2 May 2024

Farm Update: May 2024

We’ve said goodbye to the tulips for another year and as always, they did not disappoint. The beds for these are already cleared so we won’t be seeing these beauties again now until next spring.

Our poppies are somewhat more of an emotional rollercoaster. We had a bumper crop last year and they are without a doubt the most requested and photographed of our homegrown flowers. Which makes it all the more frustrating that so far this year they haven’t performed how we’d hoped in the polytunnel. As is the case for most things recently, we blame the weather. Our outdoor planted poppies are still to come but they’re currently smaller than we’d expect so we’re not sure how they’re going to turn out. They desperately need some prolonged sunshine.

You’ve heard us talk about the flower gap a few times now – the lull in flowers between the end of your spring bulbs – tulips, daffodils – and the start of your hardy annuals. Poppies filled this gap perfectly last year but they’ve been a bit stop-start for us this spring so we haven’t quite had the same constant stream of flowers from the field at the start of our season like we did last year.

We do, however, have plenty of butterfly ranunculus coming out of the field, so much so they’re in one of this week’s signature bouquets which is always exciting and there are plenty of signs of what’s to come. While we will on some sunshine for our outdoor poppies, we have buds appearing on our cornflower, our first hardy annual, and for the first time ever we’ve grown our own statice this year which is also starting to colour.

Shoots are appearing on our no-dig dahlias which is very encouraging – you are meant to lift them out of the ground and store them over winter but that’s extremely labour intensive so we decided to mulch them instead. We cut them back and covered them with green waste to keep warm over winter and it looks like they have survived!

Our perennial patch is looking good with achillea and solidago on their way and campanula also starting to green up. Raspberry leaf and oregano will also follow on, making our farm bouquets and summer selection boxes smell absolutely delicious a bit later this year. So lots to look forward to…but a bit more sunshine would certainly help.

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