AdAgrA 2018: Something Better

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AdAgrA: Adventist Agriculture Association

Intensive: Growing and Selling Cut-Flowers

Kirsten Knecht

1. Growing and Selling Cut-Flowers: Why Flowers?

Thank you all for coming on this cold morning.

So we are going to be covering growing and selling cut flowers.

And this is a class geared for those who are wanting to start a business and earn money from it.

But of course the principles that we're going to cover you can use for home growing as well.

So Yeah, okay, so The first the first slide is just the sessions.

I wasn't here last night to talk about it, but session 1 We're going to cover why flowers.

I'm going to share about my garden what I'm doing and some of those details And then we're also going to cover easy annuals what you can get started first year It is super fast super easy, but that can also be profitable and then on the next session.

We're going to go over hardy annuals, seed starting, and then session 3, the last 1 before lunch, we're going to do bulb, tubers, and corms.

And then after lunch, we have harvesting and post-harvest handling, marketing, and display.

And the session 5 is actually going to be on photographing your flowers, which is a very key part of the business.

And then the last session is going to be arranging flowers.

And that's going to be focused on arranging for events and a lady is going to come in and be doing that for the last session She's going to come in and bring a lot of flowers to show us how to do it so So for curiosity's sake how many of you all have grown flowers?

So if the slide was up here, all the photos in the presentation, except for a couple specific ones that I needed, They are all pictures that I've taken or my husband have taken of the flowers that I have grown.

So it'll give you a little window into the flowers and the operation.

OK, so we're going to get started with the basics, why flowers?

And 1 of the first reasons is the lessons to be learned in the flowers and we we read in the Bible about how Jesus pointed to the lilies and said you know consider the lilies But I found this quote in Youth Instructor that I thought was a really beautiful picture.

It says, He, Christ, would pluck the lilies, the flowers of the valley, and place them in the hands of the little children as instructors to proclaim the truth of his word.

So the flowers were to teach, were to instruct his word, God's word, and that's how it should be for us today.

All, both young and old, should be in the open air as much as possible.

Every family should have a plot of ground for cultivation and for beauty Parents a flower garden will be a blessing to your children It will pay to expend a small sum of yearly a small sum yearly in the purchasing of flower seeds and shrubs So that kind of just puts it as important, like spend some money each year in doing this, even if it's just for the beauty of it.

White also lives by her own, whatever she said, she lives by example as well.

And this is a glimpse into her gardening world.

She says, Last evening the 2 Marys went with me to Brooklyn, California, for a few flower roots for our garden.

Sister Grover gave us as many as we could carry.

We came home and I set out my things in my garden of the new house by moonlight and by the aid of a lamp light.

The 2 Marys tried to have me wait till morning, but I would not listen to them.

I was glad then that I persevered in setting out my plans." So that gives you a little window into her life and what she, the sacrifices that she made.

I mean, she didn't obviously count them as sacrifices, but staying up in the night to plant her flowers.

OK, so we're having projector issues, and since this is a very PowerPoint-centric, we'll try to go on without it.

But OK, so we've covered why flowers is spiritual lessons.

Now, coming from vegetable gardening, flowers are unique in that you don't have to be on a diet to appreciate flowers.

So compared to vegetables, they do have a more universal appeal.

It's a joy to take flowers to market or give a bouquet.

And it's just this instant smile and appreciation.

It goes beyond just giving them a cucumber and so Unless they're hungry.

Yes, the food comes first and then the The flowers are food for the soul so the fourth point is they're less pressure than vegetables now if you're growing vegetables like if you're doing a CSA Or if you have a tomato crop failure For example like that's that's pretty devastating you know people count on on tomatoes But say If you're if your cosmos didn't do well, well you just substitute with sunflowers, or you just add a different variety There's not there's not as much pressure like you have to have this variety You just put together what looks beautiful and what you have and it's you don't have as big of a loss if 1 of your crops doesn't succeed.

