How to address your mums for winter.   For the farmers that are new to mums, I’m reprising a post I made this week last year as we approached an early killing frost.  Those of you further north are likely experiencing “Frostmas” now, or soon, so here’s a few thoughts on how to help your babies:             Though the plants are relatively hardy, the flowers themselves do need frost protection.  Whether that is Reemay, Agribon, a tarp, a greenhouse, or sunroom is up to the grower, but unprotected flowers will get nipped by frost.  It is wise to take the insulative fabric off of the plant as soon as temps become favorable again.  Any...

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...

Happy Friday once again!    The days and weeks just keep slipping by so rapidly I feel like I’m in a montage without the soundtrack.  Sunrise is later, sunset is earlier and deadlines fast approach.      Some spring flowers have already been planted!  Tunnel 3 is full of ranunculus and tunnel 1 is half planted with them too.  This is the earliest we’ve ever planted.  We’ve found that ranunculus, anemones, and butterfly ranunculus are all more successful when pre-sprouted before planting and this year’s attempt at doing so was ever-so successful that we’re weeks ahead of schedule and they demanded to be put in the ground immediately.   Wasn’t the plan, but plans schmans.    Speaking of which, we just barely got...

Hideee ho neighborinos,   It’s more of the same out here.  Busy with lots and lots of dahlias and prep work for spring.  We’re also polishing up the place bit by bit in anticipation of the big dinner we’re hosting for The Plate Sale October 14th.  9 acres gets unruly pretty fast and cleaning up the yard for guests takes on a whole new meaning at that scale.   If you missed the prior announcement and aren’t sure what I’m talking about, check out the link for tickets to Dinner in the Dahlias here!   The first ranunculus and anemone corms are sprouting fresh roots and are ready to be planted…but the tunnels are not ready just yet.  To prep the tunnels,...

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...

Buongiorno a tutti! Two big items to share today.    1st: The Farm Store is back open and it is beautiful!  Just last week the store was a bare bones shed with literally nothing in it.  Then, I lost sight of my wife for four full days and nights and all of a sudden, it’s the most charming cozy nook I’ve ever seen!  I don’t know how she does it, but it’s just so damned captivating in there.  Every square inch has something unique and charming and is beautifully arranged on tables, in shelves, or dangling in space.  I just don’t have the vision to bring something like that together.  I get more and more aware of the depth of forethought...

Is it me, or are we getting the first whispers of Fall this week?  I sat out at the cabin and watched the rain as it gently and steadily fell for hours on Wednesday evening.  No violent winds, pounding deluges, or terrifying bolts of lighting crashing around me.  Just soft rain and the first breath of air not forged in the heart of a volcano.  Ten minutes ago I walked past our huge dog Cotton as she sat on cool concrete in a wind tunnel staring into the neighbors field and taking the strong breeze directly in her grateful face.  I turned back and plopped down with her and joined her reverie.   Prior to this were too many days in...

  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...

   Some of you may have studied the carbon cycle in a biology class.  Much of Earth and everything that lives upon it is made out of carbon. The carbon cycle is basically the sum total of earth’s carbon above ground in all it’s forms and interactions.  The carbon you breath out when you exhale goes into the lower atmosphere and gets inhaled by a rose bush that converts it into the structure of a leaf, which then gets eaten by a deer who converts it into body mass and so on.  In all of those transactions, the sum total above ground is the same.  Whether it’s in the form of a gas, a liquid or a solid, the total is...

This week, our local community tragically lost farmer and friend Will Breedlove.  He was an incredibly sweet man who ran Pastures of Rose Creek Farm and was a major contributor to all things sustainable agriculture in the Athens area. Will had the biggest smile of anyone at the Athens and Grant Park market and it never left his face.  He was always happy to see you, whoever you were.  Just a truly kind person through and through. He is survived by his wife Lori and their two small children.  Please consider visiting their GoFundMe to support their effort to sustain the farm's livestock and Will's mission of feeding his community with the healthiest meat and eggs possible and if you...