Preparing My Flower Farm For Winter. Overwintering Annuals 🌸

Hello from the flower farm on this beautiful sunny Sunday morning. to start clearing the beds and getting ready for the 2025 season which will be my It just seems so crazy that it's flown around so fast. Some bad weather last week, we had quite a bit of rain and also some wind and the flowers in the I'm also about to start a new field. If you watched my video last week you'll see that we We experienced an early frost here on the farm which is quite unusual but our first average hard frost I'm going to start with the fact that the first time I've seen a new product, it's usually at the beginning of November and that's about five weeks away now. I'm going to get all my hardy annuals planted in the field while it's still relatively warm and there's I can plant those out, they can get the roots down and they can They grow nice and strong before winter hits and they can withstand that winter nicely. The tired plants are coming out today or maybe not today but maybe in the next couple of days and I'm going to plant the hardy annuals right away in their place so the beds aren't kept empty for And actually I feel really bad about pulling up all the plants because I've I've been sitting here for a while now just recording the intro to this video and I can see some gorgeous Birds, some green finches that are feasting on the dried grass that has kind of dried in place So join me to see how I'm flipping my flower beds ready for the 2025 This is where I really start to appreciate the fact that I'm not using weed membrane on the It takes me literally two minutes to go over these beds with the lawnmower and I can Mulch all the plant material back into the soil which feeds all the goodness back into The soil and into the microbes and it's pretty much ready for planting right away. In cases the lawnmower doesn't manage to cut the plants at the base so I'm going along with my Cutting down the plants right at the base of the plant to leave the roots in the soil. It's really beneficial to leave the roots in the soil because they have a lot of beneficial microbes living on and around them so if I'm going to be planting new baby plants in this area The first is that the human body is not a living organism. Next I'm cutting down the Dorcas and the Ami, they add a really nice wild touch to wreaths. So I'm going to save them and dry them just for that purpose. I've got five beds cleared and I was ready to start planting in the next week. I think it's, oh no it's Wednesday. Two days in the house just preparing for the wreath making stuff because it has been absolutely We've had about 35 millimeters of rain which has been It's officially hat season, so it's really... I've been laying up, I've been putting on jackets so I think it's time to say goodbye to I'm really gutted about it because I just love summer so much. I picked some flowers. Flowers for a wedding earlier this week as well and I got a couple of bouquet orders later on I've also had my Runculus corms delivered so those will be going in the ground Last year I didn't grow them in the poly-tunnel, I grew them Actually for the last two years I've been growing them outdoors and they've done really well. But I think it's time to move them back into the polytunnel now because the polytunnel I sort of sorted out the weed problem here I think so I'm not too worried about putting the Runculus here, they're not going to get lost among the weeds. As usual, I'm giving my plants an extra boost before I plant them. These plants are getting a soak in humic acid, a handful of homemade compost and some This helps to improve plant health, immunity and growth as well as providing a I'm planting corn cobblers and cornflowers in this first bed at I was in the middle of a newly planted bed full of straight rows. The week before it had been up to 65 degrees Celsius for a while I should have turned it on sooner before it started to cool down as the pile hasn't This compost pile is just going to have to So I've got all my large-sized annuals planted out, the rest of They're probably a little too small to be planted out for wintering so I'll just see if They'll get bigger while it's still mild and I might choose to plant them out or I might Just leave them in pots over the winter or I might plant some of them in the polytunnel if I have But as I said before I'm planning on planting stalks etc in there and the ranunculus over the winter so it might be a little tight for space in the polytunnel this winter. So I just turned the compost pile and I'm moving on to the perennial area which is behind me I planted a couple of beds or maybe one and three-quarter beds here last week. feverfew, echinacea and then we also planted some biennials, hesperis, honesty and that kind of And now I just got a few plants of this anemone japonica to plant out and I got Lots and lots of lupins that I grew from seed so they also need to go out and if you can see Behind me that bed to my right is not fully mulched yet and I still have a bucket full I'm going to dig some compost in, make sure that's finished. I'm gonna go out and get these things planted and hopefully live a I'm having a good day of sowing seeds today. I cleaned that up this morning because there was a massive ball of There's a scrunched-up weed membrane in there that's been getting in the way for the past few weeks. So I stretched it out and folded it up nicely and stored it away so now I can access that greenhouse and it's got a lot of hardy annuals in it for next season so I'm excited about those. I got larkspare, olea, some spare snapdragons that I found a spare seed packet so I decided to I actually have some perennials, some silene vulgaris and some I actually moved it into this field. This year but the leaves have a touch of like a burned look on the end of them and they're It doesn't look great so I haven't picked any of that this year but in the past I've grown it in my other Anyway, all that is sown and I've also potted on some Canterbury bells etc. so I'm kind of really getting up to speed with everything that needs to be done on the farm at this time of year and I'm moving on now to these ranunculus seeds and this is the First time I've grown ranunculus seeds but I was kindly given these by Kate from Barhill Blooms who is in New Zealand and her mom lives not too far from here so when she visited her mom Not so long ago I managed to pick up some of these from her and I'm getting to give them a try I have a variety of cultivars here so I have the pastello champagne mix, milca, coral salmon, striata mix and rosacearo and the key to these It keeps them pretty cool so they need between 15 and 18 degrees Celsius to germinate and then it It takes two to three weeks to germinate so I'm looking forward to seeing if we can grow After enjoying the first and only melon of the season I moved on to pre-sprouting We made some makeshift mesh bags to hold all the combs of the same variety The combs are dehydrated when they arrive and the The process of soaking rehydrates them and gets them ready to spring back into action. We were soaking for a few hours we headed into the annual flower field to clear out some beds and In this case I'm using vetch as it's what I have to hand. Vetch, also known as tares, is a hardy legume suitable for wintering. nitrogen from the atmosphere during its lifetime which will become available to the following crop It has a scrambling mat forming habit which is perfect for keeping the The soil is protected during the winter from heavy rain and erosion. After a couple of hours of soaking the ranunculus combs were looking To plant them we used a mixture of good quality multi-purpose compost with perlite Plant it either in seed trays or mushroom crates lined with wool insulation. The comb was pushed claw side down into the compost and covered with a little more compost just So the crown was showing. This allows me to see how well the combs are sprouting. Well as you can See, it's been a really productive week this week and I managed to get a big chunk of the pre-winter The cover crops are in, the seeds are sown and a lot of things have been done. I'm ready for winter, so I'm looking forward to seeing the abundance come spring. Fingers crossed we hope we don't have any disasters again this winter. I'm going to show you into my new workshop area. shell a few weeks ago and now we've been making a lot of progress on it so I'm really excited to So check out that video next week and thank you so much for watching Have a good week again, bye.