22 September 2024
Balancing The Scales
At the time of writing, we’re yet to officially sound the gong on the end of our 2024 season, but just like summer transitioning in to autumn, all the signs are there. We still have plenty of flowers to offer beautiful late summer stems such as dahlias and sunflowers, but beds for crops that have been and gone are being cleared and prep for the new seeds to take their place has begun. In 2023, we harvested a total of 213, 734 stems. Yes, you read that right. Once we draw a line under the 2024 season, we’ll compare the two, but there are plenty of things we can reflect on before then.
Our harvests are noticeably faster and more efficient than any year before – we’ve made huge progress there with the leadership of our Head Grower, Becky. We’ve adjusted our sowing schedule to great effect – our hardy annuals are already in the ground a month earlier than last year and they look great. This means they’ll be super strong going in to winter but anything that doesn’t work from these, we can sow again in January. One of the biggest takeaways from this year, though, is about getting the balance right on the type of products we’re able to offer.
This season marks our fourth growing season ever – before that, we imported every stem we used throughout the year and were complete growing novices. Just as with any period of big change, often the scales swing drastically from one side to the other before settling in the middle. In our case, when we first started offering homegrown flowers, they were a completely separate product from our bouquets, available just as selection boxes or single variety boxes. This year, we were at the opposite end of the spectrum, where most of the homegrown stems we cut this season were used in our bouquets. That does mean we were able to achieve a Petalon-record-breaking 9 week streak with 100% homegrown bouquets and not one imported stem (that’s 1 tonne of CO2 removed from our carbon footprint if we were to import flowers for 9 weeks). Together with the fact we launched our first ever physical location – our pick up station up at Lanteague – it means we’ve sold every single stem we’ve harvested this season and we’re mighty proud of that. It does also mean, with a focus on the stems we produced going in to bouquets, we had fewer selection boxes and single variety boxes to offer (these are delivered flat in a box for people to snip and arrange at home themselves).
Next year the aim is to settle somewhere in the middle and achieve a happy medium, where we’re able to offer 100% homegrown bouquets for as long as possible during the season, while also offering customers plenty of choice with arrange-your-own flowers too (we know how much you guys love those poppies).
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