This is one of the best flower farming presentations ever. You are so real and down to earth. Burn out is serious. I'm glad you have the courage to step back for your mental health and recalibrate. I hope you plant a small garden for your soul and to have cut flowers on your table. Please keep posting updates.
Thank you so much Susan! 😭 I worked really hard on this video so that means a lot to me. I'm probably starting zinnias today and I'm so excited to have some flowers just for me. 🙂
Thank you for your wonderful advice! Wish I could have heard it back in Feb when I was ordering seeds. I live in zone 5a and I definitely have a seed addiction. 😢 We are in the middle of building our house and for some reason I decided to become a flower farmer at the same time. I did that after I watched all the youtube flower farmers like you did and learned about all the amazing flowers to grow. Now I have thousands of seedlings started and since we live in a travel trailer on our property while we are building I had no green house no shed yet so I started them all in napkins inside ziplocks. They are everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE! Little did I know this method makes them sprout faster. So I rushed to buy 20 pack of Boot Strap Farmer 72 cell seed trays, that was not nearly enough. I ordered more....not enough. Im still ordering more! 😢 I clearly started way, WAY to big for my begginer skills and my situation of lack of time and space. Finally we had to pause building our house so we could build some "cattle pannel" tunnel greenhouses. Im still purchasing seed trays to accommodate all the sprouted seeds. What on earth was I thinking?! 😮 I am now banned from looking at any more seed company websites.😂
Jessie, you are WAY too hard on yourself love. You did totally amazing and, don't forget, you went through a full transformation and became a Grower in this time! You had some spectacular results and not just for a beginner. Established gardeners have turned out much lesser quality stems. I hope that you forget the sadness associated with the sunflowers and can get lost in the beauty of it all when you see those photos. You'll have many years ahead to actually profit off your farm but you'll only ever have the beauty of that first field once! And you did it! I really need you to see yourself as a success so far!
Thank you Cynthia! I don't see myself as a failure, just as someone who went to big too fast and learned a whole lot of lessons. 😂 Oh I will definitely have more sunflowers in the future. They're too pretty to give up. 😍
I would agree with not starting with cool hardy annuals. Besides the weed issues, I find it can be harder to get them to germinate and harder to keep them alive. For instance, in my area in the fall, it's often still too hot to plant them at the time I should be planting them. Or in the spring when I planted them at the time recommended in the Cool Flowers book, it was too cold and I lost some of them. Summer flowers are so much easier. I haven't totally given up on cool flowers, but I would never recommend them to a beginning flower gardener. Low maintenance flowers like zinnias, strawflower, and gomphrena are a great way to start out. Your bouquets are beautiful, by the way!
Yes keep it small! Join community gardening groups and learn from local gardeners about what grows best in your area. Dahlias grow very well in my 8b Oregon Willamette Valley zone. I am literally 30 miles from Swan Island Dahlias! I have a similar zone as Floret. Do not go into deep debt thinking people won't say they can get $15 bouquets at a grocery store, when you need to charge $20-$25 on a market bouquet. In my zone I would add Mock Orange, Pink Snowberries, Panniculated hydrangeas, and Camillias as green filler flowers/bushes/branches. The only cool flowers I grow are tulips and Snaps. Snaps are magnets for thrips, so there you go! Good advice Jessie! It would actually be a good idea to go in with a gardening buddy and divide and conquer. They grow sunflowers and you grow zinnias. Two sets of hands are better than just one. Also, don't expect to actually make money on just cut flowers.
@@45jessiemad Laura from Garden Answer had such an infestation of thrips last season that I don't think she grew many snapdragons this year. Her thrip problem likely came from the way she mulched her dahlias to over winter and covered with a crop, not realizing she was growing an amazing crop of thrips. They are impossible to get out of snapdrags because they hide inside of that flower structure. What a headache! I try to grow other kinds of plants that attract pests amongst the flowers. Calendula helps attract aphids and keep them off other plants, while stinky marigolds helps to deter other pests that don't care for the marigold smell. It helps me to grow marigolds.
