What's Fresh August 1

We are still feeling the effects of the long cold wet spring, some good and some challenging. The cooler temps gave us strong plants with long stems and good foliage to support the flowers but our bloom times are still a little out of sync. As always, please consult your email and fax for complete availability but here a few of our favorites this week.


This is "Blue Stocking" bee balm, this particular shade of blue is a real tricky color to photograph and reproduce. It is actually much more blue than in the photo but I will have plenty on the truck so you can see for yourself.

Lemon Bee Balm, a cousin to the bee balm in the previous photo, this flower always reminds me of Dr Seuss. It looks like some wild creation he would make up to illustrate one of his stories. I like it and so do the humming birds.


This unusual plant is called Cerinthe. We grew it as a request from one of our plant loving clients. We love its lime green foliage and tiny bell flower.

A bucket of freshly harvest cleome. I am experimenting with it this week and will let you know about the vase life. I just love its unique structure, it reminds me of the fire weed blooming along the Teton Pass into Jackson.

Another shot of the coral pink cleome, if you look carefully to the far left of this photo you get a glimpse of the lavender pink cleome.

Lilies--yeah! The lilies have just started and we have two colors perfect for August. This bright orange that reminds me of a childhood growing up on Tang--just like the astronauts!

And we have this incredible red lily, it is hiding in the center of the snap dragons. Red is also a hard color to photograph accurately, it is so much easier to get true color with my brush! This red is this deep but it is warmer, like a deep mahogany stain. I'll bet it would be stunning accented with Black Eyed Susans and Diablo--we have both available, amazing!

This Red Scabiosa photographed a little more accurately but it is warmer making the immature buds look just like ripe raspberries.

Our second crop of Sweet Peas is in full bloom right now, we are lucky to have a shade house and cool nights that encourage this spring time flower to be in bloom now. This week we have an abundance of lavender sweet peas and next week we will have white also.

Our Verbena bonariensis is in full bloom, waving like a lavender cloud above the Black Eyed Susans. It is quite lovely. The little umbel of flowers varies in size from almost an inch to over an inch in diameter.

The veronica is still producing and is just gorgeous. It is the same color as the verbena and nearly the same shade as the "blue stocking". We grow several varieties of veronica, the flower spears vary in structure and length. We have a tiny "trident" veronica, three flower heads on each stem, the center flower one to one and a half inches long. Our medium veronica has a more regular two to three inch flower spear and our largest veronica has flower spears three to four inches long. All varieties are on strong twelve to fifteen inch stems.

White Veronica, the stems are not as long as the blue veronica, but the flower spear is much longer and a lot showier. The flowers are larger and form a spear three to four inches long.
Very delicate and pretty.

Viburnum berries--the same plants that produce our gorgeous Lace Cap Viburnum mature into these beautiful berries. These clusters of berries come in lime green blushed with red and ripen into deep red berries with a touch of green. We cut them on long woody stems with foliage. The birds that nest here love the viburnum, dogwood and curly willow and so when cutting we see an assortment of yellow warblers, Cedar Wax Wings and Lazuli Buntings--my favorite little song bird!

Grasses:

The Frosted Explosion grass is, well, exploding at the moment. RT is cutting it as fast as he can, we must harvest it before it goes to seed or instead of Bindweed farm we will be Grass farm!

We also have red millet and foxtail green millet.

We have new varieties coming into bloom every day. I will try to make another posting before the end of the week or I may just add to this one. You are always welcome to call or email and ask for a current availability list.

What's Fresh July 25

Bindweed is really producing and it is all RT, Carey and I can do to keep pace. The maestro is up and out of the house by 4:30 am cutting all the white flowers, he can see them in the pre-dawn light. Carey and I enter the barn at 6:00 am to find buckets of flowers ready for processing and lists of things to do on the board. But it is beautiful on the farm--flowers and foliage every where, bird song fills the air and the garden offers fresh strawberries, blueberries, peas, greens, beets and baby carrots. (If only I had time to cook!) After the heat wave earlier this week the weather has been mild, easier on the flowers and easier on us! It is good to be on the farm.

Cleome, I am totally undone by this flower! We have it in white, this fuchsia and a pink/coral.
Pink/coral Cleome

In addition to many of the flowers available this week we have some new arrivals. Our Annabelle hydrangea is gearing up and I am cutting heads as big as 8 in. across. The petals are a soft light green that mature to creamy white on stems 2-3 ft. long.

Freshly cut Annabelle hydrangea in our sunflower buckets.

A tight shot of the millions of tiny flowers that make up each hydrangea head.

Queen Anne's Lace, our second variety is later to bloom and quadruple the size. This huge head is 4 to 5 in. in diameter and sits atop lush ferny green stems.

The snap dragons continue to come on strong. We have good availability of every color--raspberry (fuchsia), burgundy (in the foreground on the right, it is much deeper in true color, very similar to a good burgundy wine), white, cherry and orange.

This close-up shows a little more difference between the raspberry and the burgundy and the orange peeking out from the back. It is a little more yellow toned than the snaps last week.

