. But the reward is that you get this spectacular scent and then the colors are just off the charts. And then you get more than two or three days out of them.
00:16:24
Speaker
whole week if you let the others start opening up. You have a few days and then a few days with the next bloom and so on. You mentioned planting them in good drainage. I learned a few years ago you don't plant them deep. Like with dahlias you want to go four to six inches underground but bearded iris it's different, correct? Very much so.
00:16:43
Speaker
So iris is unlike people call them bulbs, but it's not correct. They're, they're really rhizomes or what they're called. And a rhizome is a modified stem. So it actually is best right along the surface. And usually in my field, you can actually see the rhizome top at the soil level. And that's kind of where they're happiest. Um, and with that, um, don't be tempted to mulch iris tall bearded iris. Don't like to have mulch right up around the.
00:17:07
Speaker
the rhizome because they'll actually start to rot. So I put mulch on the ground on the pathways, but as I get closer to the each plant, I usually leave a couple of inches away from the plant that has no mulch. And they're pretty low maintenance plant. They are. The one thing you have to know about them is that every five, four or five years, the clump will become too crowded and you'll have to dig it up and plant just the green shoots again. But other than having to replant every five years, it's a very low maintenance plant.
00:17:37
Speaker
I was so excited because rhizomes are expensive. They're kind of like dahlias. Everyone talks about how expensive dahlias are, but I am embarrassed to say this. I spent $64 for a bearded Iris rhizome. It was this beautiful, blush bearded Iris. I actually, I'm not, well, I made quite a list after visiting yours because you have such a great label system. When you walk through your fields, you can see the names of everyone.
00:18:03
Speaker
My wish list kind of grew a little long after seeing yours. And then I went down a trap of finding all my favorite blush and kind of terracotta colored ones.
00:18:11
Speaker
And I think the most expensive one I bought was $64. And I don't think dahlias are quite that expensive yet, but what's so great, like you just said, you divide them every four years. Cause what happens is they start to expand. The center becomes this hole where nothing is growing out of basically. So you have this ring around an empty space where the, like in dahlia world, you'd call it the mother has kind of disintegrated. And now the babies have grown around it.
00:18:38
Speaker
So I dug up my bearded iris this year because they were four years old and I couldn't believe how many rhizomes I had. One plant gave me 16 and they were healthy and big and I've planted them all out. So in four years, you can multiply your stock.
00:18:56
Speaker
So it helped me justify that $64 cost. I think one of the ones I bought that I saw from you, you can help me. There was cotillion gown. Yes, cotillion gown. That was one. That's Keith Keppel Iris as well. That one caught my eye. And then you had, oh no, I'm blanking on the name all of a sudden. There was a chiffon, I think. I bought a chiffon. I'm trying to think of a few of the others. They have really fun names, just like Dahlia's too.
00:19:25
Speaker
Have I given you enough time to think of one or two more favorites? It'll come to me in a second. It's so funny when you ask me that question. It's hard for me to remember the exact names because I'm on the spot. But I will say that one of the cool things about Iris, the reason they're called Iris is that Iris was the goddess of the rainbow. And Iris as a flower has every color of the spectrum except true red.
00:19:45
Speaker
And so for most of my iris growing time, I was focused on sort of bright, vivid, interesting bi-colors. But now that I'm doing flower farming, I'm looking into more of the pastels. And what's amazing about the iris pigments is that you can get these wonderful combinations of oranges and tangerines and pinks and blush and all in the same bloom.
00:20:11
Speaker
And so you mentioned cotyllium gown because that is one that has this sort of gorgeous shading of sort of a peachy yellow with a few very pale stripes. So it has, iris are just amazing because they give you so many options. That's great. Okay, so people are listening right now thinking, boy, maybe I need to try growing some iris now. Where should people go to buy bearded iris?
00:20:37
Speaker
So you mentioned Shriners. Shriners is one of the biggest, best known iris producers and they're in our backyard. They're in Salem. So we get to the.
