Using Flowers to Create Botanical Based Dyes

The Charms of Botanical Dyeing

Botanical dyeing takes us back to simpler times, using the colors nature provides. It's like a plant-based paint palette that can turn ordinary tea towels into works of art. By using flowers, we can create a rainbow of shades that are both unique and eco-friendly.

Picking the Right Flowers

One of the exciting parts of botanical dyeing is selecting the flowers to work with. Different flowers yield different colors, offering a playful twist to the process.

Marigold: These sunny blooms create warm yellows and oranges, reminiscent of a golden sunrise.

Lavender: If calming pastels are your preference, lavender flowers are perfect for gentle purples and grays.

Coreopsis: With their vibrant petals, coreopsis flowers bring about shades of cheerful yellows and deep oranges.

Cosmos: Bright Lights or Sulphur cosmos as the best for dyeing, but we’ve found that we love the colors created by some of the darker cosmos. They make a lovely purple or blue color.

Dahlias: Provide a variation of shades, but the darker colors make the prettiest colors.

Indigo: For rich blues, indigo leaves hold the secret, providing a touch of deep ocean hues.

The Color Journey

Before diving into the dyeing process, the fabric needs a bit of prep. This involves cleaning and treating them to make sure they absorb the colors well. Once fabric has been prepped, you leave it damp, but not wet and add your flowers for dyeing. We use the bundle dyeing process for making our prints, which involved scattering flowers on the fabric, rolling the fabric up, then using a steam process to release the dye from the flowers.

After the fabrics have steamed for an hour, remove and open the fabric. The colors from the dye process are immediately visible. Gently remove all flowers from the fabric, then give your fabric a little rinse and hang to dry.

Botanical dyeing isn't just about changing colors; it's about connecting with nature and embracing its diversity. Each fabric created with botanical dye carries a piece of the flower farm's charm, telling a story of petals, leaves, and the colors they gift us. So, next time you use one of these tea towels, remember the journey it has taken – from the flower farm to your kitchen, with a touch of nature's magic in between.

XX Jenn and Adam

Creating a Gorgeous Raised Bed Garden

If you're looking to add a touch of beauty and functionality to your outdoor space, raised beds could be the perfect solution. Whether you're limited on space or just starting out on your flower-growing journey, raised beds offer a fantastic way to cultivate a thriving garden right at your doorstep. At PepperHarrow, we've embraced raised beds as a key part of our dahlia breeding efforts, and as an integral space for relaxing and entertaining. Today, we're going to guide you through the process of creating your very own raised bed garden.

Why Raised Beds? Raised beds offer a range of benefits and hey, let’s not overlook their beauty, making them an excellent choice for both beginners and seasoned gardeners. They're particularly useful when your soil isn't ideal for flower growth, providing you with a controlled and enriched growing environment. Additionally, these beds are easier to maintain compared to open-field plantings. Weeding and tending to your plants become less of a chore, and watering is more convenient since raised beds are often closer to water sources. Keep in mind that raised beds require more frequent watering than plants in the ground.

Designing Your Garden

Before you roll up your sleeves to get to work, take the time to draw out and design your raised bed garden. Sketch out a plan on paper to plan out a space that works for you, allocating enough space between each bed to allow for 3-foot-wide paths. Staking out the corners of your garden area with wood and tying strings between the stakes can help you frame the space accurately and ensure its level.

Here are the Materials Required for the Beds We Created for our Eight 4-by-8-foot raised beds in a 30-by-40-foot area, gather the following materials for each raised bed:

• (3) 2-x-12-x-8 treated lumber

• (1) 4-x-4-x-4-inch treated lumber

• (4) 6-x-6-inch steel corner braces

Additional Supplies:

• 200 feet of 6-foot or wider landscape fabric for weed barrier

• 100 Landscape pins to secure the fabric

• 160 3-inch exterior screws

• 48 2-cubic-foot bags of wood chips

• 160 1-cubic-foot bags of topsoil

• 500 pounds of chipped limestone road stone

• Drip irrigation or overhead watering apparatus

• Optional decorative arches for growing vines

• Seeds of your choice!

Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Raised Garden:

Step One: Preparing the Ground

1. Draw your raised bed plan on paper, considering the layout and spacing.

2. Stake each corner of your designated area using wood and tie strings between the stakes to outline your space and ensure it's level.

3. Lay down landscape fabric as a weed barrier.

Step Two: Creating the Base

1. Spread gravel evenly across the entire area using a landscaping rake.

2. Prepare the lumber, using 8-foot boards for the sides and cutting an 8-foot board in half to form two 4-foot ends.

Step Three: Assembling the Bed

1. Use your drill and screws to secure the lumber at the corners, utilizing the 4-x-4-inch lumber as braces.

Step Four: Adding Growing Medium

1. Lay six bags of wood chips in the bottom half of each raised bed, smoothing them out with the landscaping rake.

2. Finish by adding 20 bags of topsoil to fill the beds to the top. Keep in mind that the soil will settle over time, so you may need to add more before planting.

