Ornamental Kale Is Coloring Up

Ornamental Kale Is Coloring Up

#AmericanGrown Flowers brassica cabbage Ornamental kale

"The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco"
           Often attributed to Mark Twain, but debunked by the good folks at Anchor Brewing.

The Sun Valley sales team travels a fair amount. Trade shows, customer visits and public outreach are part of the job and we love to get out and share our passion for flowers. These events are great because we are able to get direct feedback on our flowers and receive guidance in what we should be planting. The huge lilies we grow and beautiful bouquets we make often get the most comments, but a trend I've been seeing in the last year is people really taking notice of "ornamental kale," or what we like to call by the scientific name, brassica.

Brassica in a Bucket

This isn't a new crop to the flower industry, and in the horticulture world it is very established. What is new about this crop; is that now flower designers and consumers can get this traditional cool weather crop year round. The colors that are most in demand are the white, lavender and purple. This is where Sun Valley excels, since our farm located in Humboldt County stays pretty brisk all summer.

Purple Kale, about 6 weeks before harvest.

Welcome to the Jungle!

 In order for the kale to "color up" you need cool temperatures at night. While most of the United States is sizzling in the 90's and 100's this time of year, July in coastal Humboldt is a very different story. Foggy mornings lead to clear afternoons, and with the sunset the clouds and moisture move back in from the sea. Our average July high is 63 degrees Fahrenheit, our average low is 52 degrees, and a peak in the record book reveals that our record low is 43 degrees and our record high is a hot and sweaty 76 degrees.

Arcata Cabbage!

Lavender Ornamental Kale

While this sort of summer weather is frowned upon by many people, brassica absolutely loves it. This unique growing condition is the only way to get the ornamental kale to "color up."  During the winter months we grow this crop at our farm in Oxnard, since it would be too cold and cloudy in Arcata.

Our kale is prized for the big heads. You can keep all the leaves on and use as a focal or pull off a few layers and use as a wonderful texture element.

Our "flower friend" J Schwanke did a great video with some design ideas last fall, check it out...he makes it look easy.




Keep an eye out for our brassica, it's not just for fancy designers and esoteric arrangements. Our customers are selling it as 3 stem consumer bunches and using it for great structure in bouquets. The purple will be especially hot going into autumn, since the trend for purple as a "fall color" keeps growing.

Lastly, this botanical shines as an American Grown and California Grown crop, I love that many old school flower folks just call brassica "cabbage." It really fits the whole farmer's market look and feel that is the predominant style we are seeing this season.

 

Mighty Mites Protect Sun Valley's Rosehip Crop

Mighty Mites Protect Sun Valley's Rosehip Crop

#AmericanGrown Flowers mites Rosehips roses Willow Creek

In part two of our "Robin Goes to Willow Creek" series, we hear about the mighty mites that protect our rosehip crop. 

Our Willow Creek farm is home to one of my favorite crops: rosehips. When I visited two weeks ago, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the flowering roses and the smell of roses in the wind. But I’m not the only one who favors these plants. Spider mites, tiny crawlies measuring less than a millimeter in size love making their homes on the leaves of these plants. A female spider mite can lay upwards of 20 eggs in a day which will hatch in around three days and begin laying eggs of their own in about five. These mites feed voraciously on the leaves of whose undersides they occupy and can cause big trouble for those who choose to grow plants they favor.

You can almost smell these beauties.

One surprising way to combat these spider mites is with more mites! And that is just what we are doing at our Willow Creek Farm. Last week I got the layman’s rundown on the predatory mites we are using to keep those pesky spider mites at bay. This year we are employing the help of two types of mites; neoseiulus californicus and phytoseiulus persimilis. Like the mites on which they prey, these mites are small in size but big in reproduction!

Our Willow Creek farm is a great place to be a on a sunny day.

The neoseiulus californiucs, as you may have guessed from its name, is native to this area and will lay between two and four eggs a day during its twenty-day lifespan, or 40 to 60 eggs in total. Fortunately for this mite and for us, their development is accelerated when the two spotted spider mites are regularly on the menu. These mites will reach adult stage about three times as fast as the spider mite which means they can consume them faster than the spider mite can reproduce, making them a perfect predator to keep our roses happy long enough to form the gorgeous rosehips we’ve been producing year after year. Another plus of this type of predatory mite being native is that it can survive our winters and will make a comfortable home for itself in the cracks of branches and proliferate the following year.

Unlike the neoseiulus, the phytoseiulus persimilis is not native to this area so it won’t hang around with us through the winter. These guys earn their keep by eating seven spider mites or up two twenty eggs per day and living on average 30 to 36 days. This gives them more than ten days more than our native neoseiulus to feed on those pesky spider mites. Their prolonged healthy appetites help keep our rosehips happy which keeps us happy, too!

Leaf inspection

Before leaving Willow Creek, I recruited team leader Vicente, to help me inspect the undersides of the rosehips for the eggs of the predatory mites that had been released just a few days prior. No luck this time, but I expect to see them during my next visit (how can I resist those gorgeous pink blooms?!)