00:20:46
Speaker
the joy of going to actually see their iris fields when they're in bloom. I would say start with a big supplier like Shriners. There are a lot of smaller hybridizers that only release their individual hybrids. If you really get into it, those are the people you want to follow because they are the ones that are breaking ground with new color combinations and new forms of iris. So if you're really passionate about it,
00:21:13
Speaker
those are the people you follow and those are the people you buy from. But if you're beginning, I think Shriners is a great place to start. They also are very generous. So when you place an order of maybe five or six iris, they'll give you a free one along with it. So that's often a nice way to explore a new variety that you might not have tried otherwise. Yes, I've always had great experience with theirs. So and I always love going there. So bearded iris and Siberian iris, they bloom.
00:21:42
Speaker
in the northern hemisphere in the early spring. Yes. I'd say late spring. Late spring. Yes. Late April, May. Correct. Mine started in late April and they're really in full bloom by Mother's Day and throughout May. So a good Mother's Day flower. I think so. That's a good advice.
00:22:01
Speaker
if you want to flower from others' day. But here's the thing. You can't plant them right now, can you? You can't right now. The thing about iris is that you really want to plant them late in the late fall so that they spend the entire winter growing a nice, thick root system. And then in the spring, they'll be able to jump when the temperatures warm up and really perform beautifully. The risk now is, especially in the Pacific Northwest, where it's cold and wet, that you leave the rhizome in soggy ground
00:22:29
Speaker
And it's too cold for it to actually put in much growth. Um, and so it just sort of languishes. So really you want to get them in the ground. I try to finish my replanting by mid September, maybe late September, and then give them a nice full winter to, um, to, uh, develop a root system. Okay. Thank you for that information. Um, let's see here.
From Small Gardens to Hood River Farmland
00:22:51
Speaker
So we've talked about your favorite flower.
00:22:55
Speaker
Can we touch a little bit more on what inspired you to start flower farming? You said you've kind of always been a flower farmer and you took this little detour, which I love. I just think that's a great way to put it because for those that know you, you are so passionate about what you do and you put your whole heart and soul into your business. Was there something that inspired you to start becoming a flower farmer?
00:23:19
Speaker
I would say for me, it wasn't something as so much as it was the opportunity. I think I've always craved that experience and I wanted that. What happened was my husband and I, we had lived in San Francisco for 30 years and we've been together 28 of those years. And we came up here to watch the eclipse in 2017 and we saw the eclipse from Eastern Oregon
00:23:43
Speaker
And as we were driving back to Portland, we hit really bad traffic. So we jumped on the phone and we found an Airbnb at the last minute, which if you can imagine back on that, it was August of 2017. Everything was booked in this area because of the eclipse. You can't find a place to stay in Hood River in the summer, even without the eclipse.
00:24:03
Speaker
And so we found a last minute, it turns out they had just received a cancellation. So we booked it and we pulled in in the dead of night, pitch black. We had spent a lot of time visiting Tom's family in Portland, but we'd never been to Hood River. I'd never experienced Hood River. And so we pulled into the Airbnb, went to bed and then woke up the next morning at the foot of Mount Hood. Oh my goodness. I had never seen anything so beautiful. And we got in the car and as we were driving around this area, we just fell in love with it. So we knew that we always wanted to have land.
00:24:33
Speaker
And we wanted to have land where there was water coming from California. We were aware of the challenges that the country will face as water becomes more scarce. So the beauty of this area is that we have glaciers on Mount Hood and they provide a lot of fresh water for the farms in this area. And so we decided to start looking for a farm and we got lucky. We found one.