Sparkle Details =Dream Space

The last step is to add pieces that make your raised bed garden sparkle. Items like arches for growing vines, bistro lights, table and chairs are great things to add to really make the space inviting. All of this you can use for hosting guests, or for your own personal enjoyment.

By following these steps and using the materials mentioned above, you'll be well on your way to creating a beautiful and functional raised bed garden, just like the ones at our flower farm! As you tend to your flowers and watch them thrive, you'll appreciate the benefits of raised beds, from improved growing conditions to easier maintenance.

Whether you're an aspiring gardener, dahlia breeder or simply passionate about cultivating a beautiful flower garden, raised beds provide an excellent foundation for your gardening endeavors.

Happy growing!

XX Jenn and Adam

Midsummer Bouquet Inspiration!

As the radiant sun reaches its peak in the sky, nature rewards us with a breathtaking display of its finest artistry - the blossoming of vibrant blooms! In this midsummer enchantment, our world transforms into a gorgeous quilt of many colors, fragrances, and textures. As we immerse ourselves in this floral wonderland, we can't help but be inspired to create extraordinary bouquets that capture the essence of this wondrous season.

Whether you're a seasoned flower farmer, flower enthusiast, or just starting to explore the joys of floral arrangements, we've gathered an array of stunning bouquet combinations to awaken your creativity and bring your vision to life. Let's embark on a floral journey together and craft delightful compositions that embody the spirit of summer's boundless beauty!

Flowers & Sunset make the perfect combination

We love using all of the best seasonal flowers grown from our flower farm to add to bouquets, but most often, we tend to gravitate towards a lot of pink and orange or pink and purples for our bouquet combinations. The bouquet above contains zinnias, yarrow, tweedia, snapdragons, bishop’s lace, strawflower, scabiosa, forget me not, lisianthus, and salvia.

Barbie Bouquets

When our employee was making grocery bouquets she said, “This bouquet reminds me of Barbie,” and it’s from that small comment, that the Barbie Bouquet was born.

We took these to farmer’s market, lined with special pink tissue paper and sold every last one. It’s easy to see why! We love pink and so do our customers!

CSa Bouquets for our July customer pick up

CSA bouquets are made with as many special flowers from the farm as we can muster. We save back and use as much of our best flowers as possible to treat our CSA customers, because they’re pretty special customers. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Our CSA customers make an investment with us early on, even before our season has started, to provide a bouquet each second Saturday May-September. Their investment early on helps us fund seeds and plants to grow these special flowers for them each month.

The bouquets above contain some of the first blooming zinnias, snapdragons, apple mint, ammi, strawflower, scabiosa, and blue glob thistle. The blue globe thistle is our favorite and one we’ve been nurturing since last year, just to have them for these special bouquets.

When deciding on a recipe for our flowers, we try to stick to something simple, instead of trying to recreate the wheel. We have 20 CSA members that we make bouquets for, so we try to use flowers we know we can repeat and scale for this many bouquets. For example, if we know there are going to be 3 zinnias in every vase, we try to cut 60 zinnias of the same color just for these bouquets. There’s always a little variability in this area, notice some of these bouquets above have orange snapdragons and others have white. You can deviate from your recipe and work with what you have.

Garden inspired. It’s a term that we use to define the different types of flowers we use in our bouquets. We think what defines this look is many different types of botanicals incorporated into a bouquet in a cohesive color scheme.

In the bouquet above, we strolled through our flower gardens and cut as many types of flowers right before a beautiful sunset to include in this beautiful bouquet. One of our favorite new flowers we grew this year was Queen Lime Orange Zinnias, which you can see in this example. They’re on the shorter side from flowers we typically grow, but they’ve been a popular flower with our market customers, you-cut guests, and a personal favorite of ours as well. In particular, we love adding a light blue and white pop of color with these beauties, because they compliment well and give a bouquet an old fashioned feeling. So pretty!

Different flowers included in the bouquet above: zinnias, tweedia, cosmos, ageratum, snapdragons, scabiosa, statice, yarrow, and applemint.

Wrapped Jar bouquets

Our customers near and far absolutely love our wrapped jar bouquets. We bring these pretty bouquets to farmer’s market, and sell them directly on the farm each weekend. Our customers tell us that they look for our signature black and white ribbon each weekend and know we’re at the market when they see people walking around with our bouquets. Some actually track us down after they see others carrying around our bouquets!

For these cuties, we allow for a little more creative freedom instead of sticking to a certain recipe, well, kind of anyway. We’ll usually make 3-5 at the same time and all 3-5 will have the same basic recipe. What we’ve found at our local farmer’s market is that people want the ability to pick and like it when there are different color combinations to choose from, so we like variability in the recipe.

If you want to check out our online tutorial about how we make these pretty bouquets, you can access that here.

We hope you found these bouquet combinations inspiring! Each petal and leaf, carefully curated and placed, is a testament to the boundless beauty that surrounds us. Let your heart be your guide, and may your future bouquets be an expression of your own unique artistry.

