Fall Flowers

It is time to think about planting fall flowers, both the ones that will grow now and those that need to be planted before the cold to come up in spring. In warm climates, you can grow flowers year round. Some are cool weather flowers while others need to be cold stratified to bloom in spring. Get them all in the ground by October in Texas.

Violas are beautiful fall flowers. They enjoy the cooler weather and do well in Texas in fall as well as early spring.

Fall Flowers - 8/21-8/27/2023

Monday, August 21, 2023

Here comes the sun right over the green shed shack where we once lived for almost a month out here on our farm.

Good morning, fellow gardeners! I have talked a lot about fall garden vegetables but today, let's talk about giving the garden some color with fall flowers you can plant. Order your flower seeds now so you can get them planted by next week!

I have a lot of seed orders to fill this morning. David wants some cookies baked. I need to start planting my ginger and my fall potatoes. There is too much to do and on top of it all, our kitchen trash can is no longer opening and closing. Something is going on with the foot pedal thingy, I guess. Anyway, I just ordered us a new one. Hopefully, it will get here tomorrow. I still have to go outside and feed all of the animals.

I got dressed and went out early. Matt was feeding some of the animals so I fed the guineas and the rabbits. He took care of the chickens which freed me up to plant a few fall things. I went on out into the back 40 and discovered that five of my 15 sweet potato plants are completely gone. Not dead, but GONE! I am sure it is gophers since our temporary outdoor folks are gone except for the two teens that we enjoy having. The green flags are still there but the plants have been pulled under. I just couldn't believe it.

I then checked on my last peanut plant and it is still there. Some of my peanut plants may have been pulled underground by gophers, but some of them were replanted on the same day that bed was weeded and as far as I know, gophers don't bring plants back up and replant them as a service.

I moved some of my vinyl and cloth pots around over by my greenhouse. Then I planted some potatoes, some ginger, and some peanuts in the pots. I have plenty more cloth pots to fill with dirt. I cut some of the potatoes in the house in half and I plan to plant those tomorrow. Also, I had one sweet potato vine ready to cut which I did. Then I put it in water to start rooting.

I cleaned up and got to work, opening the store. I found out that our seed counter called in. Then I fed the fish and cleaned out the pond. I refilled it. The pond is looking amazingly clear after the filter was serviced last week. While I was taking care of the pond, our first customers of the day showed up. Then about two hours later, a family showed up to do some seed shopping for fall flowers and vegetables. During that visit, our mailman showed up with about 20 large envelopes and six boxes, all for the business.

In between customers, I have been filling seed orders all day. It is now 3:10pm and I still have a bunch left to do. It is currently 104° Fahrenheit and I hate the heat as I am sure you know by now.

This evening, the sun went down at 8:10pm so that is when I went out to put away the chickens for the night. After that task was accomplished, I decided to stroll out back and have a look at my sweet potato plants. Now this morning, five were missing. Tonight, three more are gone. So the stupid gophers took them instead of waiting about six weeks. I wonder if there will be any left in the morning. I am so disgusted.

Fall Flowers - Oh, The Colors!

This is the herb, Calendula. We have many varieties of it in fall colors. Sometimes herbs make good fall flowers.

Around this time of year, you start seeing all of the red, orange, and yellow fall flowers in pots at the grocery store. Mums, Black Eyed Susans, Colorful daisies, violas, pansies, petunias, coneflowers, amaranth, Cock's Comb, dahlias, zinnias, goldenrod, colorful sunflowers, and snapdragons are there to decorate your gardens and your front porches.

We have the seeds for many of these flowers but not mums (chrysanthemums). Basically, get some garden pots out and order seeds for fall flowers in fall shades of browns, coppers, golds, peach, apricot, purple, reds, yellows, and oranges to make your yard look festive. Put some in the front to give your home curb appeal.

Here is a link to purchase our calendula seeds. Calendula is a medicinal herb used to treat cuts, bruises, burns, diaper rash, and minor skin infections. Calendula has edible flower petals so you can add them to a salad or use them to color cheese as a substitute for saffron. In the garden, it is useful to plant among your asparagus, tomatoes, and carrots to attract the pests from those plants so your vegetables are left alone. It also attracts beneficial insects that you want in your garden. It is great for companion planting.

