Erin's Acre

Today I'm talking with Erin at Erin's Acre. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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00:00
You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters.  I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Erin at Erin's Acre  in,  I want to say around Faribault, Minnesota. Good afternoon, Erin. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you doing, Mary? I'm doing good. Is Faribault close enough? Faribault is close enough, yes. We do have an example address. Cool.

00:26
Alrighty, I know how the weather is because we're in the same state. It's been a lovely day. It is a lovely day. It's very warm for October 2nd. Yeah, I would just assume it not be, but we're going to have that next week, supposedly. So that would be nice. I see a 34 degree out there next week is a low.  So we are coming to an end.  Yeah, I saw that too. And I was like, well, there goes the good basil that's left in the garden.  Right.  And in my farm, uh my flowers run

00:56
July, I guarantee July through September and you know, any extra days into October are just bonus for me.  The first, the first frost will take me out. I don't have, um, hoop, hoop tunnels or anything like that. I'm  everything's outside. And so that, that first frost will take me out and I grow a lot of dahlias. so usually by  the second week of October, I'm ready for, let's move on to the next,  the next phase here and start clean up and getting ready for next year.  Yes, ma'am.  Um,

01:25
I have a question about dahlias, but I usually say, tell me a little bit about yourself and your place. But first the question about dahlias. Okay. When do you have to have those out of the ground? When do you have to dig the bulbs out? So after the first frost, you can start cleanup as far as, you know, cutting down the dead greenery stuff that's on the top. They do recommend a real hard freeze to put that tuber into the dormant state. And then you dig.

01:55
You know, Minnesota weather in October  can be all over the place. It's freezing rain. We've had snow. I've had to dig snow off to dig the tail, your tubers up.  Um, but you know, a real hard freeze, um, is great. And then if you can get some warm days to do the digging and pull them up after that is the best.  And then the other question I have is, will they bloom  until the first frost or do they kind of have a life cycle where they're kind of done? They do slow down. think, um, you know, our temperatures.

02:24
Those cooler nights  will slow them down and just the hours of daylight too.  And I'm sure you've noticed we're really losing daylight fast right now But they will keep going  I've got oh I've got one variety called Baron Katie and she is my first to bloom and my last she will Keep turning out blooms until the last  last last moment. Okay. Well, we grew dahlias two summers ago just as a  shit and giggles thing, you know  grins and giggles  and uh

02:54
I  didn't love them as much as people seem to.  They were pretty, but they're not my thing. And so my husband said to me that September, October, he said, do want me to dig the bulbs out? And I said, nah,  I'm probably never going to grow them again. And he said, are you sure? And I said, yes. He said, what about the gladiola? It's because you have to dig gladiola bulbs out too. And that was the year we tried those too. And I said, nah, just leave them.  said,  you really like.

03:22
He said, you really like perennials, don't you? said, yes, I do. They are a lot of work. Yeah. And we don't really have a good place to store them. I mean, I could probably figure it out, but I'm just like, it's expensive. It's an expensive hobby.  And I also wasn't really excited about the gall situation with, you know, if they have gall on their, their roots. It's hard to cut, to cull and cut what you've been saving. Yeah.

03:50
Yep. So I was like, it is way too persnickety for me.  am  not, I'm not into it. So we didn't do it, but they were very pretty. got the cafe au lait one  and that was  really, really pretty, but I don't know. I like peonies. Peonies are easy. You throw them in the ground. Three years later, they're producing beautiful flowers. Well, that's what's, know, with flower farming, everything, Betty kind of finds their niche, niche of what they enjoy  and what they can handle. oh

04:20
Yeah, I've got a lot of dahlias. Yeah, I think that they're gorgeous. And if you are obsessed, please be obsessed because people love them. But I don't want to grow them. I'm not into it. It's not my thing. I'm bad at it. So I'm just going to let you do it. All right. So now that we've talked about dahlias, clearly you grow flowers. So tell me a little bit about yourself and about Erin's acre. Sure. So I did not grow up on the farm. I'm a transplant. I grew up in town and

04:48
Didn't really do a lot of gardening until I got into my, I'd say early thirties.  I married a farmer at that time and moved to the farm in 2010. So I've been here for 15 years. Set my daughter off to college um in 2014, 15. And so that's when we really,  I found I had more time. My daughter was a three sport athlete  all through high school. So just didn't leave a lot of extra time until she was, uh you know, officially growing up.

05:17
And then our garden really took off at that point. We'd been gardening, canning, lot of, know, big vegetable garden and slowly adding in flowers. And I'd say about 2016, I looked back through my Instagram posts because I, in the beginning there, I would say like 2016, one of my posts, had a little picture of some zinnias in a cup. And I said something about, you know, aspiring to be a flower farmer someday.

