The Floral Hustle

  📍

Hello Flower friend. This is Jenna. You are listening to the Floral Hustle podcast on this week's mini. So we're gonna talk about all things growing flowers. So you are a florist right now, and let's say you are dreaming of, of growing your own flowers. Let's say you, um, have like maybe thought like, maybe this is the year I want to start.

And it's just been something that's an on your heart, on your mind. I wanna talk about like what my journey was and how easy this can be for you to just start somewhere. Because if you start like you're doing it, you're growing flowers, you are experiencing what that is and you are, my biggest thing about this whole journey is I am learning and.

and that's why of course I also dabbled in so many different, um, seeds to start because I was learning all about them. And that was an experience that I feel was invaluable cuz I understand for one, what a flower farmer goes through, but I understand that plant so much better at this point. So let's talk about where do you even get.

I think the first step is like you need to understand what Growing Flowers is all about, and if you haven't done some education behind it, now is a great time to start. I personally did the Flore Garden workshop. She has it like once a year. It is a pretty, it's a good investment, but I felt like I was investing in myself.

I was investing. , you know, for one my business, and so it was a tax deduction. , but I also just really wanted to soak up everything. Um, Erin Eff Flore Farms, like I just, I think she is so inspiring and I literally just wanted to soak up her energy in her knowledge as well. But I also took, if you have ever heard of Team Flower, that is another flower podcast, and they have a monthly type subscription program that gives all of their courses.

and they have a gardening intensive that I thought was really great because it was on a more of a smaller scale level. So somebody with like limited space and limited resources, because Floret Farms is ginormous and it's huge and it's very, um, like it's, it's a big deal. . So this was nice because it literally just gave me a, a, a.

If you're not gonna be a big deal, like you can just start here and which felt really comforting and I thought there was lots of great advice in there. But I also went and researched each one of the seeds. So I use YouTube, uh, to really understand. I follow tons of flower farmers and, um, Swan Cottage in the uk.

Like I just, I love her grow alongs. I just thought it was so helpful and so much good information. But after you kind of understand some basics. Where I started was literally on Amazon, like many of us do. And I got like these little four tier greenhouses. There were little mini greenhouses that had about a three foot by two foot, um, footprint, um, a plastic sleeve around them and four shelves.

Then I bought a small grow light for each shelf to hang, and I bought seed mats, so seed starting mats, which are basically like a. . Then based on the time on the seed packet, I literally would, you know, kind of say, okay, these are, I would separate them for one and sort them by time, so I make sure that I'm not missing one packet when I'm starting my four week, when I'm starting my, you know, six week when I'm starting my, you know, eight week.

Then I'm looking at that particular seed instructions and I'm preparing my soil. , absolutely love Promix, which I get at Menards here in Minnesota. Um, for some reason, home Depot has not ever sold it, but I love the mix in there. I love how the seeds of reform, I made my own by literally taking, uh, you know, just like Pete Moss and regular garden soil.

Uh, then, you know, seed starting mix. I tried a million different things, but like the promix seemed to work really. It's in a black type, um, big kind of cube. And so there was a lot of good, a fair amount in there to be able to not be running for a little small bag, uh, a million times. , then I would get my, you know, mixture in my, I did it two ways.

I did individual cells, but I actually liked, uh, trays that were just wide and open, like a growing tray better because then I wasn't worried if a seed didn't germinate in this and I was utilizing so much space. But I germinated everything. I got everything to a point where it. You know, healthier enough to be transplanted and what I call is grow.

I grow up, I'm growing up into a bigger container, so I'm utilizing a smaller space by using a flat tray. Then I'm growing that up into individual cells to a point of when I'm going to, you know, plant them outside. So with that, I'm putting potentially some vermiculite on top of it to cover my. But I'm following the instructions and making sure that I'm also Googling that specific one because like with sweet peas on my instructions, it did not say to soak the seeds, but a million different YouTube videos told me to soak the seeds.

Then I am either covering with a seed tray cover. Or with Saran wrap with a rubber band around it to really hold in that humidity. Cuz once I place it on the heat map, what's going to really get things started? Is it having a nice little humid environment? Not so humid, and that it gets moldy, but humid enough that it's like inspired to sprout.

