I was asked an interesting question the other day when someone saw me at the market perusing the seed catalog during a lull.

"Don't you usually do that in spring, or do you look at those all the time?"

It’s a great question. Flower farmers do things a little differently.

In order to have specialty cut flowers for all of my uses, it takes a lot of planning and prioritizing! For instance, if I have weddings coming up for the next year, I plan around planting specifically for those weddings, so you could say that’s my number one priority. While that in itself may seem like a big task, I also have to consider the following when planning for the upcoming growing season:

What specific holidays are coming up this season ?

Fresh Spring blooms ready for Valentine’s Day Bouquets!

Some holidays take more planning than others - some of our busiest times of the year are the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Each of these holidays comes with its own set of challenges and has to be planned out at least a year in advance, if you can believe that! Not only do I have to make sure I’ll have enough flowers to meet the increased demand during holidays, but I also have to devote time and brainpower to researching (and sometimes just predicting!) what varieties of specialty cut flowers might be trending around those same times next year.

What markets will I be working this season?

Not only do holidays require lots of advanced planning, but markets! From the initial step of actually securing a spot at the markets we want to participate in, to scheduling out our calendars months to a year in advance to make sure we don’t miss any days, to making sure that we have enough flowers each week to actually have bouquets available to sell, a lot of work goes into this kind of planning, and it’s the kind of planning that requires a little bit of adaptability. For instance, my customer base at the Belle Meade Market might have a much different flower preference than my customers in Dickson, so I have to be able to familiarize myself with the different types of people going to different markets and make changes on the fly.

How many people have purchased a CSA/Flower Subscription for the upcoming season?

Two wonderful customers posing with their bouquets

While we always strive to ensure that every single bouquet or flower bundle that leaves the farm represents the kind of high quality that our customers have come to expect from us, I have always made it abundantly clear that CSA/Flower Subscription bouquets receive the highest priority in terms of quality of blooms. This is, in-part, my way of thanking those of you who purchase weekly subscriptions in advance, as it helps me TREMENDOUSLY with planning for the season. Subscribing in advance to receive fresh flower bouquets each week might seem like a big commitment to some, but every single subscription I get in advance of the upcoming growing season makes it that much easier for me to plan how many of each flower variety I’m going to need to keep up with individual demand.

What is the weather going to be like this season?

A very wet Valerie after getting caught in a downpour while tending the garden.

This is the part of flower farming where all of the careful planning I’ve done for the year can sometimes end up being all for naught. Obviously I can’t control the weather, so I essentially have to treat it as a non-factor and tend to my garden year-round as if the conditions are perfect for growing. Spoiler: they often aren’t! Dickson weather is…interesting. Sometimes I think I must be in a microclimate, because the weatherman never seems to be correct (I’m sure many of you fellow Tennesseans can relate, lol). While I can do some amount of planning in advance around things like record highs and lows for the month or rainfall averages each season, at the end of the day, you just never know what mother nature is gonna throw at you. And unfortunately, I have the daunting task of trying to figure out how to have a plethora of flowers each week throughout the growing season when dealing with factors like this that are our of my control

What flower varieties and colors do my customers want to see more or less of this season?

A lovely couple enjoying our first date night on the farm.

Because we serve customers, businesses and markets all over the greater Nashville area, as well as Dickson county, we have to consider the varying tastes of all kinds of different people and what’s currently “trending” in different local markets. Will vibrantly colored flowers with sharp hues of purple and red be in this year, or will soft pink and yellow pastels be all the rage? Do people still love zinnias, or should I cut back on how many different varieties I have available next year? Are they wanting more or less snapdragons? These are the kinds of things I have to consider when planning what to plant each season.

So, to answer the question…

"Don't you usually do that in spring, or do you look at those all the time?"

…the truth is that I’m never quite finished planning!

Our growing season usually last around 245 days, which is between 34 and 35 weeks to plan for. This leaves me with just a handful of weeks out of the year during the winter months to really sit down and devote time to planning my growing seasons, and barely any time to do so in between (and I used to think planning lessons when I was a biology teacher was hard, lol)!

Also, because I want the most premium flowers for my customers, I’m always trying to find new and different flowers that will work in this climate, so I often run trials on new flower varieties to see how they will do. Sometimes these are successes and sometimes these are large failures, but pushing the limits to try to grow more spectacular flowers is one of my favorite parts of flower farming. So, next time you see me working with a catalogue, pen and paper at a market, it may look like I’m just daydreaming, but in reality I’m working hard to bring you and all of my future middle TN customers the best cut flower bouquets I can!

Planning for the Season