What’s Growing in Native Poppy’s Flower Garden?
Margaret, Native Poppy’s lead flower farmer, has been busy planting up the raised beds of Native Poppy’s flower garden out in El Cajon, preparing our mini farm to grow many of our customer favorites.
January and February are a time of investing in the infrastructure of Native Poppy’s flower garden, and our team has been hard at work maintaining the garden’s shade cloth, which protects plants from the heat of the summer sun in eastern San Diego. “The year is off to a good start in the garden,” says Margaret. “We’ve been repairing some of the older raised beds, with help from Steven’s (Native Poppy’s Operations Manager) dad."
"The spring also brings some particular pests… last month we had a bit of a bunny problem! They love the tender shoots from our plants, and chewed up a few of my flower starts this year. But we don’t mind sacrificing a few plants to keep the ecosystem in balance. Bunnies mostly love eating the baby plants, so once the flowers are a little more grown up, they won’t be snacking on ‘em as much.”
Administrative work might not be what you think of when picturing a cut flower garden, but Margaret is excited about new systems to improve data tracking! “Creating more efficiencies with my tracking means more lean farming – reducing the labor and energy wasted on counting and recounting crops. I’m leaning more on our partners to provide corms, tubers, and starts rather than trying to start everything from seed these days – letting others’ expertise guide the way, and working in community and collaboration with other growers,” she says.
The spring is also a time when Margaret is focused on improving the soil in the garden, creating the conditions that will support optimal growth for the rest of the year. “Our philosophy of the garden is to improve the soil every year,” says Margaret. “We’ll add more compost, add a layer of straw on top of the soil to help retain moisture, and bring in beneficial insects and biocontrols to bring balance to the garden. Year after year we see the benefits of this pay off – we’ve got lots of beneficial bugs here now, including more praying mantis nests than I’ve seen in years past. They love our garden as much as we do.”
While we’re not too far off from Native Poppy’s first garden harvest of the year, we’ve already started receiving flowers from our local partners, like BeeWorthy Farms and Psalter Farms! Every delivery from our local farm partners is a joy – it’s not unusual to hear squeals of delight from our florists when our flower farm partners arrive at our door with buckets of fresh cut blooms. So far we’ve been receiving Iceland poppies, tulips, strawflower, snapdragons, ranunculus, and anemones from our San Diego flower farm partners. These blooms make their way into arrangements and wraps, and will be used exclusively in our locally grown flower designs, which have returned to our Daily Flower Menu in March!
What can you expect from Native Poppy’s flower garden this year? “We’re leaning more into bright beautiful focal flowers this year: lots of dahlias and lisianthus,” says Margaret. “So far this year all we’ve produced in the garden is dried gomphrena and a handful of strawflower, but it’s going to be exciting to harvest those first buckets of focals.” Best of all, this will be our second summer with improved shade conditions at the garden, making it a bit less like an oven during the hottest part of the year. “Less toiling means we get to find more joy in the garden, and really appreciate the magic of the changing seasons,” says Margaret. “The most beautiful part of growing flowers out here is being more tuned into the subtle seasonal changes – how the plants begin to respond to longer days, and warmer nights. It’s lovely to watch our crops thrive with each season.”
Want to try growing flowers in your own garden? We carry lots of fun gardening supplies in our stores, including seed kits for kids, gardening gloves, and flower seed packets for growing your own wildflower garden. Don’t have a garden of your own? We add locally grown flowers to many of our designs when available, but we’re excited to re-launch our locally-grown flower arrangements and flower wraps, which are filled exclusively with San Diego grown flowers! Native Poppy sources flowers from several local, woman-owned flower farms, so you can support local agriculture and get the freshest blooms around.
