Backroad Blooms Flower Farm

31/01/2025

Another BIG WIN for the farm! 💐 🏆

Since we had such a nice day yesterday, I decided to investigate how our dahlia seedlings were doing.(I'm not a patient person and this has been bugging me for weeks. 😆)

In the fall, we left 2 beds of dahlia seedlings in the ground for winter. We put a bunch of leave and pine mulch on top of them and added a layer of wood mulch. Then we tarped the beds and added more wood mulch on top and around the sides of the bed. Since we have raised beds, we wanted to make sure we had that extra protection.

***Cold and Wet are the two ingredients to rot your tubers in the winter

Yesterday, I pulled up the NE corner of a bed to find out if we had dahlia tubers or piles of mush. The mulch on top of the tarps was still frozen. When I looked under the tarp, it was also frozen solid. I knew we had a few inches down to dig, so I took a stick and started to chisel my way down.

To my surprise by the time we had gotten to the base of dahlias stalk the mulch was becoming easy to move. The soil however was not.

Thankfully, it was just compacted from the weight and not frozen. I was able to pull up this beautiful clump of tubers.

Seedling 24's last photo of the season was not her best. She looks like she had a few rough days with some hungry bugs, but the fact that we successfully overwintered her in our cold Zone 6a is a BIG WIN!

Dahlias are supposed to be perennial to zone 8 and this winter we have had was not mild. The little snow we got was not able to offer much in the way of insulation for our plants.

This is just 1 dahlia out of about 70 that are in the two beds, but it's given me hope that the work Emily & I did in the fall has paid off!

30/01/2025

Success! ❤️💐
So...I like to experiment with things I've been told to do to be successful at growing. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but it makes me so happy when it does!!!!

What does this success mean?

Earlier flowers!!! 💐🌷🪻

Ranunculus takes 90 days to bloom from the time they are planted in the ground like the one I showed in the video that had roots.

Last year our ranunculus only bloomed around mid May to the beginning of June. This year we may have them for Easter! 😍

I left a photo of last years ranunculus in the comments. My youngest daughter keeps calling them roses because she says they swirl like a rose.

27/01/2025

Good morning, Flower Friends,
The sun is shining brightly this morning. In a few months, the sunrise will be shining amongst our spring flowers.🌷🪻
Wishing you all a great week. 🥰

26/01/2025

I guess we should be thankful we don't have this many dahlias yet... 😅 We are still dividing over here as well.

Good news: most of these are divided. Bad news (for me): I’m STILL dividing and doing 7-9 hours a day to finish up. 🥴

But the end is in sight; I might be seeing tubers in my sleep at this point but tuber production was fantastic this year and storage is going 👌🏼… counting down until the sale date!

20/01/2025

Have you Considered Joining our Chamber of Commerce if not you really should.

20/01/2025

After spending the afternoon pulling the dahlias, I was exhausted and did not want to go outside and do this. I put it off until midnight.

Surprisingly, it was not as bad as I was expecting, but at that time, the winds were light. Now, I can hunker down indoors until the wind chills are above 0 again.

If you are wondering why I put these covers up, these beds hold the ranunculus and snapdragons that we planted in the fall. The cover adds protection from the wind and some cold protection.

20/01/2025

Time was running out...
Today, Emily and I raced against the clock to pull the rest of the dahlias. Last fall we moved over half of the dahlia grow bags to a storage location off the farm.

This space worked great for us until last week when we hit the single digit cold nights. Knowing that we wouldn't even be above 0 for the next few days, we decided to get the dahlias out now.

In 2 days and 6 hours of work we teamed up to successfully pull 380 dahlia clumps out of their grow bags to bring them to the farm. We did lose about 30 clumps, probably due to the cold, but overall we were happy.

Thankfully, since we started splitting tubers this month, we had more room in the garage to store all of the new tubers.

Our rescue mission is complete, and the dahlias are in a space that we can monitor the temps better. That means lots of beautiful dahlias for this year. 💐❤️

19/01/2025

No guessing games today...💐🌹🌻🌷🪻⚘️

We are soaking our ranunculus and aneome corms for spring flowers. (Hopefully in time for Mother's Day) The ones that are soaking are all new with new colors.

We saved our corms from last year and planted those out in the fall. We decided to try and overwinter them to see if we could get blooms earlier. It will be interesting to see if they can manage to survive the brutal cold we have coming next week. 🤞🤞🤞

I am currently working on our website to be able offer weekly spring flower subscriptions.
Spring subscriptions will have these flowers as well as tulips, daffodils, and other spring blooms. Make sure you are signed up for the newsletter to be the first to know when subscriptions are open. There will be a limited number available. (Link in comments)

17/01/2025

Happy Friday, Flower Friends!

Enjoy this sunny and somewhat warm day. It's 50⁰ and climbing out in our make shift greenhouse.

14/01/2025

I shared this on Monday, but added two extra photos to give you more clues.
Guess what time it is?!

It's seed starting time! 🌸🌼🌻🌹🪻🌷Any guesses on what seeds we are starting in January?

Hint: They won't start blooming until July.

11/01/2025

On this snowy ❄️☃️🌨 night we are still working on dividing dahlias.

This beauty is 🍑🌸Peaches N Cream. In the dahlia world there's a few dahlias that have similar names and this is one of them. There is also a Peaches and Cream that looks more like the Peaches and cream oatmeal I was forced to eat as a kid. 😆
Both are pretty but this Peaches N Cream is my favorite of the two. (At least from photos since I don't have the other.)
Peaches N Cream was one of the first dahlias to bloom this year and she was simply stunning from the start. The first night I picked this dahlia she actually matched the sunset. 🌅🌸
With the soft pinks and peachy color and the beautiful petals that neatly fell into place she was a staple in our bouquets last year. It seemed like every week we had at least one in bloom. Given the drought we were in, that's quite impressive. There's many dahlias that unfortunately never bloomed and this one had many.