Pollination is important for rosehips.

By the time the rosehips are ready to ship in the fall, the predatory mites will have devoured the spider mites, the neoseiulus will have evacuated the rosehips for the neighboring trees where they’ll nest for winter and the phytoseiulus will have naturally died out, leaving the rosehip leaves intact and beautiful for you and your customers.

Check out our rosehip Resource Page to learn more.

Start With Flowers, Valentine's 2014

Start With Flowers, Valentine's 2014

#AmericanGrown Flowers #Valentine's Day

"To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides." 
                                                                          -David Viscott

Life is about moments; moments with your spouse, moments with your kids, moments with your friends, and sometimes moments by yourself. These are the composition of our memories.

Valentine's Day is an opportunity to make a moment that you will remember forever. Sure, there is a lot of glitz and a wee bit of consumerism rolled into Valentine's Day, but you know what?

Why not seize the opportunity to make a moment?

Sun Valley's own "Jack of Hearts"...sorry ladies, he's taken!

You don't have to take out a second mortgage on your house to have a wonderful Valentine's Day. All you need are a few bucks to buy your sweetie some flowers. If you live where it's warm, like Florida, just go pick some yourself... legally of course!

Leonardo Da Vinci said, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." and this thought should be your guide to Valentine's Day. Bells and whistles? No, how about tulips and lilies? Yes, a simple elegant creation of romantic flowers is all you really need, as well as the sincerity in your heart.

This is the crux of Valentine's Day, sincerity in your heart is more important than any present. Your love will know, whether you spent $2,000 on a getaway Valentine's or $9.99 on a bouquet of American Grown flowers, if you have a true heart.

Perhaps this is why so many people have a pessimistic view of Valentine's, it really is a mirror back into our own hearts. For those of us that enjoy Valentine's and are excited to create a special memory,  start with flowers and go from there.

Don't have a special someone? Send flowers to your Mom, since no one loves you more than her, and you will be creating a moment for her that she will surely cherish.

Kiss, Kiss, Happy Valentine's Day XOXO,

Rosehip Run Down

Rosehip Run Down

#AmericanGrown Flowers #CAGrown CA OT Hybrid lilies Pieter Landman Rosehips Willow Creek

Rosehip November, autumn I'll remember

Gold landing at our door, catch one leaf and

fortune will surround you evermore

                                  -Vashti Bunyan

Rosehips are a specialty branch that Sun Valley brings to market every fall.  How do we manage to get this impressive harvest?

Shocking OT Hybrid lilies, fall tulips, cotinus and rosehips, with our Willow Creek farm in the background.

Believe it or not but it starts in the middle of winter. One of the coldest jobs on the farm is to cut back the rosehips every January. A team heads out to our Willow creek farm and prunes the rose bushes all the way to the ground. They grow back really strong through spring and start to bloom in summer. Imagine a field of roses all giving off an amazing scent, this is the upside for the same crew with freezing hands and toes in January. The blooms need to be pollinated to create the hip, so we have local bee keepers bring in hives.  As I was out there last August, it was kind of scary since there aren’t just a few bees…there are thousands, and they are drunk on nectar and making enough honey to make any Pooh Bear drool.

Bee's are brought in to pollinate the rosehips.

Once the flowers are pollinated, the bloom falls off and the seed pod (a.k.a. the hip) will form. Scientifically this is the swollen ovary of the rose plant, ready for reproduction.  We maintain a steady supply of water to the field, and as the dry, chilly days of autumn come to Willow Creek the leaves naturally brown and fall off. This exposes our big, red rosehips. The roses are bred to provide the best hips, so this is why your roses at home don’t create hips like we offer.

Our roses develop into rosehips thanks to a few happy bees.

Since this crop is grown outside rather than in a greenhouse, we can’t control the harvest as much as other crops, like tulips.  When the rosehips come in, it’s all hands on deck to get them harvested and ready to sell. Right now our crew is picking big numbers of rosehip stems, and they are selling at about the same rate. (Hint! Hint!)

CA Grown rosehips, ready to ship.

One reason this product is big for Sun Valley is that due to agricultural restrictions, rosehips can’t be imported into the United States.  You will often hear the benefits of buying American Grown flowers, however, in this case you don’t have a choice!  Sun Valley is the major producer, so check in on current availability.

By about mid-December, we must be done picking as the weather turns for the worst. A few weeks later in January, the process starts again.

Rosehips in August, still developing.

At home or in the design studio, make sure to keep the rosehips in water. They are still drinking water and will start to look a little like raisins if they don’t stay hydrated.

A beautiful autumn table arrangement, featuring rosehips, Sumatra lilies, red tulips, brassica, and a variety of Christmas Greens...all available from Sun Valley Floral Farm.

Design wise, rose hips are extremely versatile and fit the holiday color palette perfectly. Thanks to Pieter Landman who designed the two above arrangements.

To get deeper into the history of rosehips check out this post: What is Hip?