00:24:57
Speaker
You're very lucky. It's not easy to find farmland around here. It's not. I know from experience. So you found a farm here in Hood River. How big is your farm? So the farm is a total of eight acres, but part of that is a woodland area. So we put a deer fence around the acreage that had
00:25:17
Speaker
irrigation and that's about four acres. Okay. I don't think I even told you this last time, right as I was pulling into your property, there was a deer right there. So every time I go into your farm, I always, I think every time I've been there, but once I've seen a deer. So that deer fence was a good investment. It was our first investment. That was a wise one. So you found your farm. Did you instantly start with growing on four acres or
00:25:45
Speaker
No, that's a great question. So my coming from San Francisco, I had a 10 foot by 10 foot backyard in San Francisco, and we had some land near us in the city that we were able to grow on. But really, I hadn't had the experience of this much space. And I tell people I felt like I was hyperventilating for the first two years after we moved here because I didn't know what to do with that much land. And a lot of land for a flower farmer. It is. You don't need that much, to be honest with you. You're starting as a flower farmer and you have
00:26:15
Speaker
an acre or less than an acre, you're totally going to be fine. But because I had only had this 100 square foot yard backyard, I had been able to, in San Francisco, I had been able to micromanage that entire garden. I knew every leaf, I knew every plant. And so I'm a little bit of a control freak and that kind of satisfied my need to control.
00:26:36
Speaker
Fast forward to having the four acres and I felt totally out of my depth because there was no way I could micromanage that much space. And so it really has been a two, three year process of learning to let go and realizing how many things are beyond my control and making progress where I can, but not sort of basically getting anxious about having to fill it all and do something with every available foot.
00:27:05
Speaker
I always say that it's really good if someone is starting out to start slow. Yes. It's really easy to bite off too much on a flower farm, especially when you get seed catalogs in the mail this time of year. I almost just need to throw all of them in the recycling because I look at them and I buy more seeds, even though I've already pre-mapped out and have everything I need for the year. Next thing I know, I have bought 10 more varieties of flowers that I don't have room for. And then you still start them.
00:27:35
Speaker
So what did you start with on your farm? Did you have a set plan of what you were going to grow? Oh, I was fortunate enough that friends had pointed me to Erin at Florette. And so my first
00:27:49
Speaker
Big investment in the farm was to to participate in florets workshop and with that the amazing thing for people who don't know florette or don't know about Aaron. She's an amazing woman period, but incredible educator and really knowledgeable and generous with her knowledge.
00:28:09
Speaker
And so I took her workshop and that really gave me the sort of step-by-step process for actually getting the farm started. So I tell people this, I've had a lifetime's worth of horticulture experience and learning about what plants need and how to make them healthy, but I had zero farming experience. And there's a big gap, a big difference between gardening and farming. Huge difference.
00:28:32
Speaker
It is. And I don't think I fully appreciated how big that difference is. So what I tell people is that as I moved into flower farming, I knew the questions to ask. I knew about flower types and I knew about light, air, water, all the things that plants need and how to give them those things. But beyond that, it was a big mystery to me about how do you decide how much to plant?
00:28:56
Speaker
how you were actually trying to generate a return. So it's not just planting things for pleasure, it's planting things that actually generate revenue to pay for the endeavor. So with the help of Fluorettes program, I feel like that's really what got me started. And from there, it's been sort of adding every year. I love to learn. So I'm more than happy to dive into something brand new. And we talked about the greenhouses. I have two fully powered greenhouses now.
00:29:26
Speaker
off the charts, new for me. That's amazing. And I'm very excited to be in that learning curve. But it was it was sort of Fleurette who gave me the first information to get started. I love that. What year were you in her class? That would have been 2020 or 2021. I was part of her 2020 class. Well, you and I were in the same class. So it was 2020, 2020. And like you, I've been around flowers all my life. I know how to plant a seed. I know how to germinate.
00:29:57
Speaker
and get something to grow, but I had no clue about the business side of it, of how to make a profit, and I think that's something that her course does very well is really gives you the back inside of how to run a flower farming business, which is very different than growing flowers for pleasure, like you said, so it's really easy to plant what you love, but if that's not going to make a profit.
00:30:21
Speaker
you're going to have a really hard time sustaining your flower farming business. So the good news is I'll say that there is an overlap between what you love and what generates a profit. So those two things are not exclusive. Fortunately for me, I love dahlias. Oh good. I've been a little lucky there. Um, and I think you can still find ways to get creative. If you love daffodils, there's ways that you, well, daffodils are kind of having a comeback these days, especially the novelty ones. But I think, I think there's definitely a way to get creative. I think everyone has to find their own little niche.
