PEST MANAGEMENT 

We only grow flowers at Vermont Flower Farm and Gardens but many in New England grow vegetables as their main crop. The Xerces Society just posted this very interesting article on Winter Street Farm (https://www.winterstreetfarm.com) in Claremont, NH. Can you imagine vacuuming up cucumber bugs as a pest control effort? Interesting!!

https://xerces.org/blog/pollinator-friendly-pest-management-solutions-at-winter-street-farm

Farm For Sale

 

We just had a new drone video made with help from local producer Seth O'brien, owner of Green Mountain Drone (https://facebook.com greenmtndrone). We hope the video will help us find the right buyer for our business....someone who will keep the land in agriculture and carry on our philosophy about protecting our environment while producing and selling Vermont hardy plants that come from people who know plants and communicate how to be good gardeners. Please take a look and pass it on to anyone who might be interested in flower farming in the great state of Vermont.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEXMQcujH2Y

NEAR  WHITE  DAYLILIES 

Remember the far distant cartoon show named Rocky and Bullwinkle? It was located in a fictional Minnesota town named Frostbite Falls. My friend Don Church hybridized a very nice daylily and he named it Frostbite Falls. Here's the picture and the registration information. I'm growing it here in Marshfield and will have a couple plants I can sell this fall. One of the parents is Early Snow which is one of our favorites here at the farm. It's pictured here below our picture of Frostbite Falls. #vermontflowerfarmforsale; #vermontrealestate; #buylocal; 

Frostbite Falls (Church, 2009) Height 38 inches (96 cm), bloom 6.5 inches (17 cm), season M, Dormant, Tetraploid, 25 buds, 3 branches,  Near white self. (Early Snow × Chablis Blanc)

PEONIES  FROM  SEEDS

 

It may seem a while back to June 9th when I took this picture of peonies setting nice buds. Now two months later it's a different time and the peonies have set seed and soon the pods will be cracking open. The peonies pictured have been raised from seed and if you are patient you can do the same thing. As the seed pods begin to crack, pick off the seeds. Wait a day too long and they will be spread all over the ground so keep an eye on them. Then prepare a bed in your garden and plant the seeds right away. Plant them a couple inches deep and mark the rows or the places you plant them. Although a few may germinate the first full year, most need the following year after stratification. The first year above ground they will be a couple inches tall and after that they will take off. Peonies from seed are like winning the lottery. You never know the result until your number is called. In this batch of plants which came from my friend Mary B., there are a couple beautiful little plants now still bushel basket sized with small 2.5-3" single petals, white blooms with golden stamens. What a beautiful plant to place along walkways or front of gardens or as borders. The others of the first 60 Mary gave me are mostly large singles, a few doubles and one Itoh. A couple of them have the highest producing scapes I have ever seen. They are all very nice cut flower plants and a couple are very fragrant and would make any gardener smile. Give the seeds a try!  #vermontflowerfarm; #farmforsale; #peonies; #cutflowers; #hostas; #600daylilies; #buylocal; #vermontrealestate; #oregon; #california;