And I know in our area, at least, there's quite a saturation of farmers, organic vegetable farmers.

And so if you're a new farmer getting into farming You will find that most of the farmers markets They already have all the farmers that they need growing vegetables And you have a harder time getting in but flowers is a couple steps behind the local food movement there we go there's a slide and So you have more of a chance to get in And they they are very they can be very profitable even beyond vegetables some people will later So it's a little bit cut off there, but The local flower movement as I mentioned is just a few steps behind the local food movement 80% of flowers are imported and drenched with chemicals.

71% of all flowers come from Colombia, which is pretty staggering.

But articles, books, and speakers are bringing public attention to the need for local flowers.

We just had those hurricanes recently, and that put out the shipments of flowers coming into the US.

So all the florists were scrambling, and all the farmers were inundated with calls.

And so people are realizing that the system is fragile and and That there needs to be a change and with the photo centric media It's propelling the popularity of flowers and Varieties that florists aren't able to get like dahlias that they don't ship very well But people are all about dahlias right now because they're seeing it on Instagram They're seeing those pictures in front of them, and so that's making it more popular terms like slow flowers farmer florists their new terms that are really taking off and brides and consumers are asking for more, they're pushing for for things that so far florists haven't been able to give to them.

So it is a movement that's really taking off and 1 that's exciting to be a part of So about me My name is Kirsten connect for those of you who weren't here at the very beginning and I grew up on Bountiful blessings farm in Middle, Tennessee My family raises vegetables and fruits for...

Through CSA and farmers' markets in the Nashville area.

So that's what I grew up doing from a very young age, and I love agriculture.

It's definitely in my blood But when I got married I wanted to kind of branch out and do my own My own thing and I had grown flowers on the side before While I was still at home, But the vegetables were the main priority so I didn't have the time to devote to doing flowers So I hadn't explored the possibilities quite as much So the next picture is a picture of our farm and you can see my garden, but it's unfortunately not up there.

Do you know when the other projectors gonna come?

It's so freezing outside that I was so glad it was warm in here Okay, so This this slide it covers the particulars of what my garden looks like Which There's quite a few numbers and a lot of details, so, but I will try to cover it.

Just some keys for getting started with your flowers.

The majority of flowers do best in full and full sun.

And second, these are just some basic things.

If you've grown vegetables you already know these things, but take a soil test and amend your soil so that you know that your plants are getting what they need because to have a healthy plant and to have beautiful flowers, you need to have healthy soil.

Number 3 is mark out your beds with uniform measurements and permanent pathways.

If you start your garden at the beginning by having uniform bed lengths, not having them all just different and different widths, it's going to make it a lot easier for you in the future.

So I have my beds, they are 30 inches wide with 18 inch pathways.

And That doesn't mean that you have to have yours like that, but that's how I have, that's how we have the vegetables on our farm.

It's an easy width for cultivating and for harvesting.

You can even hop over them, because they're not super wide.

And make sure you have a way to water, whether that's drip irrigation or just with a hose, just having some way to water, especially in the south where it gets really hot.

Calculate how many plants you can fit into your space and really use the space wisely.

The 3 spacings used for flowers is either 6 inches apart by 6 inches, and that's best for upright, non-branching stems.

And it works for pretty much every crop, but you can sometimes put them a little bit closer for the ones that don't need as much space and get more out of it.

And then 12 inches for your bulkier plants that produce a lot of foliage and branch out a lot so if I don't Mention specifically the planting for a variety that's going to be it's a 9 inch spacing because that's the most common universal and now it is.

So this is we're going back to the slide this is my garden and the specifics So I have approximately a thousand 60 row feet that I'm growing on and Approximately half of that is in production at 1 time at the most half So I have a 14 by 30 foot caterpillar tunnel, which we will talk a little bit more about, but I have that over 4 of my beds, so that is over the calculated bed space there.

And so first off, my flower business is definitely a side thing so nick and I my husband We we work full-time for Adventist world radio, and so we are traveling around the world doing that So this is definitely just on the side my part-time thing.