00:30:51
Speaker
of what works for them in the flower world, especially as we get more flower farmers. Is there anything that you have found that has helped you grow your business as a flower farmer that has set you apart from others or has really become a specialty that you offer?
00:31:08
Speaker
So one of the things that I learned from Florette, which was so helpful, was as a flower farmer, there are so many different avenues that you can pursue to make money doing what you love.
Hosting Bouquet-Making Workshops and Overcoming Challenges
00:31:19
Speaker
So some people love wedding work and they want to do just weddings. Some people want to do a CSA and do bouquets for the neighborhood every week. Other people want to just generate masses and masses of flowers and sell them to a wholesale market. So as I began, I didn't know which one of those I would like.
00:31:37
Speaker
And I didn't know which one of those would be profitable. So I started out by doing all of them. Actually, I think I picked five different ones to start with. And that was a little bit stressful because a different, all those different avenues, each one had to be invested in. And so there was a lot of time and energy spent. But what I really came down to was discovering that what fundamentally makes me the happiest is creating magical moments for people at the farm. Oh, I love that. And so for example, we do bouquet making workshops and
00:32:05
Speaker
I have the joy of working with an outfit here called Wild Craft and they publish, they promote my bouquet making workshops on their website and people come out to the farm and for four hours we talk about flowers, I show them how to harvest and then I give them a pair of clippers and I say you can cut anything on the farm that brings you joy and we're going to go upstairs in the barn and make bouquets with those things.
00:32:27
Speaker
Amazing. And so by the time people have finished the four hours experience, it's it's revelatory. So they're exhilarated. They have this wonderful connection to plants and the flower. The farm is is actually it's beautiful physically. And so they have this wonderful moment and these wonderful memories. And so once I realized how much joy that gives me and them, I decided to make that a focus. So for the coming year, I'll be actually partnering with a nearby resort hotel
00:32:57
Speaker
and they'll be having their guests come out to the farm to do workshops for bokeh making at the farm. Oh, I love that. Yeah. Oh, that's wonderful. How many people can you host at a time? We can, it depends. The limitation is we can, we can fit 15 vehicles. So if people pair up, we can have anywhere from 20 to 25 to 30 people in a workshop. You do have a large barn space there. Yes. I prefer to do the workshop outside if the weather's nice, but we have a really wonderful workspace upstairs in the barn.
00:33:26
Speaker
And that ends up being where we go if the weather's, uh, if it's raining. So if it's nice, people are harvesting, cutting, and then they get to arrange the flowers also. And Paul has this beautifully laid out field. I mean, everything is just neatly manicured and it's all in rows like a flower farm, but I don't know how you do it. Your field is always spotless and looks so beautiful. I definitely have a few more weeds than you in my field. Um, let's talk about some challenges. Yeah.
00:33:54
Speaker
Looking back on the last few years as a flower farmer, or even looking back when you were a gardener, can you think of some of the biggest challenges, even just one that you have faced, and how did you overcome that challenge? So this is odd to say, but I think my biggest challenge is over imagining, like thinking, I get very excited about the vision, but
00:34:21
Speaker
And whether this is a plus or a minus, I dive into things and then figure out, oh, wow, this is a lot more work than I expected. So if I think about the challenges that I faced, they were mostly because I had an idea and sort of blindly jumped into it and then realized in the process that this is a lot harder than I expected.
00:34:41
Speaker
The good news is that there's no consequence for that, that essentially flower farming is forgiving in the sense that if you try something and it doesn't work, you can just easily pivot to something else. And essentially the structure that you've created moves with you. So I guess that's been my biggest challenge is not, is trying to limit my imagination.
00:35:04
Speaker
and figure out what's reasonable, what's realistically achievable in the timeframe. Can you share with us one of those times where you over-imagined something? Well, I'm kind of living it right now. So the greenhouses really are something that I've always wanted.
