June marks the start of sweet pea season on the farm. It's a time when the air begins to fill with the sweet, familiar fragrance of new blooms, and the fields are starting to pop with a rainbow of colors. As the days grow longer and warmer, we are all sweet peas all the time here on the farm.
The anticipation of my favorite flower blooming is a highlight of the season. We've patiently nurtured these beautiful flowers from seed (all 32,000 of them!), and now we enjoy the fruits of our labor. Walking through the sweet pea patches feels like entering a floral wonderland, where every glance reveals a new bloom and wave of their lovely scent.
Morning to night, it seems as though this is what we’ve waited all year for! From tending to their needs to marveling at their enchanting blooms. It’s like seeing your best friend only once a year- it makes the arrival so exciting and all-consuming once they’re here!
Amidst the hustle and bustle of sweet pea season, June is also our family’s transition time into summer. The boys have finished up the school year and are now full-time on the farm. They’re enjoying our new farm wheels (see May’s blog post!) to help out around the flowers.
With our book inching closer and closer, there are many things to do! All the writing is now done, so it is all about the photos. When the flowers are blooming, we have to make sure that we capture every variety and every angle that we need! I’m surrounded by check lists and have held more handfuls than I can even tell you. But I also love the time that I get to spend a little extra time marveling at each individual variety. There are so many that I can’t wait to introduce seed with in the fall and many that I’m excited to keep trialing and building stock.
June Garden To-Dos:
- June is the start of the summer season! Many annuals will be just starting to bloom, with most benefiting from staying up on cuts. It’s time to enjoy the fruits of your labor and start cutting your blooms!
- As the weather heats up, the bugs will start. This year, we especially had many aphids on our sweet peas. Instead of using harsh chemicals in your garden, check out Nature’s Good Guys for different garden-helping bug varieties! We love releasing pirate bugs onto our plants to keep aphid populations under control.
- This is an excellent time of the year to plant out any fall-blooming plants and vegetables! If you haven’t finished planting your dahlias, this is the last month to do so!
- As the Spring bulbs end, use this time to pull and divide any spring bulbs you hope to multiply. Remember, the foliage on bulbs such as daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths needs to die back completely to give the bulb a chance to flower again next year!
When it comes to sweet pea season, I know to savor every part of it as it is gone far too soon. We’ll have flowers through July, but until then, the days are filled with monitoring, documenting, and savoring every minute with these remarkable plants. I hope that you, too, have sweet peas starting to bloom in your garden (maybe even from some of our seeds!) and are getting to see your hard work turn into the most lovely flowers. Even with how much time I spend with them, the view of the farm covered in my favorite flower never gets old.