Once we finish dividing tubers we will be offering our extras for sale to others who would love to grow these beauties. Make sure you are part of our newsletter to be the first to know when our sale will be. (Link is in the comments)

06/01/2025

Emily's back, and today is all about her favorite flower, dahlias! The link is in the comments for you. 🌸💐

05/01/2025

Guess who's back?!
It's Emily! 💐🪻🌸🌻
She's been asking me to let her record a video for her YouTube Channel and it's happening tonight.
A video featuring dahlias is coming soon. If you want to watch some of her videos from last year check out the comments.
We will have a link to her YouTube Channel. ⏬️⏬️

05/01/2025

We love our dahlias, but that's not all we grow.

We also grow spring flowers. Tulips, daffodils, ranunculus, and aneomes are just a few of flowers we will have for you this spring. Most of our 🌷 tulips are grown in crates, so Emily and I were outside last week working hard to get the last of our bulbs planted for spring. Even though you may not be a fan of the cold and snow, tulips actually need it to be able to thrive. They don't do well in warmer climates because they need the cold temps for them to go dormant and get the energy needed to flower in the spring.

Right now, I'm working on getting a website started for the farm. Once it's finished we will be offering our first flower subscription for our spring flowers 🌷🪻💐 . Make sure to join our newsletter to know when our spring subscriptions will be ready. (Link in comments)

What's your favorite spring flower?
Ours are in the comments.

03/01/2025

Hi Flower Friends, 🌸

The new year has brought new jobs to be done on the farm. Farm work is never over. 🤣

I have been showing Em how to split our dahlias. She's still too young to do it herself, but she's already asked if she can make a video 🎥 of me doing it for her YouTube Channel.

The warm snap we had last week woke up this dahlia🌱 as it already was sprouting. This particular dahlias is called Lavender Perfection. It's one of our original 20 varieties and I absolutely love it.

I've just started this process this year, but 30 of our over 800 dahlias are already split and ready for spring planting.

We will be offering some of our extras for sale once we are done. If you are a dahlia lover you will love these. 🌸

Make sure to join our newsletter, so you know when our sale begins.

01/01/2025

One thing our family has prioritized for the past 5ish years was outside hours. We started counting in 2020. The 1000 hours outside challenge is something my sister-in-law found on Facebook. There are many groups dedicated to sharing your journey and ideas to get your kids outside more.
This past year was my first year joining Emily and her sisters. Emily and her two younger sisters got their personal bests in 2024 and I had nearly 2,000 hours spent outside.
Today we started 2025 with some outside time. Hopefully this year, the girls are able to finally make it to 1000 hours.

01/01/2025

From where it started to where we are now...
It's hard to believe that this first photo was taken 2 and half years ago.

3 years ago this space was the forgotten part of our yard. It flooded when the field would flood, the shed was slowly rotting away, and we only really came to this spot when we had a bonfire.

2025 marks the start of the 3rd season of the farm for Em and me, and my 4th year as a photographer. We are excited to see what the year has in store for us.

Happy New Year! 🎉

28/12/2024

It's been a hard and emotional year...🥺

This is only our second year farming, but it has been our hardest in more ways than one. The pests and drought were the hardest on our flowers, but the photos below tell stories that have weighed heavy on our hearts this year.

Being outside for nearly 2,000 hours in 2024 has led to many animal encounters and rescues. While there were a handful of happy tales, these unfortunately have not had happy endings.

This summer we shared Peepers who was one of 3 baby starlings that fell out of one of our huge maple trees. It was thru his/her peeps that I was able to rescue Peepers. Their one sibling had hit our propane tank and died and the other was on its way to death when I found it. Peepers was under a chair and I didn't see them until they started peeping nonstop. Peepers was rescued and we did our best to care for them for a few weeks until one day they disappear.(Probably hawk food. :/ )

The yellow kitty showed up on the farm one September afternoon. After seeing that he was clearly underfed, I gave him some of our dog food and water. He lived for a few days, and unfortunately we found him underneath our rainwater storage tanks deceased a week later.

8 weeks ago to the day on our youngest's birthday, I opened our front door to see a gray cat darting away. The next day, I was driving home and saw the same gray cat walking down our road. I went out to investigate and found that this poor kitty was even more skin and bones than the yellow one. I ran inside to get dog food and water for the poor thing. I moved her to a safer location than the road, so she wouldn't get hit and let her chow down. Later that day, I saw her curled up in our flower bed napping. She took refuge that weekend in our tree line and would come out during the day to eat. I set her up with a cardboard box and towels for the next few weeks, so she could have a safer location to sleep. We don't have pet cats because of I am allergic to them, but when it got cold around Thanksgiving my husband suggested we bring her inside for that time since she still hadn't put weight on. Smokey has been inside with us since that day despite my allergies. Over this past month, our girls have loved on her and become quite attached, especially our third daughter who is our little animal whisperer.

Unfortunately tonight is our last night with Smokey. Over the past few weeks, I had noticed that Smokey appeared to have a cold and she was becoming very bloated. We ultimately decided to take her to the vet and she has FIP and has already declined a lot. She was given a week to a month to live. I truly believe that had we not found her, she would not have survived the cold snaps given her old age and her illness. Knowing that we have done our best to make her comfortable for this time has made me feel better about the situation.

Telling Emily and her sisters that Smokey is going back to vet tomorrow to be put down, has been a whirlwind of emotions that I was not expecting for us to end 2024.

If you made it this far, please keep our girls in your thoughts and prayers tomorrow as it's going to be another hard day for them trying to process everything.