our 2023 farm plan

After weeks of planning, sketching, spreadsheeting, and maybe whining to Robbie a few times that I’m overwhelmed…. I’m happy to report that our crop planning for the season is mostly done!

Planning the farm is one of those things that sounds fun to me in theory, but after the fun part (ordering and receiving seeds) is over, it gets less fun to try to figure out where we’ll possibly put all of said seeds. Things get bleak when I have to start looking at spreadsheets to determine when we’ll plant all of said seeds. And by the time we get to figuring out how many plants will go in each bed, my eyes have completely glazed over and I’m on my second glass of wine, moving post-it notes around so it looks like I’m doing something while Robbie creates Excel formulas or whatever trickery he does.

But I’ve recovered, and it’s exciting to think that in just a few short weeks we’ll be starting seeds and getting into the swing of things! Today I thought I’d give you an inside look at what’s in store for the season.

Our intention this year was to streamline things a bit. To grow more of what did well last year and cut things that were more of a hassle and didn’t work great for selling. So sweet peas, for example, got the boot: they’re beautiful and smell amazing, but they required a lot of maintenance and didn’t produce very long stems for us. Lovely in a garden, which of course serves a purpose, but not great for cut flower production. At least for us. We could keep improving them and I’m sure we’ll grow them again in the future, but with limited space we really do have to think about the ROI. On the other hand, I’ve found myself with an excess of poppies, even though they’re a pain to plant and last like seven seconds. So… still working on the streamlining over here.

A lot goes into thinking about what we’ll plant, based on different sales outlets for the season. This year we’ll continue selling to floral designers, we’ll offer one-off bouquets and custom arrangements, repeat some iteration of our subscription program, and we’ll have our flower stand. We’ll also be adding in events with the truck, and are dipping our toes into weddings. So bottom line is, we need a lotta flowers! And these different streams guide which flowers we choose to plan as well. We’re thinking about what floral designers typically purchase, what’s great for bouquets, having a mix of focal flowers like dahlias and zinnias, and supporting flowers like cosmos and pincushions, as well as greenery across the board. Cut-and-come again flowers like zinnias and cosmos are quick and easy to grow and they’re popular across every outlet. So we’re adding more quantity and more varieties this year. I also learned last year that we need a lot more greenery, so we’re doubling down on cress and bupleurum, and experimenting with eucalyptus for the first time (which I’ve heard can be dicey - I’ll report back!). We’ll also do a lot of dahlias, pincushions, snapdragons, sunflowers - all things that were popular last year and we enjoyed growing. Except the sunflowers, of which the majority got eaten, so we’ll be smarter on that front.

Sad, mostly eaten sunflowers

Here you can kinda get a visual of how we lay out beds, and then which plants go where (the bed numbers on the left correspond with the labeled beds on the right). You’ll see cooler flowers, things that go into the ground earlier, in blue, and then heat lovers in green. Many of the “blue” beds will fizzle out early/mid summer and be flipped to “greens” that will carry us through late summer/fall. And one thing that’s kind of confusing here is that all the green rows on the right side of the first image will actually be planted on space that we’re leasing this year. And the map of that property isn’t pictured here. It’s essentially just 26 straight 65-foot rows, so we didn’t need to draw that one out.

There are also spreadsheets that I’ll spare you from viewing. Those tell us how many plants go in each bed, based on the sizing and spacing (for example planting crops 9 inches by 9 inches), as well as when they go into the ground. Which is particularly helpful for things with multiple successions. I didn’t do a ton of succession planting last year, just a few rounds of a couple different flowers. So I’m really hoping to get a better grasp on that this year by scheduling them out, as opposed to saying “Oh, I have some extra cosmos here that I didn’t have room for, maybe I’ll plant them in this extra space over here…”

The last piece of planning is determining when seeds need to be started, which I could look to the spreadsheets to, but that’s not how my brain works. I take our last frost date (May 15th) and count back from there based on the recommended sow date. So for example, zinnia seeds can be started indoors 4-6 weeks before the last frost date, so I’ll start the first round of seeds in our basement or the greenhouse on April 3rd, and then transplant them outside into the ground after May 15th. I’ll start two other rounds of those as well, staggering 3 weeks in between, but the most important thing for me to know is when that first round needs to be started so I’m not missing it. I note all start dates and indoors or outdoors on each seed packet.

That’s the gist of it! A this point farm planning has completely taken over our kitchen, so it will be nice to do things like open the fridge without giant post-its flapping around or sit down at the table again. Hope this gives you a nice peek into what we’ve got in store and gets you as excited as I am for flowers! Only 44 more days until spring. 🙂