OMG Jessie thank you for this video. The concept of cool flowers and summer flowers and spring flowers is conceivable if you have a lot of land and help. Those of us doing this as a side hustle with less space gotta work differently.
Jesse, great video!! This is information that we ALL need to hear. I think people try to start out like some of the "icons" we all watch. It's taken them all YEARS to get where they are. Your info is🎯
Irrigation! Investing in an auto-drip system changed my growing entirely. I'm z9b (Houston), and making sure my plants were watered at the right time and consistently made such an improvement in the health of my plants. I am also 100% with you on knowing what plants will do in your zone. A cool flower to a z6 grower usually means a winter flower for me. I laugh when I see a northern gardener planting nasturtium for summer saying "they can take the heat." Ummm, they can take YOUR heat not MY heat 🤣 My nasturtium have bloomed since December and are just about dead now.
Loved this video. And you are looking great by the way. The rest did you good 😊 Greenery... I had a florist come and get some of my back yard flowers, then saw my hydrangea shrubs. She commented how the foliage was her favourite filler. My brain pinged 💡.. I had only ever used the flowers. From then on I started using the green stems as filler and it was a game changer in terms of bigger bouquets and more $$
Dear Jessie, I’m so glad you’re back ! Thank you for your sincerity. I agree with everything you say. I did the same errors , bought as many books and seeds, but never got results like yours. For example, all the « cool flowers » that I sowed last autumn died because we had a late fall in Belgium this year and far too much rain. Moreover, it’s not easy when you have a family and a full time job. I ended up with a burn out in my job. Now I also try to make it simple and small. It seems to be the only way.
Omg, I see the video of massive snapdragon stems and huge sunflowers that we just done get in Colorado’s short growing season … and more … knowing how much huge work it took Jessie to grow!
I loved this video! I'm a lot like you, Jessie, burnout and all 🤣 A protip I've appreciated is that invasive/fast spreading plants can make great filler! I use a lot of artemisia, creeping buttercup, bishop's weed, goldenrod. Trying to think of a way to dethorn raspberry... It's great to see you make a video again!!!
OMG! Jessie, your bouquets & shots of your bouquet making are soooo gorgeous! Yes, you went overboard, but you should be so proud of what you achieved. Those others, Serena etc, while they are super amazing, don't have full time jobs as well. Hope you are starting to feel better and taking life a bit slower. BTW, could you add a link to that favourite flower arranging chanel?
Personally, I think the most important thing for beginners to consider is that you have the necessary infrastructure. Make sure you can provide water to your planting area. If you have heavy deer pressure, make sure you have deer fencing, or measures in place to deter deer. Etc.
Crocus were likely too deep 🙂 Hopefully, in a year or two, they will work themselves closer to the soil surface and bloom better. Peonies are like that in the South too, so if you purchase any make sure they are close to the soil surface 😊 Great video & tips!
Jessie you do have yoir busness so deal direcly with big stores call them offering single syem or boucqet I know Costco will take it and wondering if you have any table in fron of.your house like.a stend with box where people can leave money, how big is your neibourhood go around offer them some produce again and again untill you meet them all...can take while but.on end they will choose you over anyone around..I know you can make it big idea call big truck company around telling them to find you buyer and take loads of 53 trailers with flowers..much love from VAS transport inc and my name is Vesna
Thanks for the suggestions Vesna! I'm in a very rural area, the closest neighbor is a 10 minute walk. But it's all good. I'm rediscovering why I love flowers and really enjoying learning more about gardening in general. ☺️
Thank you for super advice! It’s so hard to resist all the seeds (and gulp personally, all the bulbs). I’m glad you said something about cool flowers vs spring vs summer flowers. I hadn’t thought of that challenge and plan to put a zillion cottage garden flowers on top of my existing bulb plantings (which are so so pretty at the moment - tulips and daffs and crocus and hyacinth etc). I might need to rethink that. Hm.
