When I first got into flower farming, I immediately ordered myself a couple hundred corms (the proper term for the “bulb” that produces ranunculus and anemones) and thought I’d just pop them in bulb crates in my basement in February to start and then set them outside when the spring weather warmed. That plan was a total flop. The plants were sickly, and the blooms stunted and deformed.

Anemones and ranunculus like a very long, cool establishment period to develop a robust root system and lots of foliage to support an explosion of blooms in the few months of cool spring weather around here. After several seasons of growing these beauties in zone 6b and 7, in my opinion, only those planted in the ground in the autumn and protected through the winter really produce enough high-quality blooms to make them a profitable crop. We typically have anemones starting to bloom in our hoop house in late January, and ranunculus coming along a little later when the daylight hours lengthen, usually in late February. Steady production for sales runs from March to May. This year’s been a bit different thanks to the intensity of the winter cold, but this hopefully isn’t the norm. Hopefully.

A hoop house is very handy to have when growing anemones and ranunculus. But even if you don’t have a hoop house, you can still produce a lovely crop of these flowers with some carefully engineered low tunnels (or “caterpillars”) out in the field. The low tunnel concept was originally popularized by Eliot Coleman for winter veggies, but low tunnels work just as well for flowers. It took a couple (frustrating) years to figure out how to build these to withstand fierce wind and heavy snow. We finally have the formula down and our low tunnels can take just about anything.

We build these inexpensive structures with half-inch metal electrical conduit from Lowes, a hoop bender, greenhouse plastic, tomato twine, and Agribon fabric. If you’re a subscriber to Growing for Market, there was an article a few issues back about how Tony at Bare Mountain Flowers builds his. Tony is a wiz at building and inventing. We based our design off his and then tweaked it with metal hoops and a few other adjustments to withstand our heavy snows. We’ll be demonstrating how to build low tunnels at some of our workshops this spring.

A great rule of thumb for any crop is to think about ordering for next year when the current season’s crop is finishing up. Therefore, anemones and ranunculus corms should be ordered in early summer. My favorite supplier is Gloeckner. They are a large wholesale supplier with high minimums. If you want to try a small batch first before committing to a big crop, a quick online search will yield several retail suppliers for ordering smaller quantities.

For ranunculus, I’m especially fond of the Le Belle series for our climate here. We’ve also been trialing the Amandine series in smaller quantities over the past two seasons. This series has been bred to withstand a bit more heat before going into dormancy in May or June. However, it seems this breeding has made it harder for Amandine to grow as well through the cold of the winter months so the plants are weaker than the Le Belles overall. Therefore there’s been no increase in production by having a longer harvest window. Amandine does seem to be coming up with some unique colors though so we’ll keep trying them.

For anemones, we’ve had great success with the Galilee series. This series has the ever-popular white face with the black eye, sometimes called the panda anemone. The plants are super productive, amazingly tough, and the stem length is outstanding at 18 inches plus. We’ve also grown the Jerusalem series in the past but have since switched to Galilee entirely as the plants are just so tough and productive.

Planting of both anemones and ranunculus ideally takes place in the first half of October but can happen as late as mid-November for abundant spring blooms in our region. We soak and pre-sprout the corms per the directions sent by Gloeckner with the order.

If you’ve been following along here on the blog, you already know we’ve gone through several intense “polar vortex” spells this winter, making it one of the coldest and snowiest on record. The temperatures routinely dipped to the single digits and the wind chills were often well below zero. There were many days too when the sky was cloudy, greatly limiting the available light and solar gain inside the structures. I was fearful that the ranunculus and anemones wouldn’t survive these harsh frigid conditions (and that the low tunnels would collapse under the weight of the snow, but they didn’t). I’m here to say, these babies are TOUGH! In fact, I’m expecting a bumper crop this spring.

Both the plants in the hoop house and the low tunnels have been kept under a double layer of Agribon fabric during the coldest stretches of the winter. The fabric is taken off on warmer days so the plants can get the maximum light. Watering and fertilizing with a cocktail of fish emulsion, kelp, and compost tea has been limited to when temperatures were going to be above 25F at night for at least three days (that’s only happened twice all winter!) so growth has been a bit limited by the lack of water and nutrients. Ideally both crops should be watered deeply and fertilized once a week when they’re actively growing. These crops love to soak up water and nutrients. Anemones in particular love a deep drink.

Weed management is a crucial key to a highly productive crop. If it’s warm enough in the tunnels and hoop house for the ranunculus and anemones to grow, it’s warm enough for the weeds. Weeding in the hoop house is not that hard and actually kind of nice on a winter day when it’s warm inside and cold outside.

But weeding the low tunnels is really tricky since you have to kneel on the ground in the snow or mud. We’d struggled to keep up with the weeds until this season, when we’ve started using a new product called FloraFlow, which is black plastic with pre-punched holes that are perfectly spaced and sized for growing ranunculus and anemones. This weed barrier has been superb at suppressing weeds and no doubt key to it looking like one of the best crops to date in the low tunnels. I think the black plastic has also kept the soil warmer through the cold snaps. That’s great in the winter but a problem once it gets hot outside so we’ll be covering the plastic with straw as things heat up.