Tuesday, August 22, 2023

There are a lot of my sweet potatoes missing. I started out with 30. I am down to seven and they have not been growing for 3 months yet.

I woke up at 5am wondering if I have any sweet potatoes left. It is still dark outside so I won't know for a while. I wonder if I should dig any up. I paid a lot of money for 30 vines and now I have seven plants left. They are not supposed to be ready to harvest until October 1 and I only have seven left. That just amazes me.

I got out there and all seven of my sweet potatoes are still out there. Here is my 2023 sweet potato journey. Lol! I had never grown them before and had no idea it would get so complicated. So much money for some stupid gophers.

Matt showed up early and helped me get the animals fed. I wanted to move five white chickens out of the small hen house into the kennel in the big hen house. I prepped it with wood shavings, clean water, and food. Then he caught five, one at a time and got them in there. Then he and I cleaned out the nesting box areas of all three hen houses and replaced it all with clean wood shavings. After that I was a filthy mess and cleaned up for work. I got the store open at 9:30am and we are closing today at 3pm for an event. Also it should be very windy with rain by then. The clouds are moving in now and it is windy but the real wind is supposed to start at noon.

Nacho and his team are here working outside, mowing and setting up some stuff for David. Our two teen helpers are here. They worked out in the back with Brendon on something while we were cleaning the hen houses. Now they are in Production working. We have all of our employees here today and I am getting orders done.

Rain clouds have moved in and the wind is blowing. We still have no rain but our friends in Leakey got rain last night.

It started raining around 12:18pm and it has been raining on and off for the past two hours. Nacho just left for the day but will be back tomorrow to hook up some air conditioners for the animals and whatever else David has for him to take care of out here on the farm.

Around 2:30pm, the internet went out as it always does when it rains so I finally packed it up and went in the house.

The man responsible for putting on Heaven's Gates and Hell's Flames at The Country Church in Marion, TX before the play began. Next April, he will bring it to our church in San Antonio.

David and I and some of friends decided to visit The Country Church in Marion, Texas to see Heaven's Gates Hell's Flames. David is sponsoring this play at Freedom Church in San Antonio next April so we took the pastor and his wife over to experience it firsthand. We rode over in our truck in the rain. We stopped at a little cafe for dinner and then went to the church. It was pretty good but David and I first experienced this play when we pastored our first church in Michigan back in 1995.

We got home close to 9:30pm. Our friends still had to drive back to San Antonio. Amazingly, the rain was still coming down a bit out here.

Fall Flowers - Sunflowers

Sunflowers are always cheery.

If you live in warm Texas, you can order some sunflower seeds that will grow with gorgeous browns, reds, oranges, and yellows. You will probably want to plant them right in the ground. Here is the link to all of the sunflower seeds at David's Garden Seeds®.

Wednesday, August 23, 2023

We welcomed the rain for the second day in a row.

Good morning. I got up at 5:30am and let Sue Ellen and Pamela out and it was humid. I let Ethel sleep and then the rain poured. I let the girls back in and then Ethel decided to go out. Fortunately, the rain stopped so she could go out and do her business. Now everyone is in and I am enjoying a cup of coffee.

David is awake and telling me what he wants to do for our next advertising campaign. I just don't know how to go about executing it in Shopify. Fun times.

Nacho and Seth were here all morning and part of the afternoon working on outdoor things. I made up four dozen eggs for sale in the store today.

The rain came down for several hours, stopping and going. Then it appeared to be done. At 2pm, it came down hard again. Nacho and Seth packed it in and left. All four dozen eggs were sold today in the store and I have a dozen left at the house.

At 5pm, I went out and collected nine eggs, most of them white. I put the bucket on the kennel to clean their water out. An Ameraucana flew up and knocked it over, breaking eight eggs! I could not believe it. So I brought in one egg. I learned a valuable lesson.

It rained some overnight.

