Happy Friday y’all!

Fall is definitely upon us. We had friends out for a few days last weekend, and it was borderline hot the first 2 days, when Mandy declared “get a last look at these trees fellas, cause they’ll change color and start dropping leaves by tomorrow.” They (and I) were fairly stunned when we got outside the next day and it was raining down leaves and some foliage had indeed lost a noticeable amount of chlorophyll from the previous day. The girl is in tune.

The mum harvest coming in this week! Harry Anderton (left) & Mancetta Sunset, Pink Fleece, Bess Witt, and Harry Anderton (right)

Purple Light (left) and Harry Anderton (right) heirloom mums bunched and ready for shipping!

We’re now shipping mums out a bit at a time.  It’s fun to see the various varieties come through each week as they cascade through maturity, a few varieties at a time.  We experimented with pruning this year, wherein we cut way later than normal to see what would happen.  We did our last topping in August instead of July.  Topping (cutting the top of the plant) sends growth hormones down and to the sides of the plants, resulting in a bushier plant that yields more flowering stems.  If you don’t do this at all, you’ll have one very tall and very floppy stem, which is undesirable for many reasons.  We generally cut 2-3 times and finish our last topping cut in July, which has resulted in many flowers per plant, but still resulted in plants that are easily 5 feet tall.  This year’s approach, though, gave us even bushier plants that are only 3 feet tall.  The stems are still long enough for cut flowers but are much sturdier than years past.  We like the results, but will space the plants further apart next year, as they got a bit crowded.  

Crowded plants reduce valuable airflow and increase hiding places for aphids, which are always present in any mum garden. To address this, Sarah, Grace, Naw, Eh, and Marry have been manually removing a lot of the undergrowth to allow more airflow, remove habitat, and create space for our organic sprays to permeate and do their jobs.

The team manually removing undergrowth to reduce crowding and hiding places for aphids!

I hope this illustrates to newer growers that learning your crops never stops. There’s always room for greater understanding, and it’s healthy to challenge your beliefs to make sure you aren’t clinging to “facts” about what is right and good that are only partially true. There’s also no blueprint for plants. What works for us in this exact location can’t be transposed exactly for a grower in South Georgia or in upstate New York. These mums are stimulated to flower by day length, which changes with your latitude.

Bess Witt's golden blooms looking lovely in one of our heirloom mum tunnels!

Never “top” any mum plant that has started budding. It’s too late at that point and could prevent flowering. The further north you go, the earlier that point will be. Location will even effect the color of some of your mums, due to variations in temperature. Also, worth repeating….mum plants are hardy in the face of cold, but the flowers are not. You need to have a plan in place to protect them from frost. Frost cloth, tarp and heat lamp, helicopter downdraft, some sexy music…whatever you have on hand to provide heat and prevent freeze damage to your flowers. We used frost cloth for years…sometimes we’d string xmas lights through the plants for added warmth, we still cover outdoor mother plants with tarps and frost cloth, and will throw a shop light, space heater, or heat lamp in on really cold nights. I installed propane heaters in our large tunnels 7 years ago and that was a game changer for all of our crops. Your approach will vary according to your project’s size and needs.

A home grower can use a tarp or may not want to bother at all. A newer farmer will need to rely on lots of frost cloth and late nights filled with stress, waking at 3 a.m. to check that the wind didn’t blow them off. A later stage farmer should consider allocating resources towards installing tunnels with heaters and alarm systems to notify you of dangerous temps and technical malfunctions before damage is done. They should also have backup plans/parts in place in case repairs need to be made at 3 a.m. to protect their crops. Thermostatic switches are the number one failure. I have boxes of them after experiencing devastating, tear inducing losses, wherein we awoke to our largest tunnel’s heater having failed and tens of thousands of ranunculus, anemones, poppies, and butterfly ranunculus covered in ice because a $40 part malfunctioned, resulting in a huge financial blow that an alarm system and a spare part would’ve prevented.

The new double layer of plastic and fans is working! This will help insulate our mum tunnel this winter.

Speaking of tunnels, all the large tunnels have been steamed (one small one to go), and spring flowers are getting planted in pristine beds with drastically reduced pathogen and weed pressure. We just installed a second layer of plastic on the roof of one of our mum propagation tunnels and a blower motor to inflate it, so that air space between the 2 layers causes insulative properties that conserve heat and reduce fuel consumption. The heat in our other tunnels just goes on here and there to prevent the plants from going below freeze damage (that temperature varies depending on the type of plant and the stage of development). The mum tunnel, on the other hand, needs nights in the 50s to encourage growth so all those cuttings we provide in spring will actually be available. An insulated roof on that tunnel makes that process much more energy efficient. Grace, Sarah, and Karmen helped Mandy and I install the second roof, and my evening test of the inflation went perfect, so we’re quite happy with the improvement.

The Farm Store is open with a buy 2 bunches get 1 free dahlia sale this week!

If you aren’t really into growing, I may have put you to sleep by now. My apologies if so. I try to share nuggets when I can to hopefully spare a grower or two some of the layers of hardship that we endured along the way. I shall move on now.

The Farm Store is open and beautiful and still, amazingly, has some dahlias for sale and a smattering of mums.  The dahlia pollination patch viewable from the store’s window is stunning, so don’t overlook that.

We’re celebrating with the crew out at the farm this afternoon. We’re having tacos and carving pumpkins and listening to Kali’s curated mix of spooky tunes for inspiration. A little Oingo Boingo to get the juices flowing.

This swap meet at Comer Coffee Co. is going to be full of good people & fantastic finds!

Comer is hot hot hot this weekend, because Comer Coffee is also hosting a swap meet this Saturday morning and some very notable vintage sellers will be in attendance selling awesome clothing.  Comer is also having a tree giveaway and a planting party this Saturday morning to celebrate the new Acorn Trail that the good folks who run the Comer Farmer’s Market have spearheaded and obtained funding for.  Definitely check that out if you’re in town. And since you’re in the neighborhood, you gotta get over to Neat Pieces Antiques and check out all the amazingness that is within and say hello to Mr. Jimmy.

Have a great weekend!!

Steve