The Sustainable Flowers Podcast

The Sustainable Flowers Podcast:

A conversation about sustainable cut flower growing and designing between two passionate Canadian growers trying to figure it out.

Heather and Clara grow cut flowers for market on the northern edge of the Canadian Prairies. In this podcast they discuss the issues they face and alternatives to conventional approaches that they are putting into practice or are trialing to ensure that their small-scale flower farming operations are sustainable. Looking to the past and to new technologies to learn the whys and hows, they discuss everything from peat to floral foam, Antirrhinum to Zinnias as well as their weekly adventures on their Zones 2 and 3 flower farms.

Planning: Q1 January to March

Dec 13, 2019

Planning is a year-round activity for flower farmers, so we decided to talk about what we do by quarter. This episode finds us discussing Q1 - planning during the January to March window.

Our theme music was composed and performed by Heather's son Callum and audio editing was completed by the uber talented...

Basic Pricing - some considerations

Dec 6, 2019

Pricing of blooms for market is one of those issues that is the source of much hair pulling, especially for new growers. In this week's episode we are chatting about how we think through prices for retail sales. We will have another episode in the future on pricing for bouquets, weddings.

The references we cite in...

Foraging Ethics: another great conversation with Lorna of Ninebark Farm

Nov 29, 2019

Foraging , gleaning, wild crafting. In this episode we are so happy to have Lorna from Ninebark Farm back with us to have a good discussion about the the ethics (and legalities) of foraging.

As flower farmer-florists, foraging of materials to supplement bouquets or designs may be a temptation, especially to achieve...

Dahlia tuber storage

Nov 22, 2019

For those of us on the prairies our dahlia tubers are all dug and packed away, so we are a bit late publishing this episode- but hopefully it is helpful for you for next year!

In this episode we chat about methods we have tried, storage issues unique to prairie (arid climate) growers, and what we are currently...

Weeds- why you, as a farmer-florist, should know and care which are noxious

Nov 15, 2019

We have noticed an up-tick in our social media feeds (gosh that is a revealing term) of the use of noxious weeds in bouquets and installations. There have been various rationalizations about their use, including that by "harvesting and using " them, one is controlling their spread. As a result, we thought we should...