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3 Porch Farm

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      • Visit the Farm Store
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Notes From the Farm

A weekly check-in of all things happening on the Farm from the mind of Steve O'Shea

Mum Days + Dahlia Dig 11/10/23

Mum Days + Dahlia Dig 11/10/23

Posted on November 10, 2023


Hey y’all,    We are out in the fields right now getting our workout and our wear out.  It’s dahlia digging time and we’ve got like 9,000 plants (roughly 2 acres) to dig up.  Fortunately the fields are pretty dry, so the earth isn’t fighting as hard to keep its potato bundles as it does during the wet years, but it's still a pretty laborious process.  Mandy and Rachel have been bumping 90’s hip hop and T Swift to smooth out the rough spots.    Here’s the process:  We pull up all the support netting and roll it up.  We pull out all the rebar support stakes and stack them up.  We do a high mow to take plant tops...

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dahlias farm tips
Long Live the Queen 10/6/23

Long Live the Queen 10/6/23

Posted on October 11, 2023


Monarchs are back!  Didn’t see many this spring, but they seem to love our dahlias, so they are here on their way back down south for the peak of dahlia season and I couldn’t be more pleased about it.  They really seem to love the singles the most.  If that doesn’t make sense to you, flowers are often categorized as singles or doubles.  Singles are flowers with a single layer of petals, whereas doubles have two or more layers of petals around and covering the reproductive parts (Stamen, stigma, etc).   Most dahlias you’re familiar with are a form of doubles.  We do grow a fair amount of singles though, but we rarely sell them.  Cute as they are, they...

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butterflies dahlias monarch monarchs
Farm Tips and Bugeroos! 9/15/23

Farm Tips and Bugeroos! 9/15/23

Posted on September 20, 2023


We are enjoying the bits of rain we’ve been getting the last few days.  So is the landscape and especially the dahlias.  Native to higher elevations in Mexico, they are a flower that prefers cool temps, especially in the evenings and they love rain.  If you’ve ever seen a field of dahlias in the pacific northwest, you’ve seen them at their happiest.  Down here in the sultry south, it took us 8 years of failure after failure to start to find varieties that were not only  beautiful, but were also tough enough to survive our relentless and punishing summers that seem to last half a year.  We keep trying new ones, but we’ve got our favorites in abundance out in...

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dahlias farm tips
Dahlias and Mums 8/25/23

Dahlias and Mums 8/25/23

Posted on August 25, 2023


  Howdy y’all!   Hopefully you are enjoying cooler days than we.  It’s rough out there at the moment.  High 90’s and low hundreds, especially when the humidity and heat index is factored in.  I keep trying the shade, but it doesn’t work.  Still damned hot.   In the mornings, the team is busy cutting Peaches & Cream and a few other early varieties of dahlias and bringing them into the cooler.  Then they head back out into the fields to cover the baby flowers with organza bags to protect them from insect damage. Every single one of our dahlias spend their whole growing period covered in organza bags.  It’s a very time consuming way to produce dahlias, but prevents us from having...

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chrystanthemums dahlias mums
Dishwashers and Dahlias 7/7/23

Dishwashers and Dahlias 7/7/23

Posted on July 10, 2023


Happy Friday y’all!    We had a lovely trip to my homeland of northern California, where we celebrated my mom’s 75th and just had a great time connecting with family and friends for two weeks.  It was a huge treat for us both and is always rejuvenating to get off the farm for a bit, especially to see loved ones and to have some laughs.  NorCal was cool to the point of being cold though, which made coming home to sweaty field work in the humid 90’s quite a shock.    We’re out in the fields right now working on the thousands of dahlias we’ve got planted.  Weeding, laying down landscape fabric, driving in rebar stakes, topping the plants, etc….    We are...

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dahlias
Dahlias and Biscuits 6/2/23

Dahlias and Biscuits 6/2/23

Posted on June 2, 2023


Hi all,    Our employees were all excited to take today off as we slow down for summer and Mandy and I saw a slow down as an opportunity to replace some cabinets, but as soon as we pealed back one layer of the onion, we of course decided to tear apart our whole kitchen.  I think I had too much caffeine that day and the mood was high and the momentum was strong.  An exterior wall came down in the process. So, without an exterior wall (there was rot), we are exposed to wildlife, i.e. Biscuit, who keeps sneaking in and meowing all night to our great chagrin.  So I need to finish rebuilding that wall today so we can...

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dahlias farm tips
Dahlia Planting 6/3/22

Dahlia Planting 6/3/22

Posted on June 10, 2022


                                  We’re back out in the fields, sweat pouring off us, making beds, pulling irrigation, organizing, laying out, digging in, and covering up our dahlias.  We’ve made surprisingly good progress in this heat.  Our team is good and getting better with each passing season.  The umpff we are losing with age, is offset by the wisdom gained from years of iteration.  Less vivacious, but more efficient. Cramping, tired, and sunburnt, we are excited to have thousands of dahlias successfully planted in raised beds.  When all is said and done, we’ll have about 8,000 in the ground.  Definitely our largest dahlia planting to date.     We’ve spent years isolating and multiplying the varieties that we...

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dahlias farm tips
Winter Projects 12/3/21

Winter Projects 12/3/21

Posted on December 17, 2021


  Yesterday we (minus me) began the annual process of digging all of our dahlia tubers.  As much as I love digging up thousands of roots, I got a hall pass because I’m building a hoop house for our poppies that need a home in short order.       I’m happy to say that the ladies made smooth work of it and reported the easiest dahlia dig in our farm’s history, despite having the largest quantity (by a factor of 2 over our previous record) that we’ve ever had.  We owe much of that good fortune to two factors.       The first is a new implement that acts as an under-cutter of sorts.  It’s like a big blade running horizontally that follows behind the tractor...

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dahlias farm tips musings

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