Fall Flowers

This gorgeous zinnia has bits of orange on magenta. It is unusual.

Dahlias and zinnias come in some gorgeous colors that will work in fall. They will keep growing until the first frost. You can put them in the ground but it might last longer if you put them in pots. If it gets cold too early, you can move the pots inside overnight. The dark purple, reds, oranges, corals, yellows, and magentas will all look great on your front porch as you welcome autumn.

Here is a beautiful magenta colored zinnia with hints of pink.

Thursday, August 24, 2023

This morning, everything was wet but we did not get quite an inch and a half from Tuesday on. So it felt like we got a lot of rain considering we have not had any in a few months, but it is a lot to us. We need as much as possible. Today, the skies are blue so I think the rain is done.

Our teens are here helping to get seed packets ready to restock the store.am until

Brendon and Matt are replacing our frayed flags out on our gate. It doesn't take much wind and the flags get torn up as usual.

The garlic is packaged and is on the Farm Store shelves.

Our garlic came in and it got all packaged up and put up in the store. I went up and priced it and put all six varieties on the shelves. I then made two social media posts and a vehicle drove up. I thought to myself that was really fast. The couple came from San Antonio looking for vegetable plants. We tried to have fall plants ready but the heat just wouldn't allow it. We could not get the greenhouse to go below 100° the whole summer, even with three big air conditioners.

Anyway, this couple bought some garlic and a few seeds. They used to visit our store when we were in San Antonio. It was a pleasure to see them again and we had a good visit on this hot afternoon.

I got all of the seed orders out except for three. We ran out of a few varieties and as soon as we get those in, I will be sending out those orders. I check every day.

Once the couple left, I started restocking the store with fresh seeds. I only got so far and it was 5:30pm. We close at 5pm. David said he was making chicken strips from scratch today. I closed up and went to the house. It smelled really good in there. The chicken strips were amazing, the best he has ever made. Matt stayed and we had a good time eating those and watching Murder She Wrote. We are in the middle of season three now.

So tomorrow, I need to finish stocking the store for Saturday morning. We will only be open from 9am until noon on Saturdays for now. Our gate will open at 8:45am and will close at 12:15pm.

Fall Flowers

Daisies are my favorites. This one is growing wild on our property.

Today, we will look at black eyed Susans, daisies, asters, marigolds, and coneflowers for the fall. They look nice in pots near your front door as well as on your patio. Daisies come in more than white. Fluffy, colorful asters are perfect in pots. Marigolds don't smell pretty but they look fabulous in all the right colors. Coneflowers have brown centers and make perfect fall flowers.

Asters

Black Eyed Susans (Rudbeckia)

Coneflowers

Daisies

Marigolds

In the spring, we grew marigolds for sale. Plant them among the vegetables in your garden.

Friday, August 25, 2023

We have six varieties of garlic right now but they are going fast. I have shipped out a lot of garlic and sold bags of it to customers in the Farm Store all day long.

Good morning! Happy Friday! It is trash day and I need to get all of my trash out. I should have done that last night but I was tired and hurting from being on my feet most of the day restocking the store. There are so many things I need to do now that we have just a skeleton crew of people. Restocking the store is one of those really big things that has needed to get done. I got a lot done yesterday but we have over 1,200 seed varieties and that is a lot of standing on my feet to get it done.

We got a lot of orders for garlic overnight. It was just incredible plus they are continuing to come in all day long. We have also had several customers in today at the Farm Store to buy garlic. We are continuing to stock the store, getting it ready for tomorrow. We will be opening for the first time since June on a Saturday. We will be open from 9am to noon. Come by and get your garlic for fall as well as your fall seeds. We are having a 25% off sale on the seeds. That does not extend to the garlic. The garlic is just too expensive this year to put on sale.

The heat is just horrible. Right now, it is almost 6pm and it is 102°. We are still working, getting ready for opening the store tomorrow morning at 9am. We are closing at 12pm so I can eat lunch and not feel sick.

I took this right after checking on what is left of my sweet potatoes. I still have 7 out of 30 left.

