Oxnard Farm Beauties!

Oxnard Farm Beauties!

AmericanGrown brassica CAGrown dahlias EyeCandy FlowerEyeCandy Gerber daisy Matsumoto Origin Matters pom pons Stargazer

“Who cares about pretty? I'm going for noticeable.”
                                                                        ― Veronica Roth, Divergent 

Our Dahlia test crop looks amazing!

I don't get down to our farm in Oxnard, California nearly enough, but last week I made the trip down to Ventura County to see what's in the ground right now.

Here are a few pics featuring the flowers that caught my eye.

Do you know we're growing Pom Pons? 

Brassica for Valentine's Day?  You know your sweetie-pie likes her Kale!

Gerbs reaching for the sun.

Feeling warmer already, thank you.

Matso-Mania!!!!

2015 the Year of Brassica!

Dahlias may be my new favorite flower...hmmm

Tony P, our warehouse manager, ready for the weekend, look out ladies!

Most Read Posts from 2014 (and One Prediction for 2015)

Most Read Posts from 2014 (and One Prediction for 2015)

brassica Ice Cream tulips lonely bouquet Ornamental kale Women's Day 2015

One of the greatest rewards of writing this weekly blog is getting to feel the pulse of the flower industry. Based on the "reads" of our posts I can get sense of what is hot in the Sun Valley community.

Looking back at the 52 posts from 2014, the single most read post was about our stunning Ice Cream Tulips. These are those wild tulips that look almost like a peony, but more colorful and vibrant.

See you in Spring 2015!

We are pleased to announce we have a lot more Ice Cream Tulips coming for 2015, but you must be patient as we won't start to harvest for a couple months. Cool your jets!

Ice Cream Tulips look good enough to eat!

The second most read Flower Talk blog post focused on Woman's Day, titled Woman's Day Homecoming.  Sun Valley has been leading the effort to create awareness about this great floral occasion. The response from our readers, the industry and media; shows that this is a hot button topic that we'll hear a lot more about in 2015. Stay tuned!

Woman's Day 2015

The third most read post of 2014 surprised me, and like Woman's Day it is another emerging floral event. Lonely Bouquet Day has garnered a lot of interest across the world and the web, as people participate in this flower happening. The premise is that you take a bouquet out to a public place and leave it, with a note attached for someone to find. A stranger finds the bouquet, takes it home and shares on social media, so the person that left the bouquet can see where it ended up.

Our own bouquet department got in the Lonely Bouquet fun for 2014.

Lonely Bouquet Day 2015, is Sunday, June 28th. What a fun way to give out flowers, and we've also been hearing that florists are doing this year-round as a marketing effort. Fun, Fun!

Lastly, spoiler alert... the blog post that is still gaining the most reads is Ornamental Kale!

So you heard it here first, 2015 will be the year of Brassica (aka Cabbage, or Ornamental Kale)

Now trending! #AmericanGrown Brassica!

We are excited to jump into 2015 at Flower Talk, and continue, learning about flowers and the flower biz.

Happy New Year! ...and please make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a single week.

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.

 

The Great Gatsby at our Oxnard Farm

The Great Gatsby at our Oxnard Farm

#americangrown #LetsTalkFlowers #stargazer Black and White Flower Photography brassica F.Scott Fitzgerald Gerberas Great Gatsby Greenball Lisianthus Nick Carraway Roaring Twenties

As The Great Gatsby splashes back onto the silver screen, a resurgence of roaring twenties style is afoot.  In homage to this renaissance, I headed out to our Oxnard farm with an eye towards the Art Deco style of the 1920's and cracked open the classic American novel again to revisit the tale of James Gatz, better known as Jay Gatsby, as told by narrator, Nick Carraway.

Gerbera Daisy growing at Sun Valley Oxnard

 "He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 3

Our Brassica, read more about it HERE

"A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: 'There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.'"
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 4

Tending the crops

"they looked back at me, remotely, possessed by intense life."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 5

Photogenic Greenball

"Can't repeat the past?... Why of course you can!"
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 6

We have Lisianthus in stock.

"He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 6

Our lilies shine through the ages.

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning-- So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 9