I now understand why some farmers are actively blogging during the winter but stop come spring.  There hasn’t been much time to sit down and blog about flower farming the past 2 months as we have been crazy busy.  Spring is a time of getting the transplants into the field, direct seeding others, maintaining the fight against weeds and critters, starting the summer annuals and transplants and going to market which occupies most of Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday (just recovering).

So instead of trying to back track and go into detail about the past 2 months, I’ve decided to start blogging about what’s happening now, the end of May.  This is a photo of one of our zinnia rows and Ray tying up the tomatoes. Both zinnia and tomatoes are plants that prefer warm soil to grow and as a result transplants were planted around April 15^th and covered with row covers to protect from any late frosts. 

So here we are 6 weeks after the transplants were planted into black plastic.  It’s incredible how much growth has taken place in that period of time.  Two different types of supports are used to prevent the plants from being blown over.  Ray ties the tomatoes to a 7 foot tall fence by weaving cord between the plants and the fence. 

The zinnia are supported by a double row of horizontal trellis.  The zinnia have already grown through the first layer of trellis and by the time they are growing thru the 2^nd row, I’ll be cutting lots of long stems.  Notice the shiny reflective tape above the zinnia.  This is “bird scare” tape and hopefully it will discourage the flocks of yellow finches from landing on the flowers and pulling them apart.  If it were just one or two finches, it wouldn’t be that much of a problem.  But we seem to get flocks of over 30 birds settling in the trees around the field waiting to swoop down onto the flowers. 'Course if the sun's not out, then the bird scare tape isn't very effective as I discovered this morning.