Once our 600 new logs were inoculated and stacked, it was time to begin the rest of our 2021 list of things to do. Ron had been adding to that for at least 6 months. I really do think it is time to cut him off from YouTube. He gets too many ideas from those videos. He watches it all. Narrowboat living, flower and veggie growing, homesteading, sailboat living and whatever else catches his attention. Interestingly the pandemic and its effects on the world were clearly visible on all these shows. People dealt with being unable to travel, lack of supplies, lost customers, lost jobs and so many of them; did what people have always done. Figured out a work around. They made do until they could actually do again. Ron is determined to do what is necessary for Tiny House Farm to be at least a moderate success and he is will to have us try just anything to get there.

This year we are growing some specialty produce. Tomatoes and one squash variety to start with. And flowers of all things. I have three rows of my calendula of course, but we are trying some other, more showy flowers. Sunflowers, which I have always loved, to start with. We took the advice of a few other flower growers (from YouTube of course) and ordered our seeds from GeoSeeds. They have a wide selection of seeds, but a bare bones catalog and no website. Which made placing my order a bit tricky. They only have a scientific name listing so you need to know what you are looking for. And then you need to fill out their order form. My handwriting sucks to be honest so I always try to type when I can. This form was not one of those fillable ones. So I had to download a trial PDF program. And blasted thing was not that easy to use at all. Took me 2 hours to get it all done and emailed it to GeoSeeds. Seven different varieties of sunflowers and assorted other cut flower selections. I am looking forward to this project. I really do like flowers. Have never tried growing them though.

Following all the given advice I started my first batch of the sunflowers inside. Apparently if you plant the seeds straight into the ground, the squirrels and other critters come for dinner. While I do like squirrels, I don’t want them eating my seeds. We had tarped our planned flower rows and that did a great job on getting rid of most of the weeds. There are still remnants of the straw we mistakenly used as mulch on both my calendula and our garlic rows. I fear we will be dealing with that for years to come. It is strange how often we are reminded that one decision made can have such a strong and lasting impact years later. Even in gardening.

My seeds grew well and it soon was time to get them in the ground. Over the years we had learned that planting was best done in the evening if possible. That was so your new seedlings do not have to take on a full day of sun and heat right from the start. So I had to get this planting done after work and of course it was a blistering hot night when Ron and I headed out to Tiny House Farm. Ron came with as he did not want me out there by myself. And he always has projects of his own to putter with. On May 24th, I took my first set of seedlings out with me and got to work. Divided the first row into 8 blocks, one for each of new varieties and the last for the mammoth variety. I really want to try getting those huge sunflowers to grow. The ones that people buy and hang on their doors as a fabulous decoration or set out for the squirrels to enjoy. I had a packet of those seeds from a few years ago, but do you think I could find it when it came to planting time? Of course not. So they would have to wait for my second batch of seedlings.

It was so hot out there. The day’s heat had baked into the ground. I had to get Ron’s umbrella out of the shed in desperate attempt to provide some shade for myself. Foolishly I did not bother to get out the kneeler too. And my knees paid the price later that night. 2.5 hours I worked digging out holes in the bone dry and rock infested soil to planting my seedlings. Watering them was another project. We still have not come up with a plan for getting water from our stream up to our field. In the past we have used our water tank to fill up pitchers and walk up and down the rows watering as we go. That takes some serious time. The first night, Ron filled two of our white 5 gallon buckets with water and hand carried them to my rows. Informing me when he got there that he wasn’t going to do that again. I got the last of the plants into the ground, watered each of them and covered them all with insect cloth. That was in the hope that nothing would saunter by and nibble on my new babies. Do woodchucks eat sunflowers?

We repeated this process the next night but Ron came up with a better idea for the watering process. He went back to the 4 wheeler and bringing our water tank up to the field to fill the water buckets. Work smarter, not harder. But this is still seriously hard work and he is now on a mission to solve our watering situation. I again left the insect cover over the entire row to give the seedlings just that little bit of protection.

While the cloth did help keep my seedlings safe from critters, it was no match for the rain we got. Even though we could see they were growing, our new plants were being held down by the weight of soaking wet cloth. So I made the decision to take it off. That was on June 1st.