For growers who have not tried either of these crops yet, I would highly recommend starting out with just anemones. They are able to withstand cold better than ranunculus, and they have a longer bloom window than ranunculus, making it easier to get a profitable number of stems while you fine-tune the mechanisms for keeping them happy in our cold winters. Once you’ve tried your hand at anemones and feel confident, add ranunculus.

Both crops fizzle out when the temperatures get in the 70s. Usually plants are done producing by mid-May. If we’re lucky, we can eek out a couple dozen stems for weddings until the first weekend of June. I really love it when the peonies and ranunculus overlap. Pure designer bliss!

So we thought, “Hey, why not put on a workshop at the end of the season? Ya know, to celebrate!” And so we are! It’s going to be such a memorable two days, full of locally-grown flowers (of course), laughter, good food, good coffee, great cocktails, and a hefty dose of realistic lessons and pure inspiration alike. When I close my eyes and visualize what this all will look and feel like, I get a little breathless. I am so very excited!
The workshop will take place at the Love ‘n Fresh Flowers Farm and the incredible Woodlands Estate in Philadelphia. Learn about all we have planned over on the official Seasonal Bouquet Project blog post. You should really come join us! But don’t delay in signing up. We’re already 3/4 full!!

Harvest hellebores when they’re mature.

The showy petals of a hellebore “bloom” are actually not petals at all, but rather something called sepals. They serve as protection for the flower part which are actually at the center of the showy sepals, consisting of a cluster of finely textured stamens and rather small and insignificant petals (in the photo above, the ruffled green at the center are the petals). Once the flower is fertilized, the stamens and petals are shed, and a seed pod starts to form at the center of the sepals.

To get hellebores to last in floral arrangements, use ones that have their seed pods forming/formed. The more developed the seed pod, the sturdier the hellebore will be. This is because the sepals become stiff and waxy as the seed pod develops, which helps them resist wilting. A really mature hellebore can actually hold up beautifully out of water for a day or more. They’re great for boutonnieres and hair flowers.

Can you spot the hellebores that are almost ready to harvest and the ones that aren’t?

My finished design from Ariella’s class.

Let’s face it. Weddings are expensive as a whole. A lot of couples are suffering from sticker shock after just a few meetings with potential vendors. It’s one of the things I like least about this industry. It’s also a good reason couples need to sit down at the start of the planning process and really prioritize what’s important to them and what’s not. Some may choose to have a high-end caterer because they’re foodies. Some may choose to have the most killer band because they love to rock out. Some may choose a big expensive venue because they love being surrounded by all their friends and family. Some may choose to have an elite florist because they adore flowers. These are my people!

But even flower lovers still have to decide what budget to create for their wedding decor. Since most couples have never shopped around before for wedding flowers (and hopefully never will again!), it can seem like a foreign idea, figuring out what’s a fair price for bouquets, centerpieces, and all the other pretty pieces that make the day special. There is certainly a huge range of pricing for wedding florals.

I like to compare the process of choosing a florist and floral budget to shopping for a chair…

You can buy a chair at Walmart.
It will be quite affordable. Probably downright cheap. It will be made of synthetic materials, likely plastic or compressed sawdust. It will look like so many other chairs in the world. It’s nothing special, but it will certainly suffice if all you want is a place to put your butt. Company that comes to your house will probably not notice the chair and almost certainly won’t admire it. Sometimes Walmart is all you can afford and that’s okay. (I say this with real heart since I grew up in a Walmart household, and we were very grateful for affordable goods.)

You can buy a chair at Ikea.
It will be more expensive than Walmart, but generally won’t break the piggy bank. It will be the product of the imagination of a savvy designer, but still made of standard materials and mass produced in a factory. It will probably look stylish in the moment, and company that comes to your house might notice it and even ask where you got it. They could go get the exact same thing. That’s cool. I have a serious love affair with Ikea for this very reason. It’s decidedly reliable mass design.

And then you can buy a chair from a master craftsman, the type that often seems to live in Maine.
It’s expensive. But you greatly value artistry and having something so truly unique. The chair will be made out of hundred year old solid oak. The craftsman will have walked his woodland, knowing each tree in it, and picked the perfect specimen for the project. He will have cut the tree down himself and milled the lumber by hand. He will have waited patiently for the lumber to cure to avoid any cracks or flaws. He will then spend hours sawing, whittling, carving, sanding and joining the pieces together. It becomes a one-of-a-kind piece of art. It couldn’t be duplicated if he tried. When company comes to your house, they notice it immediately. You feel proud to have it and love sharing its story with your guests. After all, you really enjoyed getting to know the craftsman who took such care in creating it. It’s a cherished piece. It makes the room. It’s timeless. It’s worth every pretty penny.

It’s up to you to choose where to buy your chair flowers and why. All the options are valid. The results, however, are drastically different. Use a Walmart florist and you’ll get a poof of babys breath and standard roses, not dissimilar to bouquets in every grocery store across America. Use an Ikea florist and you’ll get a trendy bouquet of garden roses and maybe some succulents, not dissimilar to bouquets popping up on Pinterest every minute. Use a master craftsman and you’ll get a bouquet that is grown specifically for you, crafted with dozens of varieties of blooms and foliage you may have never even known existed. It’s exquisite. It’s truly one-of-a-kind. There are no Pins that look just like it, and you certainly would never find it in a grocery store. You’ll love sharing its unique story with your guests who will be commenting continually on how beautiful your flowers are and how “you” they are.

Because they are.