“Ahh… do you guys get tornadoes down here?” our new worker Peg Sheaffer asked one stormy morning last fall. Now, this is not a question you want to hear down here in Texas, for obvious reasons. Peg is a grower in Wisconsin who had come down to Texas to work with us for the winter. She had been down here about 10 days, and Texas was about to give her a real cowboy-sized welcome. “You better look at this,” she said. We went to the door of the greenhouse, and right in front of us the clouds were moving in two different directions – fast! About the time we figured out what it was, a nearby grove of pecan trees started swirling around like they were in a blender, and we could see pieces of roofing tin spinning around in the air. We started running for the packing shed, and hid behind a table just as it hit. It was touch and go for a moment there – Frank said he wasn’t really sure he was going to ride this one out. Shade structures started flying around, and our big greenhouse was shaking and popping like someone was shaking out a rug. Then it was over. Through some miracle, only one greenhouse was damaged. Two greenhouses full of red poinsettias, on either side of the damaged house, came through unharmed.

This was the first tornado that we have ever seen at our farm, and it happened right after we stopped writing for GFM. Maybe it was just a coincidence. But it gets worse. Since we quit writing we have had another tornado (that makes two, and counting), the worst late freeze in the state’s history, a seven-month drought, an historic flood (2 feet of rain!), a plague of grasshoppers, a tropical storm, and to top it off, out of a clear, blue sky, a Texas-sized dust devil that tore up a new greenhouse and carried a huge piece of row cover hundreds of feet in the air, along with the metal T-posts holding it down. Several hundred yards away, the T-posts started raining down on the crew, and the row cover landed on the power lines. Guys were yelling and sparks were flying and… well, you get the picture. It’s been one wild year since we quit writing.
So, we’ve decided to start writing again, hoping this will change our luck. Actually, we’ve been bursting at the seams with stories about all the new stuff we’ve been doing. New growing systems, new markets, and of course lots of new varieties.

Two terrific dianthus
We’ve tried lots of new plants in the past year and it’ll probably take several columns to catch up on all the new varieties. But we will start with our number one favorite this year, hands down. It is called Dianthus ‘Amazon Neon Duo.’ We had a few trial seeds last year, and it was the standout of the season. Amazon dianthus is a new “souped-up” version of a sweet william. And it is definitely neon! It is a 50-50 mix of two colors – a brilliant fuchsia and a scorching hot cherry red. Together they looked too hot to touch! We thought we might have to cordon off the area because it looked radioactive. These things are bright! At first we wondered if the colors weren’t just a bit too “clashing”, so to speak. As in, what would Martha Stewart think? They definitely didn’t go with chartreuse! But people loved them. They were a big selling item at our farm market, and everyone who saw them in the field wanted plants. These are definitely a hit.

The plants couldn’t be easier to grow. They grow just like any sweet william, except that they are a lot more vigorous, and the leaves are really big and glossy dark green. It’s a nice plant all around. The best part is that they don’t need any winter chilling to bloom, so you can treat them as an annual. But they are tough, too. We set our plants out in late fall, and they grew all winter long. They were very cold hardy. Then, on the last day of February, the most wicked Texas Blue Norther that we’d seen in many years came barreling through, and the temperature plummeted from 78 degrees to 10 degrees the next night. All our plants looked great , but were actively growing, and couldn’t take the severe drop in temperature. We lost a lot of plants that are normally hardy. Everything looked like it had been scorched with a flame weeder – even under row cover. All our dianthus was killed to the ground, including the Amazon. Our Gipsy dianthus struggled for a few weeks and just gave up. We had to replace it all. But the Amazon grew back, and we were picking it six weeks later! Even after growing back, it had stems 18 inches long, and some were 2 feet. Some of the flower heads were 8 inches across.
We started the seed in 128-cell trays and went directly to the field from that. The seed starts easily, with no special directions, and we set the plants out in about six weeks. We put the plants in a 4-foot-wide bed, four rows to the bed, with a 9-inch spacing down the row. Grow them just like any sweet william. Because this is an annual, there is a possibility that you might be able to successively seed these to extend your bloom time. We’ll be experimenting with that this year.
There are no special post-harvest requirements with this plant. All dianthus are ethylene sensitive, so avoid situations of ethylene exposure, but even with standard flower preservative we got a good 10-day vase life. We love this plant. The only disappointment that we could find was that it doesn’t have a very strong fragrance.

