Our Flower Farm Has Never Looked Better! 🌸 A Mid-July Bloom Tour

Hey y'all, Jen back from Pepper Harrow Flower Farm. It's mid-July, the blooms are bursting. I think it's time that we do a farm tour. Come along and I'll show you some of our blooms. Something I've loved is finding like really special blooms that shouldn't be in a certain area, and this is one. These are Oklahoma Salmon Zinnias. Zinnias, Zinnias, however you say this flower's name, we all know what we're talking about here, but this is a beautiful unique color that is not supposed to be here, but look how gorgeous it looks. So beautiful. This is one I'm going to save seeds on for sure because it's so beautiful. Every Tuesday I come out and harvest all of these blooms, and this is one, Cosmos, that I have to cut a lot of, and I really don't like to cut Cosmos. They're a little bit of a pain in the backside just because they're so delicate, and they get really wiry, and they kind of try to stick together, and I don't know why. It feels like just to harvest 40 stems, it's like it takes a lot to be able to harvest 40 stems. Like, yeah, they're a pain, but look how beautiful they are, and what we like about Cosmos is how they sway in the breeze the way they are. It looks like they're dancing. This is what I consider my Xenia field, but you can see there are some things in here other than Xenias. There are some Gombrinas. There is some Salvia. I just actually planted some Hanging Amaranth and the Basil. We've been hitting the Basil hard. You can see where we've taken it out of the garden beds here, and we have used them to use in our bouquets. All of that has been used for bouquet purposes, but I still have a little bit more. I still have Cinnamon Basil right down there, which you can see, and I'll be using that for bouquet making soon. This is supposed to be one of my specialty varieties of Celosia, and I'm getting impatient. It's not doing the color display that I wanted, but Adam told me that I have to be patient, and it will eventually pan out and make the color that I want, but I'm actively coming in here and removing colors like this that I don't want in here. I'm going to come and pull this out so that it won't cross and make the colors that I don't want. These are the Queen Lime Xenias, and I like them, especially really, really, really, really love this shape. I really love them. You can see how beautiful and perfect it is, and just so thick and beautiful. It has a long stem on it. I like to really pair this color with this color, and I'll usually call it like Cherry Limeade or something, or I'll pair them with Queen Lime Red, which is right behind us. I'll show you guys. I'll pair them here with this Queen Lime Red, and it just looks gorgeous. Again, I like Queen Lime Red, but I love the shape of this one. This is my favorite. If I could only save seeds from this shape, I would, and what I mean by that is if you look at this, this is not my favorite. It's useful. I put it in things. I use it in bouquets, but I just love the shape of this guy so much more. It's beautiful. Somebody asked me about Japanese beetles. I did plant a trap crop. It kept them busy for a little bit, but on the agenda for tomorrow morning or maybe even later this evening, I'm going to get a soapy bucket of water and put it underneath of here and let them all fall to their deaths. Hopefully, that doesn't sound too heartless, but they are an invasive species, and they need to go. You can see what they're doing to this plant. They're just decimating everything, and this is the real indicator when you find leaves like this. You know this is one of their hangouts, and you need to come and get it taken care of. Take them out of here. Okay, it doesn't happen every year, but this year I did grow some Oklahoma Whites, and I have really loved them, and they have been in demand, and I especially love pairing them with salmon. They just look beautiful together. Maybe throwing some White Snapdragons in there. Oh gosh, it looks so beautiful. I'm out here with y'all, and there was a little part rainbow that appeared. Maybe that's a good sign that cooler weather is ahead. I don't know, but I love seeing that. That's really nice. And okay, hear me out. Not everything on a flower farm is glamorous. This, what you're seeing here, is some of the hard work that I had to do this week on the tractor. Adam is gone again. He's been gone for the last one and a half weeks. He has one week left to go. He's been gone a total of three weeks. He will be gone for a total of three weeks, and I've had to do some things on my own, and I hope you guys are proud of me learning to do some new things. It's good, but this is one spot. We had sunflowers planted in here, and I have been harvesting sunflowers like a maniac, but of course, the weeds were getting crazy. The sunflowers were done, so I had Griffin take down the electric fence that was around, and I came in with the mower, mowed it all down. What's going to happen next, even though it's mid-July? I'm going to roll the dice. I'm going to plant some more sunflowers here and see if I can get them before October. We typically plant things until the end of July, but I know the end of July is really my, like, drop dead date. I usually don't plant anything beyond there, but