Happy Friday y’all!

We’re anticipating a potential frost tonight, so would advise any local growers to consider frost preparations tonight on any flowers they might want to preserve in case it happens. Our forecast says 37 degrees, but in 15 years of watching forecasts like a hawk, we’ve regularly seen cold nights dip 4-8 degrees below the forecasted low.

Every micro climate is different, so what happens to us might not happen 2 miles away, but “be prepared, it’s the Boy Scouts marching song” so with so much on the line, we protect our crops when the forecast comes within striking distance.

Of note, the nights where those dips more likely occur are nights when the forecast is rain free and cloud free. Tonight is projected to be completely clear…i.e. no insulation in the lower atmosphere, so odds are higher of a potential frost event. On a 41 degree night, we never really worry, but forecasts of 40 and below have us checking cloud conditions to inform us how to proceed. Since it’s calling for 37 and clear, we’ll be closing tunnels and keeping heaters set to go on at 34 degrees.

Vesuvio heirloom mums coming in from the tunnels!

As a reminder, we have compiled a free and comprehensive mum grower’s guide for your reference to help you avoid reinventing the wheel and to get you over that learning curve way faster.

Flower lovers, mums are being harvested daily and they are beautiful!  We’re doing a lot of farmer’s mixes that include a gorgeous blend of all our favorite varieties that are coming in each week.  If you are a grower considering which varieties you want to grow, these farmers mixes are a great opportunity for you to do some market research.  You can experience first hand all the different varieties to see which ones call to you as the superstars you want to add to your growing program.

Our daily mum harvest is making us all oooooh and aaaaaah!

As many lessons as we’ve learned in our over 40 years of combined farming experience (holy crap where did the time go!), there are always plenty more lessons to learn. Some crops just click and others take a lot of failure and re-attempts. Anemones are a favorite of ours for their rare beauty, but we’ve had more losses than successes with them in the last 15 years of growing them. The last couple of years, Mandy honed in on a much more successful approach for us. Never one to settle, she tested an earlier start this year to see if we could get even healthier/more established plants happening, so come flower time, they’d be even more productive.

The result was a few very warm weeks in early October that basically cooked the young tender plants. We added shade cloth over them and had fans running, but the heat won the day and a 140 foot bed of baby anemones suffered 98% loss. Working in that tunnel today, I noticed one lonely plant, with one tattered and battered bloom….months too early, sitting in the middle of the bed.

One lonely anemone plant survivor from our earlier start test.

We ordered more anemone corms (bulb-like structures similar to dahlia tubers) and are already working on new baby plants to replace the loss. The window is narrow….too late and they don’t have a long enough runway to give abundant spring blooms. Too early and the hot shoulder seasons in GA cook them to death. To compound matters, seasonal weather conditions are less reliable than they used to be, further shrinking the space growers have to thread the needle through.

In short, it’s good to test your theories and keep attempting to improve your practices so you can move closer to ideal, but remaining nimble and equipped with a backup plan is highly advisable in an ever-changing world.

Have a great weekend!

Steve