The Road to Dilly Dally Meadows
- Linnea
- Feb 16
- 5 min read
Why We Started Our Flower Farm
In February of 2024, life was getting to be a bit crazy. Crazy in the way that leaves you completely drained and disconnected from yourself, and you find yourself saying you're "just so tired", like, in your bones kind of tired. I know you know the feeling. Now, I hit a point in these stressful situations where I pretty much say “okay, this is stupid,” and I seek out something to bring back positive energy, slow down, and connect back with myself.
Typically, reading a book or watching a heart-happy movie (shoutout to The Emperor's New Groove) is my go-to for stress relief, but it just didn’t feel like it was productive enough for what I needed. So I thought about painting or creating an art piece, though I soon found out that I needed something that wouldn’t be over and done with within a sitting or two, so that was out. I remember looking outside and around the house and feeling like things were just dead and stagnant. We were in the middle of winter, and at the time we had only a couple of house plants (there are over a dozen now, plus a lemon tree). I was craving color and life, as nature has always had a way of making me feel better.
I grew up climbing on fallen trees, collecting old snail shells, hunting morels, camping, and the like. Green is my favorite color, birdsong makes my heart catch, and I could sit and stare at the trees for hours if I had the time. Maybe that’s the Hoosier in me, but wherever it came from I’m glad for it. On top of that, I had worked in the wedding industry for over a year, and am happy to say that I was spoiled with the sight of beautiful floral arrangements of all shapes and colors. Beforehand, my exposure to flowers was minimal and constrained to what is found in most grocery stores which had never really made an impression on me. Through that year in weddings, however, I fell in LOVE with flowers and took arrangements home any chance I got (with permission of course, no flower thieves here!).
Which brings us to why I started my first flower seeds. Stressful life situation, plus love of nature, newfound curiosity in flowers, winter blues, and a need to reconnect with myself, equals one trip to a local garden center. Easy math.
So I found myself in front of the seed display at our local Rural King store, realizing that I had never grown anything except for maybe a soybean in science class, but I‘m not sure that counts. I ended up choosing flowers that were familiar to me from the past year; Snapdragons, Cosmos, and Bells of Ireland. I purchased seed-starting soil, vermiculite, “biodegradable” 6-cell trays, and a flat tray that the cells would rest in, then headed home.
I took a few days to research the flowers that I had bought seeds for, and set up my seedling area shortly after. As you can tell from the photo above, my first attempt at growing flowers was small and humble, but just what I needed to start feeling like myself again. Starting those first seeds felt so easy and doable even when my energy and motivation was shot, and even though it wasn’t an immediate fix to my stress, I was pulled back to my little windowsill garden every morning after to see how things were progressing.
I will tell you now that all of those seedlings got pitched, and I wasn’t sad about it at all, because I knew that this would happen from the start. Due to the time that I had sowed the seeds, they started germinating (sprouting) on February 28th. With the research that I had done, I believed that getting those suckers outside and into the ground wasn’t possible for another three months around Mid-May when our area is free and clear of frost (more on that in a later blog).
Now, while each flower variety takes its own period of time to reach the plant-out stage, all three of my flower varieties would have grown much too large before being able to start their lives outside. Seven to eight weeks was all that they needed in our indoor seedling area; with the extra month-and-a-half, they would have gotten root-bound in their small “biodegradable” containers, leading to stress and disease issues. No problem for me, I just decided that I would have a practice round of seeds to see if I could even get something to sprout! The Snapdragons and Cosmos came up brilliantly, but the Bells of Ireland were a loss the first go-around which led to more research before round two.
I can’t tell you where on the timeline it happened, but at some point during the first round of seedlings, Cameron had asked me what I was up to. I gave some sarcastic and joking reply about how I was clearly starting a flower farm. Again, all that I had was my rinky-dink little setup of about a dozen seed cells, and a third to half of them were not doing too hot. However, what I said must have piqued his interest, because while we were at the gym sometime that week he said that we should go for it and plant a whole garden in the backyard. It didn't take much to convince me, more flowers? Count me in!
Our date nights quickly turned into learning everything we could about growing and harvesting flowers. We watched YouTube videos, read articles and blogs, and gathered information on all types of flowers and what it would take to create a garden from a weed-covered backyard. Cameron discovered a new obsession in Dahlias, and I tried not to put every type of flower seed in our online cart. We bought more snapdragons, cosmos, and Bells of Ireland, plus a whole lot of other flowers including Calendula (shudder), Zinnias, Celosia, Sweet Annie, Queen Ann’s Lace, and Sunflowers just to name a few.
The Garden became a project that gave me something to look forward to. I could learn just about a million new things, watch our hundreds of seedlings become full-fledged plants, take some time to sit outside and weed while I listened to the world. Our garden and our flowers have brought so many fun times and wonderful discoveries over the past year and allowed me to take the opportunity to slow down, breathe, and connect with myself and nature whenever I want. It was and is exactly the thing that I need in my life, and I am so grateful that we started this adventure almost a year ago. We've already learned so much over the past year, and Cameron and I are so extremely excited to see where our flowers take us this year.
So that’s the story of why this all started! While the stressful time that began it all has passed, as it always does, we have a beautiful garden to show for it and an eagerness to share our flowers with you, all while learning and growing more and more with our farm.
Be sure to catch our next Blog Post: “Creating the Garden” and read about the work that went into turning 1200 square feet of weeds into our very own flower forest!
Keep on Blooming,
Linnea
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