I'm going to till either Saturday, Sunday, or Monday, the hottest days, of course. It's 98 degrees Fahrenheit, maybe early morning, late evening. I don't know. We'll see if it gets cool enough for me to do it. I'm going to till in here. I'm going to plant more sunflowers. If you guys want to see a video about how we plant our sunflowers, I'll link that below. Go to it, check it out. I'll even put a little video in there on how we harvest our sunflowers for a maximum base life. Very interesting, very informative. You should definitely check it out. Adam did the videos, so they're good, like, real good. There's just some fun things in here. This is our annual beds, and there's some Miss Marilyn Forget-Me-Nots. There's Tweedia. You guys can see how short it is, but it's actually a little bit longer than what you think. It works perfectly on the edge of a bouquet, just kind of hanging on the outside. Very beautiful. There's Lysianthus in here. There are more zinnias, of course. I can't not have those. But everything's just looking, like, so colorful and amazing. I'm especially proud of this eucalyptus. It looks so gorgeous, and it's getting so tall. One solid thing I did for myself is I planted three huge rows of celosia. No regrets about that. You can see how eye-catching and bold it is. And to have so much, I don't ever doubt what I'm going to use in bouquets or what people are going to cut when they come out for their eucalyptus experience out here on the farm. There's plenty of these beautiful flowers, and they look gorgeous in bouquets. That plume is incredible. Just look at this. So, so pretty. I'm especially pleased with the Sunday Orange. I don't usually get that lucky, but it has been really tall and workable for bouquets this year, and I'm so thankful. It has gone into almost every single bouquet that has left the farm, and, man, lifesaver right here. And this beautiful color, I would call it, like, a raspberry. It has just made everything pop. It is a little bit shorter. You guys saw how short it started out. I had it, like, tray-stunted because I left it in there too long before I got it in the ground. But, like, here's an example, taking that off. It doesn't look very big, but it's actually workable to either go in one of our little jar bouquets or to be able to put it into a shorter, a shorter-wrapped bouquet. But that plume, so beautiful. Like, magenta, raspberry, fuchsia, I don't know. What do you guys call this color? I, of course, had to show you all this. This is one of our Pepper Harrow new, new introductions for 2027. It doesn't have a name yet, so if you guys have any recommendations, let me know. But it's a beautiful, beautiful color. I think it's a winner. The front of this one looked a little bit, well, I guess the side looks a little bit rough too, but you get an idea for its shape. These are perfect for bouquet making. Look how tall they are. So great. I'm bringing you guys over to show you a lesser-known farm. This is what we consider the orchard, and there are some really great things in here. I have zinnias, little mini Oklahoma zinnias. I have cosmos. And right here, this beautiful array is our starlight celosia. I really, really love it. Although I noticed there was a color that's not supposed to be in here, and I gotta pull it. I have to pull it carefully, but this can ruin the color of that guy if I let it go. So I'm gonna toss it so that it won't change the really beautiful color that we have going on in here. It is really beautiful. I really love, especially, to use this for design work. It looks beautiful in wedding bouquets and other event work like that. So if you stop and visit the farm, this is a secret. Come over here to the orchard and come cut a few things from here. You won't be disappointed at all. It's kind of like a secret garden. I am especially proud of these lizzies. I started them from seed, and I did it. I actually have a whole row planted up, and they look fabulous. They've been weeded a million times, but they look absolutely gorgeous. I did this, and I am so jazzed. This is one of the wonders of the world for me right now. How did this get here? How? Not only how did it get here, because it's the wrong color, but it's a crazy color. We have a weirdo. It's in here with all of the coral. So strange. Do you guys get weirdos like this in your zinnias? It's, like, kind of creeping me out because the center looks really funky. Like, what happened here? I have a little teeny, teeny, tiny patch of ballerina. These are from Johnny's. These are ballerina zinnias, and they're really pretty. I like them. That one, like, looks like linen a little bit. Weird. Uh, but I just have a little patch, and you guys might think I, like, made a little oopsie here. No. Do you want to know what happened? The deer. That was status. It still is. The deer came in and ate all of the green tops off. They're trying to make a little bit of a comeback, but yeah, it stunted their growth, and they're not doing well. So if you grow status, know that it's a favorite for the deer. They will come and eat it. They ate all of this, and it's just trying to come back. The dahlias are really coming along. This is boom boom white, and I've already harvested a ton off of here, and we have the old faithful Chewy. Chewy