I did this this last summer and I had to Had to have some help for some farmers markets that I wasn't going to be available for but these numbers reflect definitely part-time on the side business, So my total expenses for this season, and some of these things are things that I wouldn't have to pay for next season, infrastructure things.

So my total expenses were $2, 000, roughly, 25.

And you can see, I kind of break it down into some of the categories.

You know down to My stickers for display and my soil tests and my caterpillar tunnel Just everything all the specific things that that that covered that also covered my ASCFG membership fee which is 200 dollars, and that's That stands for Association of specialty cut flower growers And it's something that I would definitely encourage any of you who are contemplating doing this as a business to look into.

And that does not include my farmer's market fees because that's gonna be different for everyone.

And it's different for me, the market that I go to, it's different depending upon how much I earn that week is how much I pay.

2. Growing and Selling Cut-Flowers: Hearty Annuals

Okay, so we are going to get started with the second presentation.

So this session we are going to be covering hardy annuals, and these are most important for those of us who live in warmer climates, the more southern part of the U.S.

So I'm in Tennessee, and there's lots of flowers that I cannot grow if I just treated them as a summer annual.

So this is particularly beneficial for those in the more southern regions, but, you know, everywhere can be benefited by these crops as well.

So, here's a quote from Lisa Ziegler, who's the 1 who's really propelled the hardy annual concept, what she calls as cool flowers.

The term hardy annual indicates a plant that typically lives for 1 year and doesn't just survive the cold, but thrives under cooler temperatures.

So these are flowers that actually thrive in cooler temperatures.

And I found this quote in Ellen White's writings that I thought was kind of neat.

It kind of spoke to what we're going to be talking about here with hardy annuals.

Our flower gardens are now repaying us for the attention and labor we have bestowed upon them.

The flowering shubs that live through the winter are many of them pleasing the eye by putting out their buds and blossoms.

So she had flowers that she also carried through the winter and produced in the spring.

We're not going to go through them all, but just to give you an idea of what flowers are hardy annuals, ones that actually love the cold.

And these are ones that I never even knew, I didn't know like snapdragons actually love cold weather.

You know, I would plant them in the spring and hardly get anything because it would get hot so quickly and they just don't, they don't do well with the heat.

And so I thought, well, I just can't grow snapdragons very well here, but come to find out, they absolutely love the cold.

And so if I plant them in the fall, I have a gorgeous crop of snapdragons.

So this is just a list to just kind of get you thinking of the possibilities of things that you can actually grow through the winter that do well.

And here's some reasons why I would suggest that you grow hardy annuals.

My season in Tennessee, I start harvesting these flowers in mid-April.

So that means that I have an abundance of flowers for Mother's Day, which is a key date to have flowers on.

I mean, that's like the top, top holiday for flowers.

And if you're just relying on annuals, that's really tough to get annuals in abundance in the early part of May.

So with these crops, you can actually have an abundance of flowers early April, mid-April, and some of them actually will go into summer.

So, like I already mentioned, warmer climates are able to grow flowers that otherwise would never bloom for them.

And also, plants that have overwintered will produce better quality flowers in more quantity.

So even if you're in a place where you could, say, grow snapdragons well in the summer, you're going to get a superior product if you plant them in the fall and let the root systems really take over in the winter and then you have them putting their energy into the blooms in the spring.

You have less weeds in the winter, you have less bug pressure.

So you get your plants in there, and then they just sit there all winter.

You really don't have to do anything, you know, especially if you mulch, which we'll talk about.

But you're not really doing anything to care for these plants.

And then come spring, they just take off, and they'll bloom before really any of the bugs come out, before you have all of the weeds.

So it's a really neat way to have these gorgeous blooms without, I mean it's more work in the fall, but then they just sit there, they do their work, and then you get to reap the benefits in the spring.

So for hardy annuals it's very important to know your zone.

Does everybody know what their growing zone is?

