I’m so excited about our little flower farm, it seems that it is all that I talk about lately. I suppose I am sharing the details here in part for myself, just to get it all out. But, we have had a lot of interest and well wishes, too. It just makes sense to me to write it all down now in the early days. It may be fun to come back to later if the works gets mundane and I need to remember how exciting things were in the beginning!

Our garden plot is on family land. We are blessed to have this opportunity, as many farmers either use business or homestead loans to purchase property, or they lease acreage from people in their community.

The land is about 3 acres and has two homes that sit side by side. One is an old farmhouse, the other is a brick house. I don’t know much about the history of the property, but my husband’s parents have owned it since the 1970’s, his grandmother owned it prior to that. My husband’s parents built the brick house and lived there until they passed. Corkey’s mother, Lynn passed away from complications related to a massive stroke on January 30, 2023. His father, Junior died in a tragic accident on February 3, 2024.

After Corkey’s mom passed away, I asked his Dad about planting a flower garden and he was all for it. If he had still been here, I know he would have plowed the ground for us. It is the best feeling to know that we had his blessing and we aren’t just charging ahead unchecked.

With a ton of help from his family, Corkey and I renovated the old farmhouse shortly after we married and we lived there for 4 years. I have great memories of the time we lived in that farmhouse on Glade Road.

In those days, Corkey’s Granny was still alive and she lived in the brick house next door to us with his parents. She and Lynn were inseperable, always working together on laundry, cooking in the kitchen or out in the garden. Every year, they grew tomatoes, corn, and okra and sometimes peas or beans. Granny would sell her tomatoes to people passing by. She didn’t have a sign, people just knew her by word of mouth. Strangers would pull into the driveway and ask if we had any tomatoes!

The farmhouse now is empty and boarded up, but it is still a pretty place and it is the house you see most of when you pass by.

Our little flower garden is in the same spot where the family grew their garden every year. We knew it was a good spot from the yields of years past. It receives full sun most of the day, drains well and is nice and flat. While grass grew over the garden, it was mowed and maintained all these years by Corkey’s dad. When the time came to plant, all we had to do was plow the field.

The property backs up to Lake Allatoona and is located on Allatoona Gateway, which was formerly known as Glade Road. While the neighborhood isn’t what it used to be, the property is still beautiful and has a lot of potential for additional future farming if we choose to do that.

Our garden measures 112 feet wide by 30 feet deep. It is located just inside the fence line of the property, which is why I talk so much about being able to see it from the road. When we are out there working, cars go by continuously. Occasionally people honk when they ride by. We just smile and wave! With such a high traffic location, I have fun ideas for advertising along the roadside when we get to the point of being able to sell to the public.

While I have experimented a lot with planting various flowers and vegetables at our home garden, I don’t have room there to grow large quantities of anything. I had to read a lot about flower growing to even have a sense of where to start on a larger scale. I found one farmer that really keeps things simple, but has shown time and time again that she is being profitable. She recommended starting with a 30 X 80 foot garden. We just eyeballed it based on where the old garden used to be planted, which is how we ended up with 112 X 30 feet. I’m grateful for the extra space, we will be able to walk between the rows, and knowing there is some space for anything else that I want to try is comforting.

We started with one full row and a half of dahlias, which worked out to be about 40 plants, covering a lot of varieties. I have several rows of sunflowers and zinnias, which we have planted on two separate occasions to prolong our harvest. Here are some photos of each type of flower in the original planting.

A week ago we added beefsteak tomatoes, okra, straight eight and pickling cucumbers and medium heat jalapeños, in part because our friends were asking for them, but also our whole family loves these veggies. Selling vegetables was not in the original plan, but if they do well, we will gladly sell them along with the flowers. Most of the vegetables should be ready for harvest by mid to late August.

Below is a full list of the flowers we planted. I can’t say for sure if the seeds were bad, or if the seeds just didn't like the soil, but some things simply do not appear to be coming in. It looks like we won’t have any cosmos, basil, marigolds, gomphrena, Emerald amaranth or Queen Anne’s lace. We recently did a second planting of craspedia, statice, strawflowers, celosia and we added more sunflowers and zinnias. I plan to add mint in the next week, as it is easy to grow and will replace the basil.

I think I am most excited about the dahlias. These made up the bulk of our start up costs, but I know them to be a premium flower, in high demand. They are not long lasting, and have been hard to get through the usual international channels due to flooding and extreme heat/cold in the countries that usually produce them heartily. By the time they make it to the US, which is only a few days, they are starting to deteriorate. Being able to sell fresh cut, locally grown dahlias to florists will be a great advantage to us. Big thanks to Longfield Gardens for the excellent tubers!

Additionally, dahlia tubers multiply in the ground and at the end of the season, many farmers dig up the tubers, divide and sell them. I don’t plan to sell our tubers this year, but I hope to be able to do that next year.

I do hope to collect and sell seeds from other flowers in our harvest this year. Many of our sunflowers and some of our celoisia we planted came from seeds I kept from my home garden last year, so I know they are good and will reproduce.

Our sales plan for this fall is loosely coming together. I feel certain that I would like to do one or two U-Pick days, in which we open up the property gates to the public. Guests will be allowed to come in, walk the garden and cut their own bouquet to take home.

I will offer a six week bouquet subscription service as well, with delivery and pick up options. This will start in mid-September and run through late October.

I also plan to sell to local florists, as well as some of my wedding & special event florists friends. I would be open to selling to DIY brides, and of course any of my clients can benefit from our fresh flowers. I will use social media as much as possible to share what is available from week to week, and will have “open farmstand” dates when individuals who live locally can stop by to pick up a bouquet.

The investment this year was relatively small, so I hope at a minimum to make back what I’ve spent throughout the course of the season. If we make more than anticipated this year, that will go toward next year’s plans.

We planted quite late in the season this year. I wanted to plant the first weekend of May, but I had an event, then we decided to go to the beach, then we had to catch up when we came home…you know, life happened! We didn’t plant until May 26. Fortunately, the weather was beautiful and mild until just recently, so I think everything had a chance to get acclimated to the soil before the temps got over 90 degrees. Now, for the rest of the summer, our battle will be watering frequently enough. We also will spend part of our July 4th weekend adding staking, netting and supports for the flowers.

Next spring, I want do our first planting around April 15, which will give us about 6 more weeks in our harvest season than we will have this year.

As of today, we are officially in week 3, headed into week 4. The zinnias and sunflowers are coming in beautifully. Most of the dahlias are starting to peep out of the ground, Here are some progress photos that I took yesterday:

Long term, I would like to see this become a true family business. I hope that Corkey and I are building something on his family land that will stand the test of time and help support our son, our nephew and their families for generations. It is a lot of hard work, though. Ask me again how I feel at the end of the season!

What questions do you have about our flower farm? Thank you to our friends who are cheering us on and ask about the farm - we are so grateful for your support! Feel free to ask any questions in the comments below and follow along with us on Instagram to see our progress!