just blooms its little heart out, and I, I love Chewy because of that. I need every stem it can give me, and just so you guys don't think every day is a dream, I came in and helped the team weed the dahlias this week. We weeded everything by hand, and it was crazy. It was dirty. It was hot, but boy, they really need it, and we haven't gotten rain. So what I'm going to target this week is coming in and giving them some hydration. They need a little extra help. So that's on the agenda for this evening. I'm going to come in here and water all of the dahlias. Here is Adam's gorgeous wildflower patch of cosmos. Taller than me. That is how crazy they are. They're huge and amazing. It's fun seeing the pollinators appreciate them, and boy, they just add a lot of beauty to the farm. Okay, I'm officially sweating my booty off. Got a little sticky out here, but I'm over here off of the lavender fields, and I wanted to show you a secret spot that I have a few special things. I've probably showed you all this in other videos, but I definitely wanted to make a point to show you now because I think you're gonna like it. These are all of my linen zinnias from Johnny's. They're sequestered over here so that they don't cross and they keep this color. I don't want them mixing around with any other zinnias, but you can see their beautiful color. I posted a few photos and videos with this one with a bouquet on social media, and I think the general consensus is people think they're really pretty. Probably better to use for like a wedding bouquet or something soft and romantic. A few of you said that you'd mix them with something bright. I'm not brave enough for that. I have to mix it with some creams or ivories and maybe a few like lavender colors, but this is my little linen patch. So if you visit the farm, you'll have to come snag some linen zinnias from over here. And then growing on either side, I actually have our pink lemonade celosia. And this was the other thing that was used in that bouquet that everybody lost their minds about. But I love this color. It's just like kind of pinky, kind of salmony, kind of peachy. It's just perfect. This is not a mature stem. It will turn into the crested, so it's still developing. But if you give it the wiggle test, it's ready to be cut, and you could use it at this stage. We did restock a few pink lemonade seeds online if you want to grab a packet to grow some pink lemonade in your garden. This is our gorgeous lavender field, and it is beyond peak bloom. So now we're coming in and harvesting everything out and distilling it, which we showed you guys in the last video. Griffin has been a trooper. He has been doing all of our distillations twice a day, two batches a day. And we're so lucky to have him to be able to make essential oil and our beautiful lavender hydrosol to make our rumen linen spray. This is something I often don't show you guys in the video, but this is the bees. And Kyle, the beekeeper who keeps the bees here, he said he's getting ready to harvest all of the honey out in August. So we should have fresh honey available in August sometime after he gets all of the harvest completed. But they have been really busy. They've been foraging on the lavender, bringing it back, and they are like bursting at the seams. So he said they are totally ready. And they're curious about me, by the way. They're coming and checking me out as I'm recording this. But the calmer I stay, the better it ends up. They kind of like leave me alone if I'm not doing anything, swatting at them and just being really calm, gentle, and patient. This is my beautiful pollinator patch in front of the house, and it is looking spectacular. And I did want to do a shout out. If you all can plant phlox, the swallowtails and black swallowtails really love this to forage on in about August time frame. It's a little early mid-July, but they love phlox. There's some mountain mint in here, of course, the milkweed. Our yarrow just got done blooming, and our beautiful echinacea is probably about four feet tall. It is huge. For me, it's just fun to see what new things come in here every year or each year and start filling in the gaps. I have a few gaps in here that I need to add a few things, but I can do this. I know I can, and I can't wait to add something in there that's going to be incredibly beautiful. Rattlesnake master, so beautiful. Kind of in the middle of nowhere, but I don't care. It's a pollinator patch. It's supposed to look messy and so beautiful. Other things I'm doing right now as I get ready to head into the weekend. Tomorrow's Friday. We'll be cutting flowers and doing some bouquet making, and then Saturday I have a floral design class, which I'm really excited about. And then I also that day have a sold-out cut your own bouquet, so it should be a crazy exciting weekend, but it's gonna be good. I hope you all enjoyed today's video. If you like today's video, please like and subscribe, and of course leave a comment below and let me know what you thought. I also want to thank all of our patrons for all of your love and support. Y'all are amazing, and we couldn't do this without you. Thanks for cheerleading us along the way, and thanks to all of you for joining today. Thanks for joining, and happy growing. I had to pull a weed.