XX Jenn and Adam

Best Ever! Homemade Lavender Lemonade Recipe

Close your eyes and step into a world where the soothing scent and taste of lavender mingles harmoniously with the zesty tang of lemons, creating a beverage that is as visually appealing as it is refreshing. Today, we’re proudly sharing our highly sought after lavender lemonade recipe.

We take so much pride in growing high-quality lavender varieties that are hand-harvested at the peak of their bloom. Each blossom is carefully selected, ensuring only the most aromatic and vibrant flowers make it into our products. To bring a touch of our farm's magic into your own home, here’s a link to purchase our culinary lavender, or lavender simple syrup kit, allowing you to savor lavender’s essence in various culinary creations, including this lavender lemonade recipe.

Grab your favorite glass and get ready to experience refreshing lavender lemonade. We hope this recipe hleps guide you perfectly through creating a beverage that will captivate your taste buds and leave you longing for more. It's time to indulge in the ultimate summer refreshment—homemade lavender lemonade!

A Magical Evening at PepperHarrow Farm's Lavender Al Fresco Dinner with Tangerine Food Company

Imagine yourself on a warm Friday evening. The sun is beginning its descent, casting a golden hue over the picturesque country landscape. Nestled amidst the breathtaking flower fields of PepperHarrow, you find yourself immersed in an extraordinary culinary experience. Lavender perfumes the air, and the enchanting aroma promises an unforgettable evening ahead. This is the welcome guests experience when they first arrive to PepperHarrow’s Lavender Al Fresco Dinner with Tangerine Food Company—a feast for the senses that leaves you yearning for more.

The Lavender Bloom: As you arrive at the farm, the sight of wildflower fields, and sprawling lavender fields in full bloom takes your breath away. Vibrant hues of purple and the gentle sway of the flowers create a serene and captivating backdrop for the evening's festivities. It's an idyllic setting that sets the stage for an extraordinary dining experience.

The Exquisite Menu: Tangerine Food Company, renowned for their culinary expertise, curated a menu that celebrates seasonal flavors and showcases the best of farm-to-table dining. Each dish tantalized the taste buds and left everyone craving for more. Menus were printed into a beautiful design, courtesy of designer K Henri Collection.

The culinary journey began with Whipped Labneth—an exquisite blend of whipped labneh, house-made crackers, and tangy pickled vegetables. The combination of creamy, tangy, and crunchy textures set the tone for the culinary adventure ahead.

To complement the savory dishes, was the Grilled Asparagus and White Bean Salad, which brought a refreshing twist. Roasted tomatoes, garlic, and fresh basil elevate the humble white beans, created a harmonious blend of flavors that is both light and satisfying.. The perfectly grilled asparagus retained its natural crunch, flavor and texture.

The star of the evening was the Pub Chicken—a succulent chicken thigh marinated with fragrant herbes de Provence. The tender meat is infused with a medley of aromatic herbs, a dish that delighted the palate and warmed the soul.

Finally, dessert arrived—a Lavender Almond Cake accompanied by rhubarb plum compote and softly whipped cream. The delicate floral notes of lavender infuse the moist almond cake, while the tangy compote added a burst of fruity flavors. It was the perfect ending to a remarkable meal.

Guests sipped on the Bee's Knees, a delightful concoction of gin, lemon, and honey, or chose to indulge in the refreshing Lavender Mint Mojito, blending rum, lavender syrup, lime, and mint. Whiskey lovers optedd for the Bourbon Smash—a tantalizing blend of bourbon, lemon, lavender simple syrup, and mint.

PepperHarrow Farm's Lavender Al Fresco Dinner with Tangerine Food Company was a remarkable culinary event that celebrated the beauty of nature and the art of fine dining. From the moment you step into the lavender fields until the sun sets on this enchanting evening, guests were treated to a sensory journey like no other.

After dinner, guests shopped in the Farm Shop, where they indulged in a shopping experience filled with farm-made lavender products, artisan goods, and more. Immersed in the soothing aroma of lavender, guests browsed through a selection of candles, soaps, and other lavender-infused treasures. These handcrafted items served as mementos, allowing guests to bring a piece of PepperHarrow’s magic back into their homes.

After dinner, guests leisurely strolled through the lavender fields and the sprawling perennial and annual flower fields. They captured memories of this unforgettable evening with their cameras as they explored the picturesque landscape. The vibrant colors, fragrant blooms, and serene atmosphere provided the perfect backdrop for stunning photographs.

PepperHarrow Farm's Lavender Al Fresco Dinner is an experience that goes beyond the palate. It's an opportunity to connect with nature, indulge in exceptional cuisine, and create lasting memories. Mark your calendars for the next event and prepare for an evening of culinary delights, breathtaking views, and the chance to immerse yourself in the beauty of PepperHarrow. The next dinner will be focused on dahlias in bloom and is slated for September and 8th, 2023.

XX Jenn and Adam