I have this map here so you can kind of, this is a rough, you can get more particular and have like zone A and B and get down to the particulars more, but this is just a rough map of the country with your zones.

So just take a look of where you are because with every crop that we're going to talk about, we're going to, I'm going to tell you what zone that it's in.

And when I say what zone, that is where it can grow with no protection whatsoever through the winter.

And if you use protection like row covers or hoop house, you can grow things that are for a higher zone.

If you're in zone 5, you could grow something that's supposedly just for zone 7 with some row covers or whatever.

For hardy annuals, there's 3 times that you can plant.

The primary 1 is in the fall, 6 to 8 weeks before your last frost date.

And that is a preferred time because if they have the winter to grow, the plants are going to be more vigorous and strong come spring.

But if you are in a very cold area, in the low zones, you know, zone 3, those really cold areas, you might not be able to plant them and they might not endure a really hard winter, you know, months on end of that cold.

They might be able to do a shorter amount.

So that's where you can do the early spring planting, which is 6 to 8 weeks before your last frost.

Because some of these plants, they can handle a shorter amount of cold.

So if you're in a very cold climate, they would do okay for a couple months in the spring, but they might not do okay with a whole winter of that kind of cold.

Now, if you're in a very temperate area, you can do the winter planting, which is just planting all through the winter, which would be pretty crazy.

This is how I do my seed starting for the hardy annuals.

And I use, actually, the mini soil blocks.

And that is only for the reason that I do thousands of starts and I don't have space to do a bigger block.

It would take so much soil, so many trays, and I don't have space for that, and it's also a lot more expense in the soil.

So I do the mini blocks, which they're a little bit trickier.

You know, you're dealing with a smaller transplant.

But when you're transplanting out in the fall, after the heat of the summer, you can usually, If you do it carefully, you can usually get a good solid transplant out in the field.

They're a little bit more tender when they're so tiny, but it's amazing how resilient the plants are.

So I start all of mine in the mini blocks.

Even though these are cool loving plants They do need some warmth for germination and it's helpful to have a consistent temperature So if you use a germination mat, that's really helpful.

And if you can have 1 that you set to That you has a dial and you can actually set to the specific temperature.

75 degrees is ideal, especially for the germinating, just those first few days until they have actually germinated.

Once they've germinated, they don't need the mat anymore, the heat mat.

You can use shop lights with cool white bulbs.

It doesn't have to be a super expensive thing to have grow lights.

But ideally, your plants would have 16 hours of daylight.

And come fall, you can't get that outside, and so using the lights is advantageous.

You want to be careful not to over water the the plants But I will say it's difficult to overwater.

You more have to be careful not to have them so that they can almost dry out between watering.

But you have to be so careful because you're dealing with very small blocks which can dry out super easy, so you just have to be conscious of that, but don't keep them overly wet.

And how I actually water the mini blocks, you know, You can use a mister, but that just takes forever.

So what I actually do is I use a quart jar and I put just a seal and a ring on it.

I punch 3 holes in the top and I actually just go around the tray on the edge and just pour in the water.

And you don't have to be, I mean, don't like have the plants floating in there, but you don't have to be too concerned about overwatering.

And that way your plants really do Get thoroughly wet instead of just misting them.

It'll look like you've got them wet, but then they they will dry out So by not over watering just be careful not to have them constantly wet and let them dry out a little bit before you water next time.

And then another critical thing is to harden off sufficiently.

So a week before you're planning to transplant out, You want to start taking your plants outside.

You can first start just taking them out in the shade, get a couple hours of sunlight on them, and then just each day increase it until right before you have them planted out, your trays of little seedlings are out there for the whole day, and then they're ready to be planted.

And you want to transplant them when the starts are 3 to 5 inches tall.

Now this is for the mini blocks specifically.

If you are not doing this on a commercial scale, or if you have more space, there's no need to do them in the mini blocks.

