high hopes gardens is a living experiment. Can a creative, hard-working family make a living working with nature? Join us on the journey from idea to practice as we revive an Iowa Farmstead.
If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room!
When the Costa Ricans visited our farm a few weeks ago, one gentleman excitedly moved me over to one of the gardens to tell me something.
He pointed at the agaratum as said, “In Costa Rica, if you have an agaratum flower in your wallet, your wallet will not run out of money for a year!” I haven’t tried it yet, figuring a garden patch is good enough.
There are a few new blooms on the farm this week.
These are a variety of allium that were on super close-out late last fall. They add spunk to bouquets and attract beneficial insects as well.
These are the more common elderberry blossoms - this is the first year we’ve had a profusion of blooms, so we’ll have to figure what, if anything, to do with the elderberries, other than wild bird food.
Linda gathered the first bouquet of the season yesterday.
Here’s a seasonal willow bouquet to brighten up the late winter. New bird sounds appeared over the weekend - robins, red wing blackbirds, and killdeer. It just feels different outside - as if spring might really arrive soon!
Today Linda started the first seeds - some flowers that are slow germinators.
They get the heat mat treatment to get a good start. When the high temperatures are 30 degrees below normal, it takes faith to plant flowers!
It’s time to get the gladiola bulbs out of the ground. It’s a little like Christmas or winning the lottery. Many times you plant one bulb, and get back two, or sometimes even three!
This particular bulb has produced two new bulbs. The original bulb is on the bottom, barely visible in this photo. So, you just break apart the new bulbs and throw the old one back to the earth. And again, the price is right - just a little labor in exchange for a stunning stem. You can see the ground is a bit dry - after a very wet August and September, we’ve not had rain for a month.
Here’s a bushel basket full of gladiola bulbs, ready for winter storage and the promise of another season.
This is a big flower day. We’re providing 25 table bouquets for a banquet. Enough flowers made it through the frost and it is a big evening of picking and arranging. The packing and transport is one of the trickiest parts
Linda hired the girls to help since it was such a big job for a work day.
It’s early for a frost. Very early. Here’s Linda out last night covering some of the flowers in the garden. We rolled out every tarp, old sheet, and even an old dish towel or two to try to survive the night.
We’re especially worried about the flowers since we have 25 centerpieces for a dinner to get out this week. It was a hectic night - the horse came, and with the imminent frost, we picked raspberries and tomatoes and covered flowers, peppers, and a few tomatoes racing against the sinking sun.
I’m not 100% sure but I think the work paid off - we had a light frost here and it killed some things, but I think the plants that were covered will be ok.
Here’s a nice shot from the garden today.
This is a strawflower being used as an anchor for a garden spider to weave it web. I’ll claim arachnid ignorance on knowing what this spider is really called - we just call them garden spiders. They usually first appear this time of year and are striking additions to the flowers and raspberries. I’m glad to see them, because it means fall is finally on the way.
The flowers and corn took off while we were gone. Of course, many of the glads bloomed in our absence.
Here’s Linda with a handful for a bouquet for the house. This week we have Linda’s sister’s family from CA visiting us - so we’ll have two weeks of vacation in a row, only one will be at home.
Today Linda and the girls were featured in a monthly magazine published by the Ames Tribune - the July version of Facets. As soon as I can get a link up, I will. This issue focused on “green women” in central Iowa.
Linda contributed “little green gems” numbers 51-63 in the issue. The only correction we would make to the article is the photo captions switched Claire and Emma! Thanks to Sue Ellen for making the drive out and meeting with the girls of high hopes.
In other news today, A little birdie told Linda that a local foundation contributed $75,000 to the Entrepreneurial and Diversified Agriculture program that Linda founded at Marshalltown Community College. More good news may be on the way soon as the farm bill and other federal appropriations are announced. She has worked extremely hard to get this program off the ground and do her part to support sustainable agriculture in this part of the earth. More on that in upcoming weeks.
Our ground is now “hard as a rock.” I moved some electric fence and had a hard time pushing in the posts. Today we were promised relief from the heat and 100% chance of rain, with 2-3″ amounts possible. The rain came, but not even enough to get the ground wet under the trees. You’ll see most of the rain still sitting on the flower petals on the following pictures.
Here’s a view of one of the gardens. Linda’s probably got 85-90% of the garden in. We could use a good rain as we haven’t had one since the deluge April 26.
I’ll stop back here in July for another photo.
Today, a report came out in the April Journal of the American Diabetic Association that found that young children who regularly eat home grown fruits and vegetables eat more than twice as many fruits and vegetables as their peers who do not have a garden! This is a huge difference. The researchers from St. Louis University Medical Center found that the kids who grow up eating home-grown produce prefer the taste of fruits and vegetables to other foods.
We’re digging out the last of the gladiolas. It’s amazing how much size the bulbs gain in one year.
In fact, they not only get bigger, but create another bulb! So that is good for the bottom line to get twice as many bulbs for free for next summer. They’ll go in a cool dark place and be ready to be planted next May.
Here’s this week’s “Thingamajig Thursday” entry. Also check out
last week’s answer.
Back to high school biology for this. Everyone knows this is a zinnia flower, but what are the yellow thingamajigs called?
As always, put your guess in a comment below.
Answer…
The yellow thingamajigs are called “disk flowers” and the pink thingamajigs are called “ray flowers.”
