Amazing Flower Farm

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Here's Chris getting a Fuchsia tree started. This one is probably going to take a long time to grow up.

We started heating the second greenhouse this week so we made some space here, for the moment. It won't be long before this is filled up again and we'll be wondering where to put all the plants!

Kate is moving seedlings into their final 4-1/2" peat pots for strong, well-started pepper plants. We're using organic Vermont Compost soil, and there is no transplant shock because of the peat pots. You'll get these later, of course, when it's nice and warm outside! Or else protect them in our Wall-O-Waters.

We're hardening off some baby Salanova lettuce so it can withstand COLD temperatures--even below freezing--for early planting in your garden

An early crop of peppers, snake gourd, an asian vegetable with the coolest white flowers! They love hot weather but we are experimenting with them in a couple of hanging baskets.

This is the new home for our living beneficials that we put in each hanging basket and patio pot. They are so tiny you need a strong magnifying glass to see them, but they are very good at protecting your plants from pests.

We really like these new copper-colored hanging baskets manufactured by K & C Plastics in Leominster, MA, only 19 miles away!

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We've been pinching off the flowers and spacing the diascias to get as full a plant for you as possible........

But they really really want to bloom--constantly budding up, and they're big enough now we're just going to let them, so you should see some color by Open House!

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Pink Sky Petunia. The petunias are filling out so nicely that we're going to stop pinching off the flowers very soon! (why do we pinch? to let the plants put their energy into growing up into strong healthy plants first, before they start using all that energy for flowering)

Night Sky Petunia

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If you look really closely you can see the brassicas (cauliflower, kale, broccoli) are starting to germinate. This year we're planting directly in the peat pots, but we don't have enough space where we normally start our seedlings, so we've set up seedling tables in a greenhouse, insulated below the table tops, and are blowing the heater in under the tables. And covering the tops with floating row cover. Keeps the seeds a nice and toasty mid-70s, even with these nights in the 20s! We might run out of wood pellets in a couple of weeks though. Previous years 7 tons has been a little more than enough for the whole season. I hope the weather turns soon!

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The greenhouse filling up in preparation for Open House