Happy Friday Y’all,We’ve been chalky dry lately, choking on the dust from our dirt roads. The dahlias have been begging for more juice, and we’ve been trying to get them extra irrigation, but there’s no substitute for the magic of rain. The effect just isn’t the same. Every time we get a fresh late summer rain, we see the dahlia plants burst in growth and happiness. Hard to quantify the latter metric, but it’s just something you can plainly see and feel after awhile.So, dry as a bone and no real promise in the forecast, then out of nowhere, just as Fedex was arriving to pick up 40 boxes of flowers last night, the sky opened up. It dumped down...

Happy Friday y’all! It sure has been a beautiful week out here at the farm! We’ve had some days in the nineties, but they haven’t been aggressive. The cool from the night before lingers in the earth and in the air. It has been utterly delightful. To need long sleeves in August in Georgia….it’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me. For the last 14 summers, I’ve been completely wrung out by this time. Body feeling like the gears of a motor that has been completely drained of oil. Muscles filled with more lactic acid than they are of water. Cramping near constant with fingers and toes curling under in spasms each day. 3 brutal months, seemingly adding 3...

Cheers! Happy Friday y’all! It’s a beautifully cool day here with the occasional light shower and a high of 80 degrees. Doesn’t get much nicer than that for a Georgia August day, so we’re drinking it in. Gonna have a low country boil tonight with Mandy’s fam, so we’re looking forward to the end of the day, but before we get too distracted with shrimp and melted butter, we’ve got a sale to launch! Heirloom chrysanthemum varieties in our tunnels last fall! Today is the big day for those of you on the mum waitlist!  Check your inbox for an email from us with a special link to our heirloom mum cuttings pre-sale. You’ve got 2 full days of priority...

Ciao y’all! I guess I’m back to tippy tappin’ on this here keyboard. I hope y’all have had a good summer. We’ve done our very best to make the most of ours. We joined my folks and brother and sister in law in the Dolomites for a lot of deliciously slow hikes in mid June. When I say hikes, they were really mostly just leisurely strolls through Disney-esque mountain ranges filled with lush green meadows thoroughly painted in wildflowers. I’ve never seen so many flowers. At one point, I’m told, we were in the largest mountain meadow in all of Europe. Every inch of that meadow was covered in beautiful flowers. A significant number of those flowers were varieties we...

Happy Friday!Thank you all so much for your support through this incredibly busy spring season. We spread so many flowers and baby plants across this pretty country, and it always feels so good to know that we get to be a conduit for other people’s love and good will. Your best sentiments of condolences, congratulations, gratitude, and romance are made tangible by sending the flowers we have the good fortune of growing every day. Your plans, hopes, and dreams for a small part of your gardens and farms are made tangible in part by the tubers and cuttings we nurture throughout the year.In a world where animosity and fear are so prevalent, we feel incredibly fortunate to be a small...

Happy Friday Y’all! Feels good to be closing out another busy week and edging towards a slower season on the farm. Summer is our time to regroup and recover at 3 Porch. Our employees pare back their hours, take trips, tend their own gardens, nap in the a/c, and as best as possible, avoid as much of the intense stress that farming in a Georgia summer exacts on your body. There will be some brutal days in the fields doing all that’s required to prep and plant 9,000 dahlias, but they’ll be exceptions and not rules. I swear I’m much older than I would’ve been if I didn’t spend a decade laboring all day, 7 days a week, in the...

Happy Friday y’all!I’ve been wearing a sweatshirt this week. I feel like I’m somewhere else or somewhen else. A chilly May in Georgia is more welcome than it is common. I’ll keep my beanie and my hoodie close at hand and be grateful for cooler temps as long as we get 'em. Maxine's peonies after 7 days in the vase with her smart refrigerator trick! We got an email from a customer yesterday with 3 photos showing how beautiful her peonies looked 7 days after receiving them. Now, peonies are inarguably some of the most beautiful flowers in the world, but they aren’t known to last forever. In her case, she was tickled with the fact that hers still looked...

Happy Friday y’all!It’s been a lovely week out here. Some afternoons have climbed into “too hot and muggy” territory, but outside of that it has been beautiful. Mornings have been cool, dewy, and welcoming, with a slight breeze carrying us blissfully through the lunch hour. Evenings in the shade have been magical to be outside working. The crew is taking the day off, so it’s just you and the leaves and the birds as you go about your chores in the perfect weather. Mandy physically cannot be indoors if the weather is anything other than terrible, so she’s always working on something outside “after” work, and I do all the peony harvesting 3 times a day for about 6 weeks,...

Happy Friday Y’all!Exciting news for us!  Mandy and Rachel have been working with the good folks at Brown Parcel Press for almost a year now to really elevate and beautify our seed packages, and they are finally ready to share! Introducing our new seed packet designs! We never really intended to be a seed company, but so many things changed for us during the pandemic, due to significant family medical issues that kept us from returning to markets. When we shifted away from farmer’s markets, we stopped growing tons of beautiful varieties of flowers that don’t ship well. Most of them were grown by seed, so we had a ton of seed sitting around at the same time that supply...

Happy Friday y’all!We’re heading into a stretch of mid to high 80’s now. Time to fire up the a/c a bit.That section of spring where every single thing is bursting with freshness like you’re living in an 80’s commercial about mint gum or Irish Spring has come and gone. Beautiful plants are still emerging from dormancy, but all around them, things that were recently dripping with crisp freshness are now showing the other half of life. The hard truths we all must grow to swallow. Snowball Viburnum dropping its petals! I’m fascinated by people who utterly embrace the beauty of decay. Floral designers who treasure an arrangement in all stages – who love the dropped petals and wilted foliage as...