00:35:21
Speaker
And I pursued that desire and that passion. And now that I have them, I'm sort of struck by, oh my gosh, there's a lot of complexity here. I naively thought that having a greenhouse would give me more control over the environment internally, interior, in the interior space. But come to find out that it's a Petri dish for bacterias, for pests. So there's a constant need to stay on top of that.
00:35:48
Speaker
I will just back up for a second and say that philosophically as a farmer and as a horticulturalist, I believe that the less I intervene in the natural process, the better. And that means that I use a process called integrated pest management, which has been talked about and developed, especially I think by the University of California. But it's the idea that essentially a chemical intervention is your last resort, not your first resort.
00:36:14
Speaker
Definitely. And there are thousands of things that you can do before you ever reach for a spray bottle and take care of a pest with a spray bottle. So with that, my attitude on the farm outdoors is live and let live. That if I see a pest, many times I don't take any action because that pest has another predator that's about to take care of it. There's a whole natural cycle that's taking place out there and I don't want to mess that up.
00:36:42
Speaker
But move all that natural activity into the greenhouse and suddenly it's this perfect environment for pests to go out of control because they don't have a predator. And so that's my learning curve right now. I have to figure out how do I decide when and where to intervene and when do I let go and back off. And the stakes are high because if I, so for example, I talked about where my ranunculus, which are looking gorgeous,
00:37:10
Speaker
They're showing powdery mildew right now, which I don't have a problem with in the field at all. And now suddenly it's in my greenhouse. So I could just let it go or I could risk losing the entire row. So I'm now where my challenge is I have to now decide when to intervene and when not to. And that's a bit of a learning curve for me. I think that being a flower farmer, one of our best teachers is experience. Yes. And sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty.
00:37:40
Speaker
no book is going to teach you how to do everything. And the best teacher is your own hands in the dirt. Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. I think that kind of goes along with my next question for you is what valuable lessons have you learned from working with flowers, especially those lessons that can apply to life in general? Can you think of any lesson that's really touched you deeply or has impacted you
00:38:09
Speaker
I think for me, it's about, um, the process of learning to let go. Um, there are so many things on the farm that are beyond my control. You'll remember this, um, in on April 11th of, uh, 20. Oh dear, what year was it 2021? We had, we had a sudden snow storm 19 where I live 19 inches of snow fell overnight. And my tulips, which I had been nurturing were about, um, I think they're about eight or nine inches tall.
00:38:37
Speaker
And 19 inches of snow just basically crushed them all. I had already started harvesting tulips that year. Oh, had you? Yes. So I woke up that morning and I tell people that's the day that I became a farmer because I realized I could do everything right. And something would go wrong. That was totally beyond my control. So as it turns out, um, flower farming is forgiving because let's say I did that as it turns out, I didn't, I didn't lose as many tulips as I thought that night or that morning. Um, but let's say I had lost them all.
00:39:06
Speaker
In flower farming, another flower type is right around the corner, and so you recover with the next flower type, whether it's peonies or iris or dahlias. So if you have a bad year for one crop, it's not the same as cherry farmers who, if they lose a cherry harvest one year, they're done for the season, that's it. We have the benefit of other flower types to rely on.
00:39:29
Speaker
But it was that sense of I'm totally powerless, not shouldn't say totally powerless. I can set the direction and I can do the work. But beyond that, what happens in the farm is out of my control. It's really up to Mother Nature. Yes. She's the true controller out there. It's humbling. It's very humbling. I think a couple of things that I've learned throughout my time flower farming. I just wrapped up my fifth year and I started very small and have grown to an acre.
00:39:59
Speaker
over the last few years, um, I think being humble, admitting when you make a mistake or not knowing what you don't know. And, um, I always say I'm hopelessly optimistic.
Life Lessons from Flower Farming
00:40:09
Speaker
You have to, because so much is out of your control. You, you do everything you can in your power. And then you have to release that control, which I'm a control freak. That's a hard thing to do. And I've learned, I just have to remain optimistic and know that things are going to work out. Maybe I'm going to lose my tulips, which I did last year.
