Hello In Stitches family! You may have realized by now that Wendy loves gardening. In fact, our blog writer, Ashley, shares in this love of plants. And Erin, our social media manager, has caught the chicken bug!
So, we wanted to share with you a little bit of what we grew this year and then a few tips and tricks as we’re putting our gardens (and our chickens) to bed for winter.
Wendy and Ashley have been inspired by Erin of Floret. If you like flowers at all and haven’t yet found her, you must go now! She is amazing! Here’s her website where she offers free classes (and paid classes that Ashley dreams of), here’s her Instagram, AND you can watch Growing Floret on Magnolia Network. But don’t blame us when you too start growing a cut flower garden.
Ok, enough fan girling, let’s get to it.
Both Wendy and Ashley grew cut flower gardens this year – to varying degrees of success.
Wendy’s cut flower garden was so great! She grew some of her favorite flowers like snapdragons and dahlias and has added more strawflowers for next year.
Ashley’s spring garden was amazing – despite the squirrels eating most of the tulips!
Erin grew some amazing frizzle chickens! Have you seen frizzles before? They are just funny looking, but in a really good way!
The term frizzle describes how their feathers grow out rather than in. So you can have a frizzle of any breed of chicken. Erin’s are Polish chickens.
Wendy grew – ok made, but I was trying to stay with the theme – some adorable gardening t-shirts!
(We still have some of these in stock if you need a little garden humor to get you through the dark days of winter!)
We are located all across the country, from South Dakota to Washington to Georgia, so some of these tips and tricks might be good for you and some might not, so if you have any questions, you can reply to this email and we’ll let you know where to find the information!
Tip #1 – Now is the time to plant your spring bulbs!
Who else loves spring flowers? Me too, me too! And we often get asked when is the best time to plant them. So, plant them now until the ground is frozen. Follow the directions on how deep to plant them but honestly, you can ignore how close together they are. Just don’t let them touch.
Your spring self will thank you!
Tip #2 – Winter is like a drought for plants in South Dakota
I know! I can feel you getting ready to hit that reply button, but think about this. When it’s cold outside, but the sun is shining, plants are still doing their thing and their thing needs water. Where is all the water? Frozen as snow. This is especially difficult on shrubs and trees. So, if you don’t have snow covering the ground and you get a few days of bright sunshine, just go out and give your plants a little water. Do that right in the middle of the day so it has time to absorb before the temperatures get too cold.
Tip #3 – If you grow tomatoes, pinch the flowers around August 1st
This is especially good to do if you live in a place with cooler summers, like Western Washington. When you pinch off the flowers, the plant can put all its effort into ripening the fruit that is left on the plant.
Tip #4 – If you have frizzle chickens, they need to be kept warm
Because of the way their feathers grow, they can get colder easier and they can freeze to death well before chickens with regular growing feathers.
Tip #5 – Feed chickens corn in the winter, not the summer
Even frozen corn is not good for chickens in the summer. It takes a lot of effort for them to digest corn and that warms them up. So, only give them corn treats when it’s cooler.
So, what did you grow this year? Whether it was vegetables, flowers, or weeds, we hope you had a wonderful summer. We love this time of year, but I’m not sure we’re ready for the snow to start falling. What about you? Let us know!