There is another new dianthus worth mentioning. That is dianthus ‘Bouquet Purple.’ This dianthus looks a lot like the dianthus ‘Gipsy Giant’ that we grow and have recommended in the past. The flower is actually hot pink, not purple, and about an inch across. It has a nice clove fragrance. It grows about 18 to 24 inches tall, with clusters of flowers at the tips of the stems. The stems are thinner than Gipsy, but still sufficiently strong. Bouquet purple can be grown as an annual. Although it is a little less refined that the vegetatively propagated Gipsy dianthus, this makes a nice seed grown alternative for folks that don’t want to invest in plants.

The seed for both ‘Bouquet Purple’ and ‘Amazon’ is a bit pricey, running about $50 per 1000 seed, but it is well worth it. Seed is available from most seed companies.

Early larkspur
Another plant that was new to us this year is the Larkspur series ‘Messenger’. This series has apparently been around for several years, but had not been listed in any catalog that we know of until this year. It is an early type of larkspur, blooming two weeks earlier that the Giant Imperial or QIS strains.

This appears to be a different species of larkspur than the Giant Imperials. There is a fair bit of confusion about larkspur taxonomy, at least in the catalogs, and things can get pretty complicated. Originally, all larkspurs were classified as Delphiniums, and to the best of our knowledge the standard larkspur was known as D. consolida. The Messenger series larkspur is a type of “Hyacinth-flowered” larkspur, which was known as D. ajacis. Then both larkspurs were moved and given their own genus, Consolida, and this is where it gets confusing. Allan Armitage, in his book Specialty Cut Flowers, lists two species,Consolida orientalis and C. ambigua. He states that the standard Giant Imperials are the C. orientalis species, but then lists the Messenger series in the same group. Our guess is that the Messenger series is actually C. ambigua. Look for it as Delphinium ajacis in the catalogs. By now you should be thoroughly confused!

Hyacinth – flowered is a pretty accurate description of the flower shape. The plants are shorter than standard larkspur, about 24-30 inches tall, and the flowers are more tightly clustered at the top of the stem, something like a hyacinth bloom. There is a more limited color range, with just a standard selection or purple, pink white and lavender. The stems are thicker than standard larkspur, but more hollow, so they are a bit weak. In fact, overall, they are a bit lower quality than the Giant Imperials. The main reason to grow them is their earliness. We can get a two week jump on the season.

We grow these larkspur just like the Giant Imperials. Here in the south they can be fall seeded, and in the north you can put them out in early spring. We direct seed all our larkspur around the first of November. We plant larkspur four rows in a 4-foot-wide bed, and we use the onion seeding plate on a little Earthway push seeder. The seed needs to be covered to germinate, but not too deep. The plants will come up thick in spots, but we don’t thin them. Larkspur won’t germinate in warm soil, so don’t plant too early in the fall or too late in the spring.

One problem with early blooming larkspur is that we can get hit with a late freeze that damages the developing flower buds. This is especially a problem with the Messenger series because it is so early here. It is impossible to put row cover on tall spikes, so we use a system that builds a tent over the beds.

We have to put Tenax netting on all of our larkspur because our spring storms can be so strong. The netting is supported on metal T-posts that we run along both sides of the beds. If a bad freeze threatens, we simply run a second layer of tenax netting at the top of the t-posts, and lay floating row cover over the whole thing. This keeps the row cover off the buds, and creates a “tent” that really gives a lot of frost protection. We also do this with our late fall mums. We have even used this system on fall tomatoes and peppers, and by covering the plants directly with one layer, and another layer supported at the top, we have been able to protect peppers down into the low 20s.

Messenger larkspur is available from Modena Seed, 415-585-2324, or Ivy Garth Seed, 800-351-4025

Branching larkspur
There is another new larkspur out this year the we are hoping to use for season extension. The new series is called ‘Sublime,’ and it is an improved Giant Imperials type. We tried to grow it last year, but the same storm that brought us the tornado also brought 8 inches of rain and washed away a quarter-acre of newly seeded larkspur. (Did we tell you about that?) Anyway, it washed away our trial beds of Sublime. A few plants did survive though, and they looked really nice. Definitely worth trying again.

But the interesting thing about the Sublime series is that the literature all says it has a “strong branching habit” Actually, we like to grow our larkspur as a tall unbranched plant. But the trouble with larkspur is that it all comes on at one time. We can extend the season forward a bit with the Messenger series, but it is hard to delay the crop. Our thought this year is, What if we plant this Sublime series, let it get about 6 or 8 inches tall, and mow it all down with a bush-hog? Perhaps its “strong branching” tendency will give us a delayed flush of stems? It seems like it is worth a try. We’ll let you know. You can get Sublime larkspur from most seed companies.