00:40:29
Speaker
Um, I actually thought I'd lost them to tulip fire. I just learned recently that I lost them to a pest that had been in the bulbs that came over from, uh, Holland. Um, and so I've been working with the department of agriculture on that, but that was completely out of my control. There was nothing I could have done on that. Um, and thankfully I had another flower, which I think is something to consider if you're really niching down to just one plant.
00:40:57
Speaker
you have to make sure you have something as a backup because then you become like a cherry farmer where you could lose your whole crop if something does go wrong. So I think that is one nice benefit of when you grow mini flowers, if you have a security blanket that there's something else there, should you lose one crop. There's one more thing I want to add to that, which is the other big learning was you can lose everything and start from scratch the next year. So essentially living in our area where we have four seasons
00:41:26
Speaker
Winter is the time for the slate to get wipe clean. And I look at my field now and it's essentially a blank slate for next year. And I'm now creating ideas in my head about what do I want to grow and buying those plants and imagining what the field looks like. But essentially, if things go wrong, you can see it through the end of the season and then start all over again the next year and either do it differently or try some variation of what you did. But in that way, again, flower farming is more forgiving.
00:41:56
Speaker
I love that. That's really impactful. So with that, it is winter right now while we are recording this podcast episode. What do you have in plan for this next year? So with the workshop series that I do in Bouquet Making Workshop, my number one goal is to assure that every week of the growing season next year, I have a nice wide selection of foliage, flower types, flower colors.
00:42:25
Speaker
because I want to be able to host as many as one or two workshops a week. And people, I want them to come to the farm and I want them to be able to get excited about the variety that's available. And then as we talk about how do you assemble a bouquet, be able to put color combinations together, textural combinations together, I want them to be able to find all of that that week and be able to make their bouquets out of it.
00:42:52
Speaker
My challenge this winter as I plan my seat starting for next year is to make sure that I have enough flower types, enough colors of each type, and enough foliage plants to basically make beautiful bouquets for my workshops. I was just talking with someone else about this. I have found that probably the most underrated, but probably most important part of the bouquet is the filler flowers. Yes. What are you growing for filler flowers?
00:43:22
Speaker
I'll talk about fillers for a second because this, when I first heard the word filler, it, it sounded to me like it was a throwaway or like padding, that it was somehow a way to make a bouquet, um, to, to, to sort of fill up a bouquet. Well, the truth is filler is vital for, so the three components of my bouquets that I describe are focal flowers, which are the flower that catches your eye right away. It's usually a more striking or larger.
00:43:50
Speaker
it's somehow the one that you first notice. The filler, which is the ones that go around the focal flower. And the fillers are necessary because they separate those focal flowers and they give them space in the bouquet. So if you can imagine, if you only had focal flowers, they're all sandwiched in together and they're sort of crushed and they're not necessarily showing off, but the filler gives them that space. The filler also adds new color elements. So my number one filler is yarrow.
00:44:20
Speaker
Mine too. Oh great. And I used to think yarrows were boring because I'd only ever seen the yellow one that grew in the southwest where I grew up. But yarrow comes in thousands and thousands of colors. And because you have so many, there's always a shade that works perfectly with the colors that you've got in your bouquet. So I use that. And then the third thing, so I said focal filler. My last one is fizz.
00:44:43
Speaker
Fizz. I haven't heard that before. Fizz is one that I made up, but it's the idea that you want to have a little bit of movement outside your bouquet that's sort of dazzling and shimmery. So it could be something like an ornamental grass, or it could be there's a wonderful plant called Jules of Opar. Yes. And Jules of Opar has these gorgeous shiny seeds that are like pearls. And you can pop
00:45:06
Speaker
one or two spreads, uh, sprigs of those. And it just gives you this little bit of shimmer in your bouquet. So for me, it's focal filler fizz and the three F's. Oh, I love it. That's fun. Very fun. Um, do you have any other filler flowers? Yes. Um, so I mentioned Yarrow. Um, I am big on a foliage, which I also use as a filler. So,
00:45:31
Speaker
One of the discoveries for me that I've never grown before in once I'm moving to Oregon is a plant called nine bark. Yes. And nine bark, there's a native version and the native is attractive, but not nearly as attractive as the cultivars that have been made from it. And the range of color in this foliage. Um, I have one called Diablo, which is this deep, deep one with really rich, dark burgundy foliage. Um, and I have one that's bright green, almost a chartreuse.
