Horse Farm Flowers

09/05/2024

Mowing down the last row of buckwheat cover crop this morning. Cover crops add nutrients to the soil when they break down and also help the soil gather up valuable minerals. It’s our first cover crop ever - hope it’s as helpful as they say!

08/22/2024

I went away for just a few days and look what happened! Most of these have opened up too much for commercial bouquets (they're best when the yellow is just starting to show, like the bud on the right) but they look great in my home and I've shared them with my good neighbours. Sunflowers must be the most joyful of flowers!

08/20/2024

These lovely blue bachelor buttons are in the wildflower garden we're cultivating this year. I haven't got any planned for the cutting garden (yet!) but that's the thing about gardening - every year is a new beginning.

08/18/2024

I planted WAY too many yellow yarrow so a lot of them went to waste. But the best thing about a flower garden is there's no such thing as waste - beneficial insects will hide in these stalks over winter to help build my garden's strength for the next growing season. Still, next year I'll replace most of these with the Colorado variety. Colorado is made up of lovely whites, pinks, pale yellows and lavenders. I have a few of that variety planted this year but not near enough (photos coming soon, I promise!).

08/16/2024

The bees love Veronica even more than I do so I just leave it for them! At the beginning of the season, I pick a few stalks of this purple perennial but then I just give it over to the bees. It seems the right thing to do.

08/15/2024

I just came across this photo of our good kitty, Shy, from earlier in the season. She loves hanging out in the garden with me, though she appreciates the air conditioning inside when the weather heats up.

08/14/2024

Phlox has such a beautiful, delicate scent and I love the way it fills a bouquet with its soft pinkness.

05/21/2024

It's a late start but it's finally happening! This was the garden at the start of the day yesterday. The peonies are trucking along, as is the yarrow, but most every other happy thing in the garden is a w**d.

Aside from Shy, of course. She's a lovely orange kitty who likes to hang out in the garden with us. You'll be seeing more of her as the garden gets growing - she's no help but is an absolute joy to have around.

02/08/2024

Zinnias are fast! In just three days, they were ready to move into soil (if that's what I'd been planning). Most of my seeds were just fine, like these Benary Giant Carmine Rose seeds from Stokes Seeds. The Queen Lime seeds from Stems Flower Farm were the only one of the 18 varieties that didn't show any sign of life, though other seeds from Stems were totally fine, including one that had 100% germination.

I had the greatest luck with the Stokes seeds, though it was too small a sample size to really know which company was the best.

I'm getting one more batch of different kinds of flower seeds under light this afternoon - stay tuned!

02/07/2024

I have a lot of great seeds left over from last year that didn't make it into the ground and although most seeds are viable for a few years, I want to know FOR SURE whether these ones are going to work for me or if I need to order fresh ones. I'm looking for about an 80% germination rate to go ahead with these old ones.

Seeds don't require light to germinate but they do need warmth. My heating mat would have been a little too much for them but these non-LED lights let off just enough heat that they should wake up without drying out. I'm keeping an eye on them!

If I were doing this as a way to wake seeds up to plant the ones that germinated, it's a bit early for that in my zone 5b. But if you want to check out old seeds while making sure you have time to order new seeds, then go for it!

12/11/2022

You can't see any flowers in this short video of Pepper running through the snow but I can! They're bright and beautiful in my imagination and as soon as the snow goes - and the weather warms up - you'll be able to see them, too. I can hardly wait!

11/26/2022

I see deer fencing in my future! Last summer I grew a trial garden that the deer didn't discover until late in the season. They stripped a few eucalyptus branches (who knew eucalyptus was tasty?) and knocked a few things over but overall, they weren't too disruptive. But my 2023 garden will be serious... so I'll need serious fencing. Still, they're lovely creatures and I'm (almost) always glad to see them. This buck is in the sagebrush over the fence from my garden - the perfect visitor!

11/03/2022

Check out the eyes on this beauty! This is a Duchesse de Nemours peony bare root. It'll be two or three summers before she'll be established enough for cutting but with all those eyes (the pink parts), she's sure to be prolific. Peonies take a few years to get going but once they step up to the plate, they'll give you flowers every spring for 50 years or more. I'm so pleased to welcome this energetic worker to Horse Farm Flowers!

