Mitchell Flower Farm Sevenoaks

Starting to venture back to the flower field. The Ammi has come through winter well under its Environmesh tunnel. Male pheasants fighting around me and skylarks singing. The cobnut prunings are nice and bendy to make into hoops. Soil sodden and in dire need of compost but that means turning the heap to find it. Work for another day 💚

All rather brooding up at the flower farm right now - it’s hard to imagine this muddy desolate space filled with flowers in a few months! But behind the Environmesh net curtains the Ammi visnaga and Ammi majus are looking rather good! The last picture, believe it or not, is a dahlia bed 😂. Tubers were lifted and the w**ds have come back with a vengeance- think I’ve got my work cut out there. It’s been so wet that today was the first time I could drive round the field even in a Suzuki Jimny with 4 wheel drive but it feels finally like spring may be on the way. Is that tempting fate?! At this time of year I feel like a cave spider when the sun comes out - so unaccustomed to the light it almost feels alien. Planty Instagram is waking up, there is a strange yellow thing in the sky today and the mad sowing/potting/w**ding rush will soon be upon us.

I wonder if the people who pay a fortune to go up in the Spitfires that fly over the field from Biggin Hill will look down at this and think there’s been some awful animal carnage. First time leaving dahlias IN THE GROUND over winter. Will they make it through? Sheep wool from shearing back in May is my mulch to keep the potato-like tubers relatively dry and - I hope - totally frost free underground. But rubbish phone signal at the field meant I couldn’t check how hard to cut them back so had to take a guess and lopped them back to ground level. Seems like this may be too brutal - is there hope dahlia experts?

No one has told the cosmos that summer is over but the rest of the family is at the football so a good opportunity to start getting the beds ready for next year. So it’s off to the compost heap for the cosmos and a quick dig then w**d suppressing membrane over it to keep it covered till spring. This is is the first time I’ve been organised enough to do this - I usually just leave everything to die back then have a massive digging job in March since w**ds have gone crazy by then and it’s like digging the field from scratch all over again. So hopefully this will save lots of effort next year. Definitely time for tea!

The Ammi majus seedlings are up. I’ve had trouble with getting them from this to maturity in the past - some never seem to get into their stride - so am doing a little experiment 🤓 In one of the trays the seedlings will be split and potted on (see second picture) but in the other I’ve snipped off all but one seedling per module at ground level to let the roots of that one establish. Will pot those on later. Super nerdy and probably pointless but will be interesting to see which grow better.

Lovely late afternoon light showing off the dahlias backed by pink cosmos and sunflowers Dahlia border/bed

Open today! The sun is shining. The penultimate pick your own day of the season - hope to see you! 🌸🌸

Only 5 more pyo days until the end of the season! Open 26th and 27th September, 3rd and 4th October and Friday 10th October.

Picked these lovely apples this morning. The sheep were very interested in them so was quite a ninja operation getting them safely to the box! For sale today along with the usual pick your own flowers. Open from 10 till 3 today and tomorrow

Somewhere under the rainbow… a lovely evening of flower picking at the farm