I don't know, I don't really feel like yelling, but So there's no need to do them in the mini blocks So if you're doing a smaller amount I would say you know go with your bigger block size go with inch and a half Go with 2 inches because you're you're You're gonna have an easier time dealing with a bigger transplant But if you're like me and you're tight on space these little guys are super resilient So don't be afraid to do them in the tiny little transplants You do need to be careful when you plant them out that you choose a day that's going to be cool.

Ideally, you would even cover them with a row cover after you do them, hoops and a row cover to just to gradually accustom them to that environment.

You want to make sure that it's not too hot out there because they're so tiny they could easily get burned in heat so just pay attention to when you Put them out this last year Or yeah this fall when I planted my hardy annuals out I really struggled because I was trying to get them in earlier because we kind of had a premonition that it was gonna be Rough start to winter a little cold start to winter.

So I was trying to get them out earlier And because they were so small and I was planting them into black plastic, which heats up even more, I was having a challenge with them getting too hot.

So I actually was having to water, like actually wet down the black plastic like 3 times a day just to cool it off and keep the plants from dying from the heat.

Whereas if it was a bigger transplant, they probably would have done okay, but that's just 1 of the challenges that I faced.

3. Growing and Selling Cut-Flowers: Bulbs, Corms, and Tubers

Okay, so we're going to get started with the third session.

So in this session, we're going to be talking about bulbs, corms, and tubers.

And you might think, well those are kind of similar and interchangeable terms, but there's very different flowers that come from each 1.

So here's a quote from Aaron Benzikane that I thought explained it well.

Bolds, corms, and tubers are bold, showy plants with saturated colors appearing like exclamation points among other plants in the garden.

And there really is something so special about the flowers that come from these forms that is unlike your annuals or even hardy annuals.

And we're going to be talking about dahlias.

White's writing where she talks about dahlias.

And this is the first little, it's an excerpt from a letter.

Henry and Edson Do not neglect to water the flowers, the dahlias especially.

So this was in a letter to her sons, and I thought that was a sweet little footnote.

And then this is from her time in Australia, talking about what was in bloom.

Dahlias, the richest beauties, are in full bloom.

I never saw them blossom as they do here.

So she talks about dahlias in several places.

And it's clear that dahlias had a special place in her heart because she mentions them by name, which is kind of neat to think about the flowers that we grow as being ones that she grew also so the ones that we're going to cover in today are Daffodils and those in Narcissus those come from bulbs and then we're going to talk about anemones and ranunculus Those are quorums and then we're going to wrap up with Dahlias, which are tubers.

And we're going to be talking about specific varieties and covering the process of ordering these, how you purchase them, and growing instructions.

So daffodils and narcissus, those are interchangeable.

There's a debate as to which are which, but you want to order those in the summertime.

To get the varieties that you really want to get, kind of the rule of thumb is to order your bulbs when they're flowering.

So just to make sure that you get the ones that you want.

So At the end of your season, make sure you go on and order the ones that you want for the next season.

You want to think about what your market is.

Do you have a way to, if you're trying to sell these flowers, you have a way to move them when they're going to be blooming, which is very early in the spring.

So depending upon where you live, like for me, they bloom, they start blooming in late February and depending upon the variety, I'll have them February, March, April, but they're very early.

So you're going to want to plant them in the fall and space of a bulb width between them.

They're a larger bulb, so you want to give them more space.

And then the depth of the bulb height times 2.

And for harvesting daffodils or narcissus, you want to harvest them when they're in the gooseneck stage.

So the stage when they are kind of, their heads are flopped over, but just beginning to crack.

And you can actually hold daffodils in the cooler.

If you harvest them at that stage, you can hold them in the cooler dry.

You can wrap them in newspaper and you can hold them for several weeks.

I actually grew for my wedding because I had an April wedding.

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Series

Intensive: Growing and Selling Cut-Flowers

2. Growing and Selling Cut-Flowers: Hearty Annuals

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

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Session 3

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Flowers

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Session 5

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