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There is that old saying ” the more things change the more they stay the same”. That’s sort of the way we are at the moment. In the spring we added a new lavender to the mix Hidcote Superior and it’s doing well nice bright bluish lavender and we will add more Phenomenal this month. What’s changing is we are adapting and as we have time we are making the farm more od a garden than an actual farm. We will still be farming but we invite people to come to out place and just enjoy.

LGBTQ+ Friendly.

We are doing the Garden Tour this Saturday July 8 from 9am to 1pm, or whenever decide to leave. This is our Third Year and we try and make it a bit different every year. This year we have a new to us restored 1952 Ford 8N tractor that you can take pics on or around. We have shade areas to sit, a buddhist meditation area, lots of parking and even a draw for our products. Hope to see you here. The sign will be out at the road – 891 66th Ave, Grand Forks, BC.

We will be moving in a new direction. Yes we will still have lavender and we will be expanding our field as well. BUT we will be growing something new, at least new for us, Ornamental Grasses.

SETARIA italica MAX. Ornamental grass with solid, semi-pendulous bristles on long stems. Used in mixed bouquets, fresh or dried.

Muhly Grass Ruby. Has an impressive late summer display of see-through amber-pink flower spikes. This is the one Muhly grass with showy pink flowering plumes that can be grown in USDA zones 5 to 9.

Millet Jade Princess, 24-30 in/61-76 cm. Intense chartreuse foliage and rich brown pollenless panicles have a controlled, compact, mounded shape. Perfect for large containers and landscapes.

Juncus Spiralis Corkscrew Rush. If you like unusual indoor plants, you’ll want to add this spectacular ornamental to your collection. Stunning on its own, corkscrew rush also adds some sizzle among a display of leafy and flowering plants. In fact, those curly-Q stems are sometimes used in florists’ bouquets.

Melinis Savanah, From Africa named for its deep red panicles, this lovely ornamental grass begins as a very round clump of blue green foliage about 25cm (10″) wide. Then, in mid-summer, the flowering stalks begin to appear, starting red, but fading to pink and then to creamy silver at maturity.

Sorghum Black Broomcorn. Sorghum Black Amber, commonly known as Texas Black Amber Molasses or Broom Corn, is a long loved heirloom that produces 6′ to 8′ stalks that feature black hulls that cover amber seeds. 

Sweetgrass.  fragrant grass with long, satiny leaves. Also known as vanillagrass, mannagrass and holy grass, it is well known to many Indigenous people in Canada and the United States as a material for baskets, as well as a scent, medicine and smudge. We will use this in our smudge sticks but also sell some as plants.

As they say – TTTThat’s All Folks!

Our old tractor a 1950 Ferguson TE20 decided to call it quits. The starter failed and we were unable to secure a replacement.

So we decided to replace ” Christine” with something a bit newer. We acquired a 1952 Ford 8N. It’s been redone for us and although we are still waiting for the rebuild carb, to wire in the front and real lights and to replace some minor wiring that’s 70 years old it’s good to go.

The benefit to going to this particular tractor is that parts are readily available at pretty reasonable cost considering they made hundreds of thousands and many are still in active service.

That’s about it for now. Soon we will be starting to get ready to plant more Lavender.

We had a good plan for spring but them. We decided to change it.

We have deicide to expand our Phenomenal field and also to add a second type of lavender, Lavandula angustifolia ‘Hidcote Superior super Blue’ a sweetly fragrant, uniformly compact plant and blooms with darkly colored lavender-blue flower spikes in late spring.

We were lucky to be able to have our order filled after our supplier’s cut off date. We hope this will add a bit of variety to our field.

We also wanted to add something different to our Nursery end of things. We will still do lilac and Staghorn Sumac but we will add some specialty ornamental grasses to see how that goes. We need to utilize our unheated greenhouse space more and grass grows quickly.

The types we will grow are Melinis Savannah, Setaria Max, Juncus Spiralis, Jade Princess Millet, Muhly Grass Ruby and the one that I personally want to grow Black Broom corn.

Black Broom Corn looks like corn but has a large seed head that can be used in flower arranging or as a plant to block out a view or as a windbreak.

That’s about it for now, With luck the snow will melt the river won’t run too high and our trees will have a bit more of an undisturbed stange spring and summer.

We are going to add a new Lavender to our farm to add to the Phenomenal we already grow. We will grow it ourselves from seed that we acquired from another farmer in Nova Scotia now that we have the greenhouse space to do it. Once we plant we will sell what’s left to the public.

Lavandula Angustifolia “Krajova“. A beautiful blue-flowered, long-lived cultivar from Northern Europe known as Country Lavender or Czech Lavender. High essential oil content of which the fragrance has a mellow quality and flowers to 3 feet high. 

I’ve been taking an extension course at Michigan State University on Lavender growing production and marketing for the last while. I just finished it today. Like an course some was interesting, some enlightening and some downright boring. In the end I prevailed and managed to pass the 7 tests to complete the Curriculum.

Sometimes an opportunity falls into your lap. About a week ago Michigan State University wanted to split off their Facebook page from their University business page as it was unmanageable. I reached out to one of the Profs and made some suggestions. A couple of other students did the same. They put the three of us together and we managed, to get the job done or almost still a few glitches. The 3 of us who didn’t know each other became the Facebook page admins and the Prof and a postgrad student manage the MSU site. Confused yet? Two of us worked 10-12 hour days to get this done.

So the short of it is the three of us now know each other pretty well and we now co-administer The largest lavender farming page on Facebook with almost 10,000 members.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/lavendergrowers

Fresh Bunches $6.00 each

Wellness Balm $9.00

Hydrosol 100ml $7.50

Essential Oil 10ml $14.95

Sachets $4.00

We have tried to keep our prices down but had to put a modest increase on some products.

July 10 from 4pm to 7 pm.

We will have a draw for some of our Lanna Lavender products as well you can walk around and see what we are doing. You don’t have to be a member of the Garden Club just drop by.

The gate is down the gravel drive, lots of parking, and just past the blue wind barrier.

It’s actually almost 1/2 over. We have been working hard during this rather strange spring. Cold, wet, hot, dry nothing knew what was going on. Our orchard had trees that did not even bloom and I haven’t figured out what the heck happened. While at the same time some trees are full of fruit set. Doesn’t seem to be variety either. One apple full – one not much same with the pears. One variety of asian pears did not bloom and yet another kind are all set up good.

Our well works very good even though we have an abundance of rain at least we know when it gets hot, and it will, we won’t be dry again.

We also installed a greenhouse this spring. At least it’s dry inside when it rains and we have propagated most of our own vegetables this year. Speaking of Veg we have put in a field and should have a good crop to sell. A little expansion from our lavender this year. We decided to put off a lavender expansion in favour of food production.

We have planted a lot od Asian veg and look forward to long beans, eggplant, cauliflower, Asian Broccoli and Mellons. We planted almost 75 melon plants.

I’m also trying an experiment. I have propagated almost 100 asparagus plants from seed and am getting a bed ready. We’ll see how it goes it takes 2 to 3 years to grow into a viable crop.

We will open this year for customers for Lavender, Lavender Products and Vegetables. Not sure of what days or times yet. Hope to see you drop by this summer.