10/31/2022

Tulip bulbs are in the ground! Starting small this year... only 600 bulbs (still sounds like a lot!). I'll post photos of the varieties I've planted in case someone would like to make an order for spring. I'm starting half of them under a low tunnel so some will start early while the rest carry on for regular programming 😊🌷

10/09/2022

A beautiful autumn bouquet went out to Allison’s mother here in Kamloops yesterday, ordered from Allison’s Fort St John home. Can’t believe we’re still picking fabulous flowers in October! There are still great dahlias in the garden if you’d like a bouquet for your home, too - just call or text 604-649-9818 and we’ll get picking! Horsefarmflowers.ca

09/18/2022

A little bouquet from the garden this afternoon. No dahlias in this one - mostly zinnias with cosmos, globe amaranth, dusty miller and eucalyptus

09/08/2022

Beautiful flowers, beautiful sunsets. Feeling very lucky to live in this part of the world. Kamloops, BC, Canada

09/07/2022

It's been a bad year for grasshoppers. My plants seem to be healthy so they don't eat the flowers all up (I'll be checking their BRIX levels later this afternoon) but each one has at least a little bit chomped out of it, like this poor dahlia here. They like the dahlias and sunflowers the best (so do I!). I know they're just trying to make a living but yeesh!

09/05/2022

A bucket full of blooms from just one morning in the garden. It's been a slow start but there's hope for good years ahead. And beauty. So much beauty.

08/11/2022

I'm loving the bouquets from my garden! I'm new at this and am so excited to know they'll only get better as I learn more. But they're spectacular now! And to think I grew everything from seed myself (except the eucalyptus - my seeds didn't do anything so I bought four of them as seedlings). It's magic!

08/08/2022

Everything about a bouquet is beautiful, even the part under water. The red sprig is Hopi Red Dye Amaranth, a current favourite of mine.

08/05/2022

The bees love my purple veronica! I haven't been picking it regularly so it's got lots of pollen for them. Love the bees!

08/03/2022

I started these flowers from seeds under lights in my basement and here they are looking fabulous in my garden! It's magic. There aren't quite enough of them to start up the roadside stand yet but soon!

08/02/2022

This little ranunculus should not be here…. Not because I didn’t plant it - I did - but because I left the corms in a space that froze over winter and then I planted them too late and now it’s really hot. But it’s blooming anyway and it’s beautiful and I am so grateful. This cut flower adventure might work out after all!

06/13/2022

So I admit to feeling a little discouraged.... All the perennials and seedlings are finally in the ground but do you see that yellow hose snaking off to the right of this photo? It's there because my irrigation system is not all it should be. It doesn't reach every plant and it leaks at almost every connection. So I still have to hand water the whole garden while worrying about dragging the hose over my hard-won seedlings and wondering what will happen on days when I'm not home - automatic timers are no help when it comes to hand watering.

I'm very grateful for the perennials Oriana Acres sold me when she moved north - at least it looks like there's life in the new flower patch!

I've always given myself permission to accept all that's good and learn from all that goes sideways during this, my first year of commercial flower farming. But it's one thing to expect to not get everything right and another thing to actually experience it....

So I'm discouraged but will keep moving forward. It's hard to imagine this patch of ground producing any flowers at all - it's so bare! - but I'm a born optimist and a hard worker and, well, we've all got to start somewhere.

Including seeking help from professional irrigation folks here in Kamloops! High on my list of priorities this morning....

What kinds of discouraging obstacles have you experienced on your way to starting a new venture? And what did you do to overcome the obstacles? I really want to know! 😊💐❤️

06/03/2022

Pepper likes to hang out while I’m planting seedlings - she’s not much help but she’s great company. Got 60 snapdragon seedlings into the ground before the rain storm moved in. It’s very slow going - I’ll have to learn some tips and tricks to get ‘em in the ground faster! Still, a very satisfying day so far.

06/01/2022

Bloom Flower Festival just wrapped up their tulip event and I got to be there when it was at its peak! They planted several acres in tulips of all colours and shapes and will open their fields to the public again once their sunflowers are in bloom. Check them out - it's a great outing for families and anyone into photography! www.bloomflowerfestivals.com

05/06/2022

04/30/2022

It begins! Steer manure has been tilled in and plants will follow soon. A quiet, modest start to what I hope becomes a thriving cut garden business bringing bouquets, beauty and joy to Kamloops. Welcome to Horse Farm Flowers!