00:45:58
Speaker
called Darts Gold. And I have some others that are just beautiful mixed shades. So with those Neimbark cultivars, I can bring in both texture and color and filler in the bouquets. So Neimbark is a good one. I do use a lot of cress. Cress is a new plant for me, but it gives you these beautiful bright green seed pods. Auroch is another one.
00:46:27
Speaker
I love it. Yes. So there are things that I've added to my list that that serve me well as a filler flower. I have found that the Orack and Jewel of Opar both self seed like crazy. They do. I find them everywhere. I almost don't even have to sew them again. Once I've sewn them, I just leave a few to go to seed and they come back the next year and more more force than they did the previous year. So I know that we've been chatting for a while,
00:46:57
Speaker
What advice would you give to someone interested in starting their own cut flower garden or flower farm?
Starting Your Own Flower Garden or Farm
00:47:04
Speaker
I would break that into two parts because the cut flower garden is really about what brings you joy. Yes. And you're planting things that you genuinely love and grow well in your climate. I would say that's actually that reminds me of something else, which is pick something that grows easily and well where you live. Don't you know, we all love
00:47:25
Speaker
Well, here's a good example. We all love roses. I lived in San Francisco for 30 years. And the joke was when people would say, well, how do you grow roses in San Francisco? We used to say move because it's just a climate that's not conducive. Now, there are a few cultivars that can handle it, but it's not an environment that is conducive to roses. So anytime you try to grow them, you're working against nature.
00:47:48
Speaker
So pick things that do perform well in your area. That's great advice. If you don't know what those are, you can look in the neighbor's yards and see what's growing in your neighborhood. Or you can call a Master Gardener program. There is a Master Gardener program in every state of the country that has a land grant university. So if you Google Master Gardener and your county, you will find people that will help you know what grows well in your area and how to grow it.
00:48:18
Speaker
So that's really for the cut flower garden. That's excellent advice. Yes, thank you. But then for the cut flower farmer, I think the biggest thing is try to find out how much work there is to do before you dive in. I think a lot of people think, God, it just sounds like a magical job. And it is. But I don't think people are aware of how much physical labor there is in making it happen.
00:48:48
Speaker
I think it's great that people are excited about flower farming, but I would actually try working at a flower farm as a volunteer to actually see how much physical lifting, how much digging, how much time do you spend on your knees. It's hard physical work. So if you happen to love the work and you love flowers, it's a great combination.
00:49:06
Speaker
But if you're really doing it because you think that picking flowers sounds like a fun way to spend your time, that's not enough. I don't want to discourage anyone, but that's my advice is to be aware of how much physical labor is involved. I think that is really great advice. I think one thing that surprised me when I started my farm was I thought I was going to spend all this time harvesting flowers. And really, even in the peak of the season, it's a couple days of the week, but there's so much maintenance. You're moving compost, you're pulling weeds, you're
00:49:36
Speaker
doing your IPS or IPM, excuse me, thank you, your integrated pest management. You are managing employees depending on your size, you're delivering bouquets, you're sowing seeds. There's so much else besides harvesting the flowers that what, how much time per week do you think you actually spend harvesting flowers compared to everything else you do?
00:50:00
Speaker
Well, first of all, it's not even throughout the year. So peak season for us is really from the beginning of May until probably beginning of September. And so in that period, there are weeks when all we can do is harvest and it's the, it's, it's just keeping up with the harvesting. But where it gets tricky is that for like January, February, March, we're starting seeds.
00:50:24
Speaker
And then once those get up potted into the three and a quarter inch pots and grown in those pots, then they have to be planted in the field as soon as the danger of frost has passed. So there are weeks when we're seeding, up potting, planting in the field and harvesting all in the same week. And that process is continual. So we are spending in the early spring, less time harvesting, more time planting. But by May, we're really into sort of crazy harvesting mode.
