Search Results for: sunflower

LATE SEASON IS HERE IN AROOSTOOK COUNTY! At the end of August we have our sure signs. Breathtaking Cosmos Flowers are now in bloom. And so are Sunflowers – including the one hiding behind this jungle of Cosmos.
These two Flowers are a sign of the times and late-blooming members of our Beneficial Insect Flower Beds that we planted last Spring in and around our fields of Organic Seed Potatoes. https://www.woodprairie.com/category/the-organic-garden/certified-organic-maine-certified-seed-potatoes/ These Flowers nourish and give refuge to the Beneficial Insects who help to keep in check troublesome insect pests of Potatoes.
And there are further signs. Some of the trees are starting to turn color. Local Seed Potato farmers are killing their seed crops and getting ready to begin Potato Harvest.
We arrest the growth of our Organic Certified Seed Potatoes while tubers are still in their juvenile-stage. This practice of ‘early killing’ provides maximum vigor in the tubers. And that translates into the highest yields in the next generation – that would be the Organic Certified Seed tubers we’ll be shipping to you next Spring if you buy from us.
As organic farmers we kill our Potato plants (‘Tops’) with propane flame. Our conventional neighbors spray broad-spectrum ‘Diquat’ Herbicide, which in recent years has been rebranded as ‘Reglone’ which sounds less like close-cousin ‘Paraquat.’ Out West, custom applicators apply Sulfuric Acid to kill down the big fields of conventional Potatoes for scheduling harvest. Caleb, Megan & Jim

Source

THE BEST ORGANIC FLOWERS TO ATTRACT & NURTURE BENEFICIAL INSECTS AND HELP CONTROL DESTRUCTIVE PESTS IN THIS YEAR’S GARDEN! Planting Flowers is EASY and beautiful. If you’re going to the effort of planting Flowers in this year’s garden for beauty, why not increase your BENEFITS by selecting varieties which do double-duty and attract the good bugs which eat the bad ones? Over 90% of the bugs in a garden are the good guys and why not help them?
In a fun but gigantic SUCCESSFUL experiment last year, we planted around the entire perimeter of our entire Potato field – plus additionally in refuges INSIDE the field – 40 varieties of Flowers reputed to attract Beneficial Insects. Our goal was to have both Early and Late Blooming Flowers growing less than the recommended distance of 100-150 feet from every potato plant. This planting design offered easy access, shelter and good nutrition to the Beneficials which succeeded as we’d hoped and performed their jobs of eating the bad bugs.
The best Flowers we identified last year are the ones we’ll be planting in this year’s expanded experiment. They are listed on Page 27 of our print CATALOG (https://www.woodprairie.com/catalog-request/) and are also part of the Flower Offerings in our Webstore (https://www.woodprairie.com/category/the-organic-garden/flowers/).
Here are the Early Bloom Winners: Organic ‘California Orange’ Poppy, Organic ‘Pinwheel’ Marigold (variation of Orange Marigold pictured below), Organic ‘Seashells’ Cosmos, Organic ‘Best Find’ Phacelia and Organic ‘Goldilocks’ Rudbeckia.
Late Bloom Winners: Organic ‘Evening Sun’ Sunflower, Organic ‘Colorful Blend’ Nasturtium, and Organic ‘County Fair Blend’ Zinnea.
We still have available for purchase EXCELLENT supplies of MOST Organic Flower varieties! Caleb, Megan & Jim

Source

HEADLAND JUNGLE OF BENEFICIAL FLOWERS ON WOOD PRAIRIE FAMILY FARM. This time of year every evening that is dry has us out flame-killing potatoes when the wind has died down. Last night the clouds cleared out and that allowed the temps to drop down this morning to a cool 37oF.
This photograph was taken last evening from the flamer-tractor seat and shows the east headlands looking north. Last Spring we planted a 5-foot swath of Beneficial Flowers around the perimeter of our Organic Seed Potato field and also across two in-field alley ways to aid beneficial insect movement. Today the swaths have become jungles of diversity.
The most prominent flowers at this late season stage are cheerful Sunflowers and pink Cosmos. Caleb, Megan & Jim

Source

WOOD PRAIRIE CATS ADMIRING OUR MAINE STATE BIRD. A winter-long obsession for Goose (left) and Ginger is to watch Black-capped Chickadees grab a lunch of oil-seed sunflower seeds from the bird feeder outside the kitchen window.
Perched in the ultimate safety of adjacent spruce trees, they will dart in momentarily, rapidly eat their fill then fly back to the security of the boreal spruce.
Chickadees are the State bird of Maine and Massachusetts, as well as the Provincial bird of our neighbor New Brunswick, Canada. Caleb, Megan & Jim

Source