Delphiniums
While we are talking about Delphiniums, there is is some good news to pass along. Our favorite Belladonna-type delphinium is back on the market. The variety is called ‘Oriental Blue,’ and it has spectacular deep electric blue, single flowers on very strong plants. This variety became unavailable a couple of years ago, and we really missed it. And even better, there is a new sister variety called ‘Oriental Sky Blue.’ It apparently matches the color of the old, and weak variety ‘Clivenden Beauty’ (also known as belladonna). This is really good news because the color of Clivenden Beauty is a real knockout, a light pure sky blue, but the plant is so weak we gave up growing it. We get our Oriental Blue delphinium from Modena Seed (415-585-2324) or Gloeckner Seed(800-345-3787). Gloeckner is the only place we’ve seen Oriental Sky Blue.

Another new delphinium we are going to try this year is an interesting little species called Delphinium yunnanense. It is listed in the seed catalogs as Delphinium Blue Bouquet. We haven’t grown it yet, but it looks like a branching delphinium that can be used as a filler. Our old copy of Bailey’s Hortus Second says it can get up to 3 feet tall. And according to the Germania seed catalog, it will bloom the first year. Sounds like a good one to try.

We always set out our delphiniums as transplants. We’ll sow these in 200-cell trays, and go into the field from there. Delphinium seed is like larkspur in that it will not germinate well in warm soil. We wait until November or December to sow our delphinium here in Texas. For earlier plants, we buy in plugs.

Germania Seed Co. (800-380-4721) was the first place that we saw Blue Bouquet listed. Geoseed (888-645-2323) also has it listed.

Well, as we write this our fall season is finishing up and we’ll be out planting larkspur seed. Since we last wrote a column for GFM, we have decided to expand our farm market (again!) and that has really taken off. We have increased our vegetable production, and have actually looked into buying more land. People often ask us “How do you have time to write?” We really don’t know, but it is important to us that we share information, so we just have to make time. And believe it or not, since we first told Lynn that we could write again, the weather has been perfect – sunny and mild, with just enough rain!

As usual, we are sitting here with a grand case of split personality disorder.  It happens every fall.   The season is over, the pain of harvesting all that gomphrena is wearing off, and we are trying to decide where to take our business.  We are running our farm market almost year round now, and we have a loyal following of customers who drive out to the farm for their flowers and vegetables.  But our main wholesale customer is adding stores every year, and they want to have our flowers in all the stores.  Frank storms around saying “We can’t be making any money on zucchini!  Think if that bed were full of sunflowers!”  But then the farm stand customers thank him personally and profusely for growing vegetables.  Our customers are truly grateful that we are here!   So that’s our dilemma.  Should we be the biggest cut flower farm between the East and the West coast,  or focus on our market and become the best farm stand around?  Can we do both and still keep some semblance of a life?

We also have to be worried about the economy.  Our flower sales in town stayed steady during the fall, but sales at the farm market are way down.   People are still coming out, but they are buying more vegetables and less flowers (“Ugh!” Frank says. “Radishes!  They all want radishes!)  And when we talk to other growers, we hear similar stories, especially from growers that ship from the west coast.  Both prices and demand are slipping.  We really have to be careful about expanding our wholesale business in a shrinking economy.

One of the best ways to expand your business without sticking your neck out is to sell more things to your existing customers.  This may not mean that we are going to sell them more bouquets.  Instead, we try to sell a wider range of items.  So we are always on the lookout for new things.  Last year was a banner year for new material,  and last month we wrote about some of our favorites.  Here are a few more varieties worth looking into.

We are going to grow more grasses this year. and a new one we are trying is the ornamental millet Purple Majesty.  This is a new All-America winner that grows 3 or 4 feet tall.  The plant is very dark purple all over, almost black, and has a huge purple seed head at the top.  The seed heads are shaped like cat-tail heads and the leaves are wide, like a corn plant.  We think this plant has a lot of potential, especially to the high-end florist trade. 