There days later and something had themselves a very good meal of my sunflowers. Crushing sadness. And anger. And determination that this was not going to happen again. Problem is that we have too many suspects out on THF. Rabbits, deer, birds, chipmunks, and woodchucks all live out there. While we could never stop all of them, we could make a good start by fencing in the sunflowers. We used the fencing that was previously used on our garlic beds and a few of our T posts. The problem was that our length of fence was shorter than my sunflower bed. So we started at the back end of row where I had the mammoth variety planted. Those had not been touched so either the snacker did not care for them or they were full by the time they made their way that far up the row. I ended up with a row about 3 feet shorter than I started with.

But at least they should be safe from marauders. With our plan being to sell sunflowers to our restaurant customers, we needed to plant more rows of flowers. More work was needed and a larger fence too. I started more seeds at home and then got busy with the massive job of weeding.

Once I had yanked most of the weeds out, I got Jo working to break up the soil for me. And we needed to move the rocks around. They tend to get in the way when planting anything. Ron has plans for us to get out our dirt sifter come fall and tackle those rows; getting most of the larger rocks out of our way. But that is a project and story for another time.

The weekend of June 19th the three of us set out to get the fence up. We had 4 pieces of fencing to use and scrounged up more T posts. Whatever we ended up with, that was going to be our flower garden. Overall, things went smoothly once Ron and I stopped arguing about our plan. As we worked, it dawned on us that we needed a way to get into the bed. Unhooking the fence from post and re-hooking it was going to get old very fast. But luckily we have lots of cinder blocks laying about the farm.

Three stacked outside the fence, and three more inside and we had our way in and out. I have already lost count of the number of times I have used them so far this year. Every time I am at the farm, I have weeding to do. So much weeding. Both in this flower bed and in my calendula rows. I count my blessings though as these particular weeds are pretty easy to ID and yank.

This is what I have been waiting for. Signs of life from the actual flowers. There are a massive amount of leaves on every stem but we chose to grow single stem varieties. So one flower on each stem. Which is why I have been starting more seeds after I plant the seedlings. Succession planting is the way to go. There is so much to learn about growing sunflowers. Not only the variety, but the spacing between plants. Closer together gets you smaller flowers. Which, going against common sense, is better. Smaller more compact blossoms work better in arrangements. Do you use weed cloth or not? YES, use weed cloth. And yes to fencing if you can. But then you have harvesting questions. The goal is to have the flowers fully open just when customer needs them. So you cut them ahead of time and let them sit in water. But timing is a bit tricky and another learned process. We will know better next year. Because, yes we are growing sunflowers again next year. I am already working on our 2022 order. Even though we have not yet sold a single flower. Which is the biggest issue we have. How do you decide what to charge for your product? The large grocery store prices are a starting point, but really, they can afford to sell for less than $1 a flower only because they buy in such massive quantities. And bring them in from Colombia and Ecuador. And they are not selling the more specialized varieties we are. So we have to decide how much to charge. Enough to make a profit for THF while keeping the price low enough for customer’s to agree to pay it. A delicate balancing game. One that all small business owners have to play. One that is not fun at all.

I started and planted more and more sunflower seedlings over the weeks. And it turns out that planting in well watered soil is much easier. So next year, I will make sure my planting beds are thoroughly watered before I get started. I used our garlic dibbler to make the holes and it worked a treat. And it turns out doing extreme weeding is also very good at preparing your planting bed too. As I toiled in the hot sun and yanked out the weeds, that was loosening up the soil. Which then made it easier for me to plant our sunflowers. I won’t have to deal with weeds as much next year as we are going to use weed cloth with burned in holes. That will be a huge project but will mean less work for me in the long run. Another upcoming project and story.

This was my goal for the year. Bright and happy sunflowers growing in our field. It is still early in our season and I will have better photos later. Next year I will have a different planting schedule and layout. Before this fall we will make the final decision on which type of flowers and how many of each we will grow and I will get them started sooner in 2022. Everything is a learning process and this will be no exception. THF keeps us busy, gets us out of the house, meeting new people, learning all the time and gives us lots of exercise. All in all, not a bad thing.