Whatever the weather, the flower show goes on
The one thing that being in the Horticultural industry for 32 years, and a Flower farmer for 11 has taught me, is that you can’t control the weather.
With Climatic conditions changing, and extremes of weather of all kinds expected this is going to affect farmers more and more, and yet, the show must go on, if our businesses are to be sustainable as flower farms, and if our florists are going to trust us to provide blooms.
Here are 4 ways that flower farmers are already helping to mitigate weather extremes to ensure there are some blooms whatever the weather.
1) Planting more perennials
Perennials stay in the ground from year to year, and so often have deeper root systems than Annuals, meaning they can find water for themselves. By finding out which Perennials will grow well on your soil, and are suited to your conditions, you can have flowers even in drought. Rachel Siegfried’s excellent The Cut Flower Sourcebook - Exceptional perennials and Woody plants for cutting gives lots of ideas for what might work for you.
2) Planting hedges
Conveniently, lots of hedging plants are also great foliage or even flowers for cutting. Beech, Pittosporum, Privet and Viburnum plus conifers, are mainstays of field foliage, and also protect crops from the prevailing winds. By siting polytunnels and greenhouses behind hedges too, storm damage can be minimised. Fence panels are a lot likely to be blown into the next field.
3) Having a diverse set of crops
This is obviously the complete opposite to how farming has been mostly carried out for the last 50 years. A large mono crop has benefits of economies of scale. But the downside of that is that if you only have one crop, and it is ruined by the weather, that’s it for the year, all your harvest and profit ruined. By growing many crops alongside each other not only are you able to harvest all through the season, but Wind, drought or torrential rain, will tend to only destroy some, not all of your year’s work.
4) Undercover Space
and lastly, to prevent too many losses, undercover space is at a premium. Whether that’s extra greenhouses for propagation, Polytunnels or Glasshouses for growing in or Commercial structures for protection, some undercover space is going to be needed for extending the season, and protecting crops from damage particularly from rain.