Fall Flowers

Johnny Jump Ups and violas are growing in cool weather in front of the tall snapdragons in the flower bed by the Farm Store.

We plant small petunias, pansies, and violets in the fall and they do very well in cooler weather. They all tend to grow shorter so you may want to plant them in pots on your front porch and use the tall flowers like snapdragons as a garden border.

Pansies

Petunias

Viola (Violets)

Saturday, August 26, 2023

Hello from the hen house!

Hello and Happy Saturday. We set the gate to open at 8:45am today. I got up early and went over to the store before 7am to feed the fish and price some of the seeds before we open. Then I rushed out back and fed all of the animals. By the time I was done, I was totally soaked with sweat pouring off of me. Yes, it is that humid today.

I rushed back inside and got cleaned up, dressed, and made up. I opened the store and no customers. So I hung up more seeds in the Farm Store and started pulling orders. Soon, the first customers came. Then, came several more. The gate was supposed to close at noon. However, it closed at 11:45pm. I had to open the gate for some and then open it again when they left. The last person showed up at 12:05pm when I was letting some other customers out of the gate. So much for my eating lunch on time. By the time I got back to the house, I was starving. I grabbed the last two frozen meals and nuked them. Then I took one over to David in Fulfillment and went back to the house to eat mine.

I believe we will change our hours to 10am to 2pm instead. Hopefully, Matt will be able to reset the gate for us. It is tricky.

The interesting thing is that we did not sell one sack of garlic today in the Farm Store. I thought that was so strange considering we are already halfway through the garlic. It is moving fast through the online orders.

I made two containers of my homemade laundry soap today. I feel so accomplished. Grating the soap takes a long time.

This afternoon, I made some more of my laundry soap. I had all of the ingredients sitting on my kitchen table for a long time so today was the day. I have two containers of it.

This evening, we had a Walmart deli pizza and it was good. We turned on Svengoolie but it was high school football instead. So we rented the newest Mission Impossible through our TV and it was very good. We meant to go see that in the theater but we never made it.

The sunsets lately have been very pretty.

Fall Flowers

Amaranth, Celosia, Dianthus, and Gomphrena all have flowers that are not typical. They look very cool and can be easily mixed in with regular looking flowers for a show stopping fall flowers display. Don't forget the flowering Kale!

Yes, there are non-edible kale flowers that are just beautiful. They will look stunning in your fall garden.

Red Crane Kale flowers are stunning fall flowers.

Amaranth

Cock's Comb (Celosia)

Dianthus

Gomphrena

Kale Flowers

Sunday, August 27, 2023

Good Sunday morning! It is still dark outside as I type this. I checked and a lot of the garlic was ordered last night. It is truly going faster than I thought it would. We just packed it up on Thursday afternoon and we have already gone through half of it in just three days! If you want garlic bulbs from David's Garden Seeds®, don't wait.

I took the three dogs outside this morning and it is hot and humid even in the dark. Soon it will be time to go out and feed the animals.

I took care of the animals, fed the fish, pulled the garlic and cover crops for the overnight orders and put them in Fulfillment for tomorrow.

We went to church and then had some brisket from the freezer for lunch.

It is 6pm and 104° and I just got back in. I collected only 12 eggs. Seven were white from the Leghorns. No blue ones. We have air conditioners on the chickens but it is just too hot.

Someone was selling homemade menudo up in Poteet so we got some and will have it for dinner over rice. However, I am still full from lunch so we won't eat until later. I believe the heat has a lot to do with it.

Fall Flowers

Each fall, we grow some snapdragons. The smaller blooms grow tall and then something happens along about February that is not supposed to happen in Texas and that never used to happen. We got some horrifying cold snap along with snow and/or ice. We then cover the snapdragons with some of that white garden "cloth" until the horribleness is gone and very magically, the snapdragons are okay and live and bloom until May or June when it is just too hot for snapdragons.

Below is a link for our snapdragon seeds.

Beautiful snapdragons love the cooler weather.

Snapdragons

Return from Fall Flowers to Year Five On The Farm

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