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As we walk across the farm, through the frost-kissed (errr killed) plants, we find ourselves embracing the end of the season. This helps us step back and reflect on 2019. Two events jump out right away. The first is the success of the peony study. Gee, that feels good to say when much was uphill. We’re working with ‘Coral Charm’, an early variety that blooms around Memorial Day. Our goal is to force bloom for Mother’s Day and we successfully pushed bloom four weeks early this year. As we’re gaining a handle on optimizing production, we met with Dr. Ruby Ward, a USU economist, to learn about enterprise budgets. These track expenses, income, and areas where we are less efficient. First, we had to get everything we ever put into the peonies on paper, such as: how many hours did it take to plant, maintain, and harvest the peonies each year? How much fertilizer, water, and floral preservative do we use? How many hours and miles did it take to sell? The list goes on.

The title is daunting but here is a summary:

We are so excited to get to know our members better, to hear their stories, and watch their growth and triumphs. Ali of Paradise Valley Orchard is an amazing farmer and person whom we greatly admire. We are so excited to feature her in today’s newsletter so we can ask her the questions we always wanted to and learn a little more about her. So read on to learn about Ali, how she got started, what keeps her going, and try to imagine what two alpacas in a Subaru look like.

Let's take a moment and define what makes a fabulous filler. If focal flowers are all about being the star, then fillers are the supporting cast. They should protect, surround, and enhance the focal flower in a bouquet. The best fillers are bulky without being unwieldy, and most importantly, prolific. Nothing is better than a small patch of plants filling buckets for weeks on end. Here’s a list of my favorite fillers throughout the growing season. The months I list them for when they are ready on my 6B zone farm in the Salt Lake Valley, where our average last frost date is in mid-May. For the sake of simplicity, I am listing foliage and flowering fillers.

Utah State University’s research on cut flower production is ramping up. About a year ago, I started the USU Small Farms lab, where we focus on tailoring cut flower production to Utah growing conditions, as well as testing environmentally responsible farming practices. My background is in soil physics, so researching production schedules, season extension, temperature manipulation, plant nutrient management, and water conservation is right up my alley. It’s particularly exciting to be working in Utah because the growing conditions here are just about opposite from the typical places where cut flowers are grown: we have different soil, water, air, sunlight, temperatures, precipitation, growing season length, and winter conditions – from a plant’s perspective, that’s basically everything. Before I arrived at USU, cut flower research had already started to pop on the university farm because of Maegen Lewis, an undergraduate student at the time. She has a true passion for cut flowers and I’m incredibly fortunate that she’s now a graduate student in my lab, where she manages most of the research and undergraduate crew. Here’s a preview of our current studies: