Happy Friday y'all! The weather has continued to be oh so much nicer. We're smiling through work, enjoying each breath of cooler air, thankful for the bit of rain we finally got, and feeling imbued with a renewed sense of enthusiasm. The first scent of fall has arrived as Tea Olive has perfumed the evening air, reminding us that even when it's not alright, everything is still alright. Heat comes, heat goes, plants live, plants die, bad days come, bad days go, and the world just keeps on turning right through it all. And sometimes the world smells like a happy song feels. Grace & Biscuit on our crew's morning walk through the dahlias last week! Speaking of goodness…monarchs are...

Happy Friday y'all! We just hosted around 80 flower farmers from across the U.S. and even a few kind folks from Canada for a tour of the farm this Wednesday.  It was a beautiful morning with coffee and pastries from Comer Coffee and The Comerian, cooler temps, and a rapt audience.  A lot of the folks in attendance were our customers, some were our suppliers, others were beginning farmers, and some had operations that completely dwarfed ours.  Everybody was all smiles and pointed questions.  Such a different kind of tour than we've done in the past for students or guests. Flower farmers chatting over coffee & pastries just before the tour began! All the nitty gritty details of each crop,...

Happy Friday y’all! It finally happened! Kinda. Part way at least (no rain still). But we’ll take it! We are no longer stuck in the high 90s. We got 3 glorious, life affirming, ain't it good to be outside farming, kinda days this week. So nice. So nice. We’re getting back into the high 80s, but that’s still a welcome change, especially with nights getting cooler as well. What a relief. Our first 90 degree day this year was in March. After an extended and deeply cold winter, our outside spring crops were devastated and many of our tunnel protected crops were too. Hellebores, daffodils, flowering fruit branches, and most peonies were a complete loss due to the ice and...

Happy Friday y’all! It's another crispy dispatch from your friends in Georgia. We heard folks got some serious rain last week in Athens and Atlanta and there were puddles in parking lots about 7 minutes from us, but we somehow missed it all again. Each week for months, there has been rain in the forecast and each week it breaks our hearts and skips us, but for the occasional 7 minute drizzle. We are grateful for those 7 minute squirts, but aside from one glorious day of 83 degree weather, we have remained predominantly dry and in the 90s. We have shifted from constant high 90s to a gentler low to mid 90s, but it's still too hot for the...

Happy Friday! It’s another dispatch from your friends on a crispy southern farm. Dahlias are our big thing this time of year, but with this dry heat consistently stuck in the upper 90s (some low 90s this week…yay!) the plants get shocked into metabolic stasis. They don’t really grow. They don’t really produce flowers. Even the heat tolerant varieties we’ve been selecting and cultivating for 15 years are on strike. Without the storms that cool the earth and drop nighttime temps into a range they can work with, they just get stuck in plant purgatory. The ones we have that are near the woods and are exposed to morning and evening shade, are actually doing quite a bit better, which...

Happy Friday y’all! Still too hot and too dry out! Bless a milk cow, it’s hot. I’m sure your plants are struggling if you’re in the area. Hang in there. We may get down to 90 for a day or two next week (crazy to think that 90 is a reprieve)…then back up again. The sun is getting lower in the sky though. There will be respite in the coming weeks. Won’t there? Please let there be respite. After a few years of well deserved hiatus, Mandy is getting a bit more active on Instagram again to share info on plant care.  Mostly stories.  If you’re on IG, follow along.  She’s a peach. If you’re off socials, I’ll give ya...

Happy Friday y’all! Writing to all you big and small growers from our parched farm in North Georgia. It’s crispy underfoot. I gotta admit, that despite studying the mechanisms and forecasts of climate change way too intensely for multiple years in college, I didn’t believe in my bones that the forecasted climate models of this area getting hotter and drier would manifest quite this rapidly. When I moved here 16 years ago, I was amazed at all the summer storms we’d get. The rain was frequent and reminded me of my summer in the cloud forests of Costa Rica. It was almost overwhelming. A shift to “not enough” just didn’t seem probable in the short term. “Sure, it may get...

Happy Friday y’all! It’s been another hot one with the heat index stuck in the 100s for most of the week. We’re trying to get most of the field work done by 1pm and either head to shade and fans, or let folks cut out early after that. It’s just unhealthy to cook yourself daily if you don’t have to. We’re in the dahlias lately, finishing more weeding, adding netting and support strings, fertigating with nutrients, and adjusting irrigation settings/mitigating problems. Some of the plants are definitely stunted by the heat and other sections that were planted earlier, or got more shade and water, are as lush and healthy as we could ever hope for. Pest pressure seems low now...

Happy Friday y’all! Our dear friend and former studio manager, Kali, came by last night for a meteor shower viewing. While Mandy played fetch with the dog at dusk, Kali and her hubby joined me for an evening walk in the flowers. There aren’t many folks more enamored by the magic of flowers than her, so we geeked out over the new varieties of dahlias we’ve been breeding and goofed on some potential names for them. She was mesmerized by the juicy melon colors of a new ball shaped dahlia. It's evocative of a ripe cantaloupe in color and tempts one to bite into its lusciousness. There are so many other new beauties that we’re giddy to share with the...

Woooo doggie, it’s hot out there. It’s 7:40 p.m. on Thursday and I’m just coming inside from an observational run with Mandy through the fields and it’s still hot as Hades out there. The ladies have been working on black plastic and I’ve been doing some roofing these last few days and it sure is something to experience. I hadn’t encountered heat like this til’ my first southern summer on the farm in 2011. You walk out all clean and fresh with a plan in mind. You’re gonna get this done and that done and take care of a few things before the heat comes. And 15 minutes later, it’s 7 a.m. and you’re already soaked through like a drowned...