Then once it sprouts, I take it off the seed mat and I either move it or I just remove the seed mat itself. And I take the cover off because we want them to be able to grow. I'm making sure my grow light isn't super duper far away because if it is, your plants will get leggy cuz it's reaching for the sun.

So you want to meet it in the middle where you want it to, of course, grow and stretch, but you don't want it to be aiming high so high that it literally is just growing so fast that it's not getting. . Then once I got to that point, and I'm nearing my last frost date, you do this thing called hardening off and you will actually take them outside and expose them to what the outdoors is for a limited amount of times, I literally put them on a huge cart so I can cart it out and then cart it back in.

So I, I just, kind of gracefully expose them to the outdoors, but then when you're getting to the point where you're going to plant them, you're gonna prepare your beds. I put compost, um, I put, and what's great about the, uh, team flower one is she talked. a lot about, like all garden soils, all potting mixes, all composts are not created equal and really explain that, which I thought was helpful.

But, um, I mix all those different mediums together and till them into my, uh, area. I then will. . I have tons of weed block material that I have literally made templates for spacing and I've burned holes in. So I literally can just lay that on my 25 foot bed and plant everything in there pretty seamlessly.

But the last thing I wanna talk about is dahlias. Right now I, for one, I follow Follow a Million Dahlia Farmers cuz I'm just in love with them and I. Love designing with them. I love growing them. I love how they look in arrangements and it is something that is, it's so fulfilling to grow because literally you go out and you're just like, this is gonna be like the showpiece in your bouquet when you grow a cafe ole or a laborist or, or something.

So, Super fun and not something that you're like starting, you know, eight weeks ahead of time. I, this will be my fourth year growing and with that I've learned a little bit about Dalios, cuz I went kind of big ever since the beginning and the first two years I literally went in and planted every single tuber in a soil median to get them started.

And that was so painful because it was like 150 of them. So 150 pots that were big enough and all of that soil, it was just tons of work. And then having grow lights on them and doing all those things and moving them out outside. And so last year in, in a, and I did that because I wanted to make sure that they're sprouting.

Especially my first year I had 25% of my, uh, obviously cause I was buying a lot of them. Uh, 25% of my tubs didn't even sprout. The next year was about 20%, and this last year it was about 15 because I changed how I was doing it. That was just so much work, so much mess to clean up with actually planting them.

And I do see a lot of people on Instagram planting them. It was just so much work that I just was like, yeah, no. So I do this thing, I call them waking up. I am waking up my dahlias now by literally, I take them out of my cooler from being in their, um, median over the winter, and I, I look through them to make sure there's no rotty icky ones.

But then I literally put them on, I have this big metal cart that I use for my boxes, and I also use for like the plants when I'm trying to sprout everything. And I put them on there and I just let them sit. And the humidity from being in the Tupperware box, it's like a, a target tote with a little top on it.

Literally. It's just this environment that is making them sprout. And last year I woke all my dahlias. By just letting them sit in their containers and then when they s sprouted, I started taking them out and parsing them away so that the other ones would still, you know, sprout if a couple in the bin didn't.

All my new Delias, I had hydrangea boxes with the tops basically off, and I lined them in their cutting the bags open and wanting them to all sprout as well. And that worked amazing. It was so much easier. And I probably had still, like, because I bought a, a chunk of new varieties, I still had about like 20% that didn't sprout, but I didn't spend hours and hours and hours moving them, planting them, and doing all those things.

So, That's just a brief like kind of summary of the journey I've went through. I, I just, I feel growing flowers is such an experience and if you have ever entertained it, like if you want some peace and joy in your life, it is so fulfilling and it is such an enhancement as a designer because you just get this like appreciation for flowers.

Like, I appreciate Lian more than I ever know, and if you are thinking of growing Lian, It is so painful. It's actually nine months to get a bloom. So think about that. You plant a seed and you're gonna wait. So that's why Lizzie costs so much. And so now I'm actually, I buy Lizzie plugs from um, farmer Bailey's and it is amazing and I ordered a whole bunch.

I'm excited. I hope this episode was helpful or inspiring. I so appreciate for listening 📍 and you guys have a great day.