The seed for this millet is pretty pricey – about $100 per thousand seed –  so we are going to grow this plant from plugs.  We aren’t going to start the seed until a few weeks before last frost.  We haven’t grown this before, but if it is like most grasses, it won’t need very much time in the plug tray before setting out.  We plant to use a 72-cell tray to grow the transplants.  From the literature it looks like this plant will need a lot of space.  We will plant some on our standard sunflower spacing of 4 rows in a 4 foot wide bed, with one foot between the plants down the row.  We are also going to try a 2-row planting in the same size beds. 

We know nothing yet about the post-harvest qualities of this plant, but we can’t imagine that there would be any problems, based on our experience with other grasses.  Being an AAS winner, seed is available everywhere.

Another grass that we like this year is the White Popping Sorghum from Germania Seed. (800-380-4721)  We first saw this plant a year ago in the Germania booth at the cut flower conference.  Frank was in mid-conversation when he spied it, and completely lost his train of thought.  He had to drop everything to check it out. 

We have grown other sorghums in the past, but never quite found one that we liked.  But this variety has a “freshness” about it that is really appealing.  The seed heads are open and loose, with a graceful spray effect.    The stems are light green, and the seeds are white, like the name implies.  In some ways it looks like an “improved Johnson Grass”. (This may not sound like a glowing recommendation, but we actually get a lot of requests for Johnson grass heads!)  We don’t know if they really pop, but the catalog says so. 

Like a lot of ornamental sorghums, this plant can get really tall, so be prepared.  Our earlier plantings (May) grew a lot taller than our later plantings(August).  The first plantings reached 10 feet or more.  The plants were strong, though, and we never had to net them for support.  Later plantings grew about 5-6 feet tall and were much more manageable.  We also found that the plants could be pinched at about a foot tall, and the side shoots produced nice sized heads for bouquets.

The seed for this sorghum is not too expensive, so it can be direct seeded.  Sorghum is a warm season crop, so plant it when the soil is well warmed.  They can also be started in 72 cell plug trays to get an early start in the north.  We planted our first batch like sunflowers –  four rows in a 4-foot wide bed.  It soon looked like a “Louisiana cane-brake”  and we expected to find the gators had moved in!  It was so thick that it intimidated us! (It is still standing out there in the field.) So we went to a 2-row system for our later plantings. 

In the future we will focus on this plant for our fall bouquets.  The smaller side shoots had a very nice effect with the fall tones of the mums and marigolds and salvias.  There was no particular post harvest problem.  Just treat with standard preservative.

There are a couple of nice new plants from German seed breeder Benary that we are growing.  One is the new Rudbeckia Prairie Sun, another AAS winner.  It’s been mentioned in GFM before, so we won’t go into a lot of detail except to tell you that we saw it at this year’s Association of Specialty Cut Flower growers trade show, and it’s going to be a winner!  The stems were 2 1/2 to 3 feet tall and the flowers were big – about the size of rudbeckia Indian Summer.  The glowing green center on bright yellow petals really set the flowers apart.  The florists are going to love this one!

Benary recommends growing this one as an annual, since it blooms the first year from seed.  Those of us in the south can put it out in the fall, and bloom it in the spring before the heat sets in.  Seed is available everywhere.

The other Benary variety we are looking at is the new Echinacea Primadonna Deep Rose.   This is a variety with large flowers and petals that open flat out from the flower heard, instead of drooping slightly like the older types.  The flowers are a rich, rich rose with bright orange centers.  As Texas gardening guru Scott Ogden says, “The flowers clash with themselves!” But not in a bad way.  We have always had good luck selling Echinacea.  Florists are surprised to find out that it has petals, as it is often shipped just as the orange cone.  Usually they fall in love with it as a fresh cut flower.

We have not bloomed this plant yet, but we already see an advantage with this variety. It has the best seed germination of any Echinacea that we have ever grown.  Echinacea usually germinates easily with a light coating of coarse vermiculite, but the germination is often erratic, with plants coming up over several weeks. (Once we had a batch of seed that was half dormant.  50% germinated immediately, and the other half came up 2 months later.)  Anyway, the Primadonna seed all came up in a week, and the plug trays are well filled and uniform in size.  This makes it a lot easier to work with when you are planting thousands of plants.

Echinacea is a hardy perennial in most of the country.  We plant it two rows to a 4-foot bed, about a foot apart in the row.  We could plant four rows per bed, but then weed control becomes an issue.  Echinacea likes to come up late in the spring, so weeds can really get a jump on it.  It seemed easier to get in there and weed a double row rather than four rows.

