5/25 - What's Growing Now?

While my bi-weekly updates haven't happened, rest assured, things are still growing! With the Farmers Market/Mother's Day two weekends ago and a wedding this past weekend, I've kept busy harvesting and prepping for those fun events, but today feels like a good time to keep everyone in the loop of what has been popping here in the past few weeks.

Up first - spring staple that everyone is familiar with, peonies! Love them or not (and I've chatted with many people in the "not" category 😱), most people can recognize these widely grown blooms. I planted my peonies by bare root 3 years ago and this is the first year I allowed myself to really go to town harvesting them since they are finally well established.

Not all my varieties are pictured here but the ones I grow and love are:

Sunny Girl: pale creamy yellow, very early

Coral Magic: bright pink single with yellow center, early

Gardenia: giant white blooms, mid

Petticoat Flounce: blush pink, mid-late

Nippon Beauty: single deep fuschia with yellow and fuschia center, late

Peter Brand: dense, deep fuschia, late

Louis von Houtte: fuschia fading to light pink tips, mid

Catarina Fontyn: pale pink, mid

Jacorma: pink, very late

On the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of impact, but one of my favorites: Nigella, aka Love in a Mist! I absolutely love the airy blooms. They have a delicate 2" flowers that seem to float in their frilly foliage and have several blooms per stem. The flowers themselves are amazing, but they also form these amazing, funky seed pods that are great additions to any arrangement (fresh or dried!) once the petals drop, giving them a longer harvest window. Each plant is pretty much one cut and done, but they do readily re-seed if you let some just die back naturally in the field.

Dianthus aka Sweet William, is one of the earliest bloomers out in the field and keeps on pumping out the blooms for weeks! As the name suggests, they have a delightfully sweet scent that adds allure to any bouquet. These two varieties pictured here, Sweet White and Sweet Red (plus an unpictured Sweet Black Cherry), were all seeded late last summer and planted out last fall. They take minimal care over the winter and then shoot up as soon as the weather begins to warm with multiple sturdy stems. Central stem usually has larger flower head, but is a bit shorter, and once I harvest those stems nearly to the ground, the subsequent side stems are often taller, but with smaller flower heads. Stay tuned for a later blooming Amazon Neon Rose Magic!

With blue being such a popular flower color these days, Bachelor Buttons are definitely a staple in the early season flower garden. The are very easy to grow, just throw some seeds in the ground in the fall and/or the early spring and you'll have an abundance of these cool season annuals. The plants themselves aren't much to look at - quite scraggly - but with some selective harvesting, one is rewarded with these amazing little pops of color. Pictured here are Black Button and Tall Blue Boy. Every year I swear them off because they are a bit of a pain to harvest (and I often forget to support them before its to late and they flop over - but not this year!). But here we are again. I do love the look of these cuties!

I must admit, before I ventured into flower farming, I had never even heard of ranunculus, and now I have no idea how I lived my life without them! While they are a decent bit of work to keep them happy, the joy they bring to me and everyone else totally makes it worth the effort to grow them! These babies come in a wide range of colors, are a breeze to harvest, and last forever in a vase. So many winning attributes.

For my final feature in this post, I'll highlight snapdragons. These are a staple cool season flower for me. I plant a fall succession and an early spring succession. The ones blooming right now were planted last fall and it amazes me every year just how tall some of these stems get. With proper support netting (and yes, I learned that lesson the hard way), some varieties are nearly as tall as me with multiple usable stems on each plant! Not all varieties reach these amazing heights of well over 4', but consistently the fall planted varieties are 3' tall. These beautiful spikes come in such fun colors, it is hard for me to choose when it comes time to order seeds!

Thanks for checking in to learn more about what is growing in the fields! I wasn't able to feature everything in this post, but stay tuned for more content in the future.