The weather has been warming up this past week and we’re starting to feel a bit of warmth from the sun. Winter took a while getting here this year, but towards the end of July we finally got the drop in temperatures. It brought frosty mornings and some cold and windy days. And we even got some rain too which was lovely as it’s been a dry winter here.
I’m not a big fan of freezing cold weather. I really hate it when my fingers freeze and they burn as they warm up again. Duncan likes to joke “Takayama” to me whenever I complain about the cold. We lived in Japan for about 7 years when we were younger, and we’d always try to get to Takayama when we had friends visit. We went there with my sister in the middle of winter, and it was snow-covered and about -11 degrees. My brain shuts down in the cold and I spent an entire day repeating “I’m so cold”, to the point where I even annoyed myself. But I was so cold I literally couldn’t get my brain to compute anything else!!! So, needless to say, freezing winter days are not my favourite farming days.
Flowers that need the cold weather....
But did you know that some plants really need the freezing, frosty, winter days to flower well in Spring? Some need the cold to encourage the plant to put down a strong root system ready for spring and flowering, and some, like Peonies, won’t flower (or won’t flower well) in spring without the cold weather. I was listening to a podcast the other day where they said Peonies need approximately 50 frosty mornings over the winter to flower well. Which probably means they aren’t a great option for us here with our milder winter temperatures, especially with climate change. (Which is good since I’ve only got a few plants). I have heard of people putting blocks of ice on top of their peony roots in warmer climates to encourage them to flower well, but from a business perspective I feel that if a plant isn’t right for our climate, then it’s more sustainable and economical for us to focus on the ones that are. Some of the cottage flower annuals we plant that thrive on over-wintering in the cold are stock, calendula (canterbury bells), matricaria, poppies, statice, and strawflowers.
What’s flowering now?
It definitely doesn’t look like most people’s idea of a flower farm here at the moment, but there are still a lot of beautiful flowers blooming. We have the later flowering proteas like MayDay, Joey, Southern Cross and Possum Magic coming into bloom, banksia golden candles finishing its flowering, and pretty pink philotheca blooming. The endemic native philotheca are starting to bloom in the bush around the farm, along with the beautiful native grasses with the purpley blue heads (that I always forget the name of). And of course, who can forget the wattle - the bursts of yellow acacia flowers are lighting up the bush at the moment!
Our spring bulbs are also slowing coming into bloom, with the pretty yellow of jonquils and daffodils popping here and there. This year we don’t have as many spring bulbs and ranunculus/anemones as we’d like because of our efforts to move. Everything got dug up last year in the hope that we’d be moving to easier farming land, and some of it didn’t make it back in the ground (or it got popped in pots where it is not thriving). Next year!
We also have calendula blooming and strawflowers just starting to come into flower. I’d never grown strawflowers before this year, but I’ve put a lot in the ground for spring so hopefully we’ll have lots of those Aussie gems to share over the spring and summer months. Our first ranunculus and anemones have popped, and hopefully we can keep the rabbits off them long enough to share them with you all. And we are seeing some poppies just coming into flower (with more seedlings in the ground that the cockatoos are enjoying plucking out when my back is turned).
Where can you find us in August?
We’ve been enjoying a couple of weeks break from the market (to get some planting done and move back into our house), but we’re back at Canberra Region Farmers Market from 29th August. We look forward to seeing you there!
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