Echinacea can be tricky to cut in the field.  Like rudbeckia, it doesn’t like to be cut in the heat of the day.  We cut first thing in the morning or last thing in the evening, and we cut into a hydration solution such as Chrysal OVB.  Sometimes the flowers will still wilt a bit.  Put them in the cooler overnight to condition and they’ll be fine. Primadonna seed is available from most suppliers.

Last spring we had a great crop of a nice native flower known as Standing Cypress.  You might find it listed in catalogs as Ipomopsis.  This plant is native to Texas and the Southeast, but we think it is worth a try in other parts of the country.  It is a tall plant, growing 4 feet tall, or more.  It has wonderful fern-like foliage, with a cluster of brilliant orange tubular flowers at the top.  Some plants have salmon or yellow flowers with tiny orange spots.  Everybody who saw it loved it.  The flowers tended to shatter a bit, but there are more buds at the base of each flower, so the stems never looked sparse. 

The plants looked and grew a lot like larkspur, and we are putting it in our program this year on a similar schedule.  Seed is relatively inexpensive, so you can direct seed it like larkspur.  In fact, the seed is about the same size and shape.  We are growing ours as transplants just to control the spacing, but it may not really be necessary.  Last year we planted the plants six rows in a 4-foot bed, with 6 inches between the plants in the row.  The plants grow straight up, with very little branching, so a closer spacing with direct seeding would probably work.  In this case we would only plant four rows in a bed.

The plants are somewhat winter hardy, but up north  we would recommend planting them with larkspur in the spring.  You can put out plants before the last frost, though, to get a jump on the season.  Here in Texas they can take as much cold as a larkspur.  We cover the young plants with row cover just to be safe.  If you grow them from transplants, set the plants out before they stretch in the tray for better quality stems.  The plants don’t like wet feet , though, so avoid boggy soil.

We cut the stems just as the first bloom opened.  There will be lots of nice buds that will open in a day or two.  Post-harvest was just our typical hydrator in the field, and standard preservative in the bunch.  They lasted at least a week.  You can get seed from Wildseed Farms (800-848-0078)  or Native American Seed  (800-728-4043).

There is a new Chinese forget-me-not that we are trying this year called Mystic Pink. (Available from Ivy Garth Seeds  (800-351-4025).  We’ve mentioned Chinese forget-me-nots in the past,  Technically they are called Cynoglossum, and they are a tall relative of the perennial forget-me-not.  The standard type has that powder blue color that is so hard to get as a cut flower.  The flowers are not that long-lived, but the color is great, and so is the texture of the blooms. 

Assuming that Mystic Pink grows like the others, we will treat it as a hardy biennial, although typically Cynoglossum will bloom first year from seed.  The seed germination and vigor of Mystic Pink has been far superior to the blue varieties.  We start our seed in 392 cell trays, and then bump up the stronger seedlings to 72 cell trays.  We have set plants out in bitter cold weather.  Last year we planted 200 cell plugs in January and they took 10 degrees!  We plant the plants about a foot apart, four rows to a bed.  They form a lot of side shoots.  Closer planting will force them to grow more upright, although they can be harder to pick. 

You really have to treat these flowers right to limit shattering.  We pick them late in the day, place the stems directly into hydrator, and the buckets are whisked right off to the cooler to condition.  Otherwise they wilt in short order.  By morning they are fine.  Remove any foliage below the water line or it will turn brown.  The tiny flowers will shatter some, but the buds keep opening.  The shattered flowers stay fresh where they fall and look like little snowflakes.  Tell your customers that Martha Stewart planned it this way!

Although we really like the blue color, we are doing  pink as a bouquet item, and to mix with the blue.  We think that mixed bunches of the two colors will be a knockout.

We could fill up several more columns with more varieties – maybe later.  In the meantime we have some big decisions coming up.  We have to decide if we will expand our wholesale business even more – that will mean a delivery route to Dallas, on top of everything else.  We also have our loyal farm stand customers, who sincerely appreciate being able to come out to the farm.  We are glad to have so many opportunities in an economy that could be stalling out, but as the  Chinese proverb says: “Success can sometimes be measured in opportunities passed by!”   So many flowers, so little time!

Frank and Pamela Arnosky are the owners of Texas Specialty Cut Flowers in Blanco, Texas. They have 15 acres of field production and eight greenhouses for winter flower production. They sell to supermarkets, florists, and at their own on-farm market. They can be reached at arnosky@moment.net.

Their book, We’re Gonna Be Rich! is on sale this month 25% off, of $18.70; call 800-307-8949 or visit the Online Store at www.growingformarket.com