00:50:54
Speaker
Perfect. And let's see, since you are a local flower farmer, for those that just want to enjoy some beautiful flowers in their home and want to support a local flower farmer, how does buying locally grown flowers benefit both our listeners and their community?
Supporting Local Flower Growers
00:51:15
Speaker
Good question. So the first one is I'll answer how does it benefit the customer, the listeners, because essentially,
00:51:24
Speaker
When you buy a flower that's been flown in from somewhere else, it's been picked as a tight bud, packed in a box, chilled, stashed on an airplane, and then flown and unpacked. And what I witnessed is when I go to see flowers in flower shops, they kind of make me sad sometimes because the blooms are crushed. Sometimes you'll see brews. Sometimes you'll see they just haven't fully opened because they were picked too soon.
00:51:53
Speaker
It's great to be able to have flowers all year round. And that's kind of magical on one level. But the truth is, if you buy from a local grower, you're going to get a bloom that was picked at the perfect stage of ripeness so that, oh, that's another thing. So when you get it home, you're going to get seven to 10 days or even two weeks of enjoyment out of that bloom. When you buy a flower in a flower shop, it was probably picked two weeks before. And all the travel time that's required
00:52:22
Speaker
all the time in the cooler, you don't know how long it's been sitting in the flower shop before you get it, and you take it home and it's maybe gonna last another three or four days, and then it's pretty much finished. That's not always the case, but that's what I see as often the case. But if you buy from a local flower grower, you're getting this perfectly picked, undamaged blossom. And if you care that much about flowers, that's really where the joy is for me. I would say the benefit to the community is that
00:52:51
Speaker
flower farmers create joy and you can't have too much of that. Exactly. So I think you are by supporting a flower farm and allowing that flower farm to do what they do. You are you're giving this joy quotient to your neighborhood. Yeah, I love that. Oh, yeah, joy. Joy is why we do it. There's no one. I don't think anyone sets out to be a flower farmer.
00:53:22
Speaker
to get rich. I think we do it because of the joy it brings ourselves and the joy we see when we hand off that bouquet. I mean, when you pass that bouquet off to your recipient, it's such a wonderful feeling. You see someone pick it up, they smell it, their eyes gaze over the different flowers. Sometimes it's like, what is this? This is amazing. I've never seen anything like this or this bouquet just lasted two weeks. And there's just such a tremendous joy.
00:53:48
Speaker
and being able to share that with others. And you definitely are someone that passes along that joy and spreads it among our community. So thank you. Where can our listeners find you? We are online. So our website is www.applecorefarm.com.
00:54:10
Speaker
We were also on Instagram. I confess that I'm not, as for somebody who spent his whole life in communications, I'm not as good with social media as I could be. But I do have an Instagram profile and I'd like to post pictures there. So our profile is at Apple core farm on Instagram. And then we have a Facebook page as well. The same. The same at Apple core farm. Perfect. And Paul, thank you so much for being here today. It's been such a pleasure and such an honor.
00:54:39
Speaker
hearing about your story, your flower farm, your workshops, lessons you've learned and challenges and the joy you bring to others. I feel like we've gone really deep today and I'm sure we could have gone even deeper and talked for hours. Is there anything before we say goodbye that you would like to leave our listeners with today? I think
00:55:04
Speaker
I think try it out. I think go for it. I think that people I think go and try. If you have an inkling and you want to try it out, just do it. Don't spend too much time thinking and planning and planning is a great thing to do. But find a flower farm and go ask if you can work there one day and see what it's like. We love we love help. Can never have enough help. Exactly. Oh, I love that. Thank you so much, Paul. It's been a true honor having you here.
00:55:34
Speaker
Go give Paul an apple core farm and cut flowers. Follow on social media. Be sure to visit his website. If you're local, Paul does offer flower subscriptions and workshops for those visiting the Columbia Gorge. And we thank you for joining us today and happy gardening. Happy gardening.
00:55:57
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,
00:56:24
Speaker
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.