Again the red is not quite true in color, the cherry snaps are fire engine red with an orange/yellow throat. The white snaps are very white.

This has been a tricky year for sun flowers. In Italian they are called "gira sola" which translates to "around the sun" because they do follow the sun. The problem this year has been a lack there of, but they are finally starting to bloom. We have a good supply of Lemon Lime suns, named for their yellow/green faces.

Fresh bunches from the field.

Not all sunflowers are created equal.
At Bindweed we only use premium cut-flower seeds and plants. Our sunflowers especially are specifically bred for cutting, which means they have a good vase life, are pollen-less and do not make seed. We work very hard to make sure all our flowers are cut at the proper time and carefully conditioned to give you maximum beauty and longevity.

Verbena bonariensis: a beautiful long stemmed blue head comprised of multiple tiny flowers, the perfect accent.

In the foreground of this shot you can see Scabiosa Stellata, they are the geodesic looking heads. They produce a very typical looking scabiosa flower but it is almost iridescent in color and very short lived. It then produces this funky parchment like ball.

Another funky textural flower Nigella Transformer. The yellow flower drops off leaving this unusual jade green seed head.

We have a gorgeous crop of foxtail millet--long soft green miniature foxes tails on long grassy stems.

What's Fresh July 18

The farm is turning more and more towards yellow and orange. As the days heat up so does Nature's color palette and all the golden yellows, oranges and reds start blooming. The oranges asclepias and calendula are perfectly orange. We also have some amazing yellow/orange/bronze snaps and tequila sunset orange snaps.

Tequila sunrise snaps, Raspberry snaps, Cherry snaps

Orange Asclepias

Calendula is very light sensitive, open and brilliant in daylight and then closing up at night as the sun sets. These were cut as the sun was rising and so are still closed. As they gather sunlight they will burst fully open.

We also have Black-eyed Susans and Chocolate Susans, which are double and triple petaled flowers in chocolate to bronze shades.

The heliopsis have also started blooming and are fantastic this year. Large "marigold" yellow blooms on long strong stems complemented by lush deep green foliage. Good flower.

Salmon Clarkia

The clarkia also started blooming this week. If you are not familiar with this little cutie do not miss it. Clarkia comes in mixed bunches (the seed is only sold in mixed colors and it is too hard to cut in separate colors) of this salmon color, white and fucshia. Each blooming stem is a rosy pink with multiple blooms. I call it the Bindweed orchid--they are delicate but long lasting.

Fucshia Clarkia

We still have pink and white Asclepias, a cousin to the orange asclepias, this variety is taller and fragrant.

Bupleurum
Ralph has just started to harvest the first bupleurum, it looks fantastic, lush and bushy.

Cleome
This beautiful flower is making a Bindweed come-back. We grew this many years ago and I convinced RT to try it again. Aren't you glad! It is so unique--but beware it is thorny.

We still have some fabulous blues:

Delphinium

The Delphinium are singing their swan song and we will take our last cut of these beauties this week.

Indigo Spires
This is another flower I requested. I have always loved these beautiful deep indigo spikes in landscaping and thought they would add a color not easy to get in design work. The spires and sage green leaves are velvety soft.

Another blue beauty, phlox, so fragrant and strikingly blue!

Scabiosa in periwinkle and white.

The second crop of cat mint.

What's Fresh July 11

The day has come to say goodbye to the peonies...they were so late, so beautiful and so brief! Peony time is one of my favorite times of the season.

I used the last peony orphans in this bouquet. I also used some filipendula, baby pink garden roses, our new raspberry and orange sherbet snaps, lambs ear and wine clematis. (There have to be some advantages to running a cut-flower farm.)

Asclepias Time: the asclepias have started. We have orange available this week and white and pink to follow next week.

Canterbury bells in white, lavender and purple.

The campanula family is peaking this week, we have Canterbury bells, bellflower and glomerata available.

Campanula glomerata, strong stalks with clusters of purple bells forming a ball of flowers.

This clematis vine covers three sides of two different barns and is just peaking now. We custom cut vines 24 inches to 36 inches. If you are interested please call to special order this beautiful vine.

The white blossoms on this vine are the size of a silver dollar, vines include a variety of leaves, pearl-like buds and blooms.

The delphinium are peak right now. These delphs are almost as tall as I am. We have a good assortment of light blue, lavender, blue and deep purple.

Finally we have something yellow! The heliopsis has started blooming. These blooms are deep gold on strong long stems and have an excellent vase life.

White phlox is scenting the air on the farm. These fragrant white blossoms cluster on very strong stems.

Queen Anne's Lace, this is our early variety. Very lacy airy blooming umbels on green stems.

Snap Dragons--our second crop of snaps is gorgeous in orange sherbet, raspberry and deep velvety burgundy. The white snaps will make their debut next week.

These are the sun flowers--they are tardy. Now I really understand why they are named "sun flowers", after the long cold dark spring they are very late. We hope to see blooms in two weeks--such a bummer!

Last, but not least, Veronica--beautiful lavender blooming spikes soar above green lance shaped leaves.

As always, please check your email/fax for full availability, these are just the highlights.