2017 MWFC Farm Crops
Ranunculus (left) and anemone corms (right) before being planted.
It is officially spring and Modern West Floral Co. is excited to announce that we are in Phase II of our own flower production! We have a mixture of bulbs, anemone and ranunculus corms, tubers, perennials and over 60 varieties of annuals that we are trialing on the farm this year. (Our annual list and estimated flower availability sheet can be found here.)
The annuals you'll see from our farm this year include ageratum, amaranthus, black ammi, white dill, aster, basil, bells of ireland, bupleurum, calendula, celosia, centaurea, cerinthe, chinese forget-me-not, delphinium, dianthus, digitalis, dusty miller, gomphrena, hard red winter wheat, ruby silk grass, gypsophila, ornamental kale, larkspur, lisianthus, love in a puff vine, nasturtium, nigella, orache, phlox, poppies! salvia, scabiosa, snapdragon, stock, strawflower, sunflower, sweet peas, verbena, and zinnia.
Tiny tiny snapdragon seeds being sown with needle nose tweezers.
With limited space and a limited budget we transformed our studio space at SAW (Studio for Arts and Works) into a germination and seedling nursery. Thanks to our friends Casey and Kirsten at Wild Mountain Seeds we got a great deal on hand-me-down seed starting supplies. For the germination station we set up a 10' heat mat on top of our cooler with the thermostat set at 65/70 degrees. The ideal germination temperature for our first round of starts varies so we chose a median temperature. We used 72 cell flats for most of our plants but we also got a few 50 deep cell flats for plants like lisianthus that don't like root disturbance. For our seedling rack we assembled 2 standard 4' wide wire racks with 4 shelves spaced 20" apart and 2 fluorescent workshop light boxes with a cool and warm bulb per shelf. With this set up we have enough space for 24 trays to be under lights. Let's hope it's enough!
Our "germination station". 10' heat pad with thermostat set at 65/70 degrees.
Our seedling rack. These snapdragons germinated in just 4 days!