Curating
Seasonal
Art

Botanical Info & Tips
for your Flower CSA

Flower Farmer Calendar

Flower farms all have slightly different bloom calendars because of their unique infrastructures, farm goals and priorities, and the exact climate on their farm, including soil type, temperature, and sun exposure. Here is a rough estimate as to when you can anticipate different flowers in your CSA bouquets.

Spring

March

Pre-cooled and forced tulips, ranunculus, anemones, and willow make their debut.

April

Narcissus, early season field-grown tulips, and blooming branches appear.

May

Expect late-season tulips, flowers that have been over-wintered in a greenhouse, and

sweet peas.

Summer

June

Perennials such as iris, peonies, delphinium, yarrow, astrania, and digitalis pop up. Field-grown annual flowers trickle in near the end of the month.

July

Peak annual flowers arrive, such as zinnias, cosmos, sunflowers, asnapdragons, and celosia.

August

Peak annuals continue to flourish and dahlias make their debut.

Autumn

September

Heirloom chrysanthemums start to arrive as annuals come to a close.

October

Cold hardy field-grown flowers will stick around until the first frost. Greenhouse covered blooms will last a bit longer.

November

Greenhouse covered, cold hardy flowers like chrysanthemums will be the final fresh flowers of the season.

Winter

December

Dried flower bouquets and wreaths will include statice, strawflowers, marigolds, celosia, gomphrena, blue nigella, and grasses.

January

Farmers rest, reogranize and re-boot.

February

This is a great time to support your flower farmer by purchasing a CSA Share for the upcoming season!

The Flower Dollar

Without the CSA model, many flower farmers work, pay and invest back into the farm year-round but only make their income seasonally. The upfront payment model of CSA provides cash flow prior to the start of the growing season, making it easier for farmers to buy seeds, hire labor, set up new infrastructure, and pay themselves a living wage.

A CSA bouquet might cost $30. To break that down,

let's borrow Lennie Larkin's "The Flower Dollar" framework

and apply it to a CSA Bouquet:

$3.50 into infrastructure and machinery (reinvesting back into the farm)
$4.50 into land costs (mortgages, taxes and rents)
$4.50 into farm supplies (seeds, bulbs, compost, fertilizer, irrigation, tools)
$4.50 into admin costs (insurance, permits, bookkeeping, accounting and utilities)
$6 into employee payroll -- fair, living wages for farmworkers.

A quick note on wages: many farms struggle to keep up with the ever-increasing living wage in the region. Most local farms can offer employees $18-$22/hour, while the true living wage in the Hudson Valley is now $24.75/hour.

$7 into profit -- a hopefully living wage for the farm owner & reinvestment in capital expenses

Bouquet Care 101

Flower CSA farmers often harvest their flowers before they are fully open so that their CSA members get the most value and time from their blooms. This progression of maturity is intentional and allows CSA bouquets to thrive for hopefully a week, if not longer. Continued care and attention to your bouquet and its environment will also help prolong its vase life. Below are some best practices for keeping your flowers as happy and gorgeous as possible.

Hover over the icons to learn more!

Trim a half inch off your flowers' stems when they first arrive home.

This will open up the stems for the intake of water in their new vase. Use sharp, clean scissors to cut stems. A clean cut will ensure no bacteria is being introduced to the stems, and that there are no broken or ripped stems that will start to rot quickly.

Always use a clean vase.

This will ensure that no bacteria is present in the vase for your fresh bouquet.

Change the water entirely, clean the vase, trim a half inch off the stem and remove spent blooms every 2-3 days.

This process will keep the bacteria at bay in the vase.

Make sure your flowers always have at least two inches of water.

They're thirsty! Don't let them dry out.

Use flower food if you'd like

(except with zinnias, sunflowers and gladiolus).

This will prolong your blooms' lifespan by feeding your flowers, balancing the pH and eliminating bacteria in the water. Make your own flower food by mixing 1 tsp of sugar, 2 tsp of lemon juice and 1 tsp of bleach per quart of warm (easier for stems to absorb) tap water.

Keep your flowers in a cool spot out of direct sunlight & away from ripening fruit.

Sunshine will speed up the bacteria creation in your vase & will make your flowers wilt. The ethylene gas emitted from ripening fruit can also ripen your flowers, shortening their vase life.

My favorite way to enjoy flowers is to not get hung up on *the perfect vase arrangement*; instead, choose flowers that you love and try spreading them out around your home in bud vases to enjoy them in unexpected places. You might find yourself happier than usual with all those blooms around!

~ Lauren, Alchemy Farmhouse Blooms

Start with the best of what's in season as your focal flowers! Let the natural shape of the flower head and curvature of the stem direct the flow of the arrangement. Add in foliage and filler and remember it's okay to keep it simple.

~ Diana, Diana Mae Flowers

Design Tips from Farmers

OUR SERVICES

STRATEGY

BRANDING

DESIGN

How It All Begins

Flowers that you see in your CSA Share have many different origins, each of which affect the value of the stem, as there are differing hard costs in sourcing and growing time. As one example: the longer a flower is in teh ground, the more resources and care it requires to keep it healthy, and the fewer other flowers you can grow, given the space it has already claimed. Treasure every stem!