Welcome back to our Garden Planning for Success series! We’re picking up right where we left off yesterday.
The clearest way I can express how we plan (our space, schedule, crop timing, field layout, *everything*) is that we start big and work small.
Start with your vision, then work backwards through the details. This type of planning works best with very specific goals. For example, say you were to start with the specific goal of having 15 bouquets to pick and give away each week from June to September. That’s about 16 weeks of growing (during which you’ll also practice growing new varieties of flowers, gain knowledge of your soil and microclimate, and meet flower-lovers!). Almost any level of gardener could accomplish this, so I’m going to use this vision as my example today.
I would approach this goal from three separate angles:
1. What should I grow to meet my bouquet needs?
2. How can I efficiently use my available space to accomplish this goal?
3. What do I plant and when to ensure that I have what I need when I need it?
Today let’s start tackling WHAT to grow. At our farm, a good bouquet has fantastic focal flowers, coordinating fillers/secondary flowers, and a fantastic foliage. Working from that knowledge, you’ll need to plan to have something from each of those categories available each week that you want to produce bouquets.
My best tip on planning this is to THINK SEASONALLY. (Don’t count on having peonies in August or dahlias in May.)
My second best tip on this is to choose blooms in only 1-2 palettes. Keep it as simple as possible!
To help you with these first two tips, on Wednesday we’re going to publish a graphic with our REAL LIFE plan for the crops we’ll grow at TWF this summer. It shows our palette plan, and lists the varieties we’ll grow. Hop over to the blog post on 2/16 to download it for free, and visit here tomorrow to learn why I choose a limited number of varieties and glean more tips on growing WHAT you need!