05:43
And then I noticed my Instagram post said like hashtag flower farmer wannabe. Yep. And so that's, you know, 2016, 2017, I was, I was dabbling. was growing more and more flowers enough that I had flowers on my kitchen table and in my bathroom, bringing them to work and sharing them with friends. you know, your hobby's getting like a little more than, you know, you just, where am going to go with this? And so then I started.

06:11
You know, that flower farmer wannabe tag, I really got kind of ingrained in my head of does it, are there flower farmers? I didn't even really ever think about it that, where did these come from? Other than, you know, buying them in a, in a floral shop or grocery store, you know, setting. So in 2016, that summer, we had a windstorm that blew through our farm. had a little, I would call it one of those little backyard, uh, kit greenhouses, like six foot by six foot thing.

06:41
And it got completely blown away. uh Most of our buildings had damage, lost a ton of trees, just  a 90 mile an hour straight line wind. uh And so at that point we were out of our greenhouse  and  down a greenhouse that we used a ton just to get our vegetables and flowers started here early, you know, get a jumpstart on things in the spring. And we looked around the farm and we had a building that was uh underutilized. It would end up being just a storage shed for junk.

07:10
And it had been a calf barn at one point, so it had a concrete floor with drainage. And we just took a hard look at that and we decided to convert it into a greenhouse. And so the winter of 2017, we converted that building to a, from this, know, calf barn at one point to a 20 by 40 insulated greenhouse with a green greenhouse roof. And.

07:34
Through that process, we did a lot of research on winter greenhouses in Minnesota, deep winter greenhouses. Learned a lot about passive solar energy.  we added,  in my greenhouse, I've got,  like I mentioned, it's got insulated walls, concrete floor, and then we added 55 gallon water barrels filled with water. I painted them black and they absorb sunlight during the day.

08:03
And this is mostly for like  in March, early March so that I can get things started. So in March, the days are getting longer, things are warming up. You still get really cold nights in March. And so with these barrels filled with water, they're soaking up the energy from the sun during the day and then they emit heat at night. uh we have found it keeps our greenhouse 15 degrees warmer than the outside air temp just with those barrels filled with water. So free energy. uh

08:32
And just a fun way to get that started. We tried a few different things to keep that greenhouse warm all winter.  We had a corn stove going for a while.  We've got LP heat as a backup that, you know, when we get hit the really freezing  nights, then it keeps things  warm in there. uh learning about passive solar energy, you know, who knew that in my adult life, I'd be taking some science classes online. Yeah, we did the same thing. uh

09:03
Last year, basically.  I  applied for a grant to get funds to build a greenhouse. Okay. And I really wanted a permanent building greenhouse. I didn't want the high tunnel thing where you take it down in the fall.  And got the grant. And my husband and my son built the greenhouse. And they're doing the same thing with the water in the  bins, basically. really works.  It really does.

09:32
And so  we had to really look at how we wanted to heat that greenhouse because the whole point of having it was to keep it warmer longer  into the fall and the early winter. And my husband was like, well, I'll just get a wood stove. And I said, you do understand that you have to tend the wood stove and you do understand if something goes wrong and it catches fire,  I don't get another  grant.

09:58
And he was like, oh yeah, let me do some more research. And he found out about the IBC totes with the water.  And he mentioned it to me and I said, well, that would get us October, November and into December. And that would get us  into February, March and April, you know, to put the seedlings out.  And he said, let's do that. And I said, yeah, let's do that. That way if they spill water doesn't really hurt plants. Right.

10:22
Fire could really ruin that whole plant, but water's good. freezing nights, that's a catastrophe. And then when we had the corn stove, it was just so unreliable. just constantly, we had a temperature monitor and just watching that all the time was stressful. Yeah. I am a big believer in that homesteading and farming and ranching, because I was just talking to somebody else about this this morning.

10:52
uh There's a word.  Reduce the amount of stress if you can because there's so much that you can't foresee. If you can actually foresee a problem,  do what you can to avoid it because that takes the stress down. Control what you can control.  I don't know what's with my brain today. I keep having thoughts and they're not coming out of my mouth the way I want them to. It's okay.

11:15
Um, me keep going. in, in September of 2018, I  attended a two day flower farm workshop.  And that is what really, would say launched me into moving this from a hobby into, would call it a small business aside side hustles, moonlighting business.  Um, so in this flower farmer workshop was hosted by Adam and Jennifer O'Neill and they have pepper Harrow farm. And that's in Winterset, Iowa.

11:45
And I highly recommend people check out their farm, Pepper Harrow Farm. They were so lovely to share all of their information.  They literally opened up their books,  their marketing, their pricing.  They did a lot of wedding work at that time. They've got a really unique farm. growing lavender now down in Iowa. Wow. But they shared growing tips and all that, you know, their resources.

12:12
And they brought in, it was a small class. want to say there was maybe 10 or 12 of us in the class. Deborah Prinzing was there. I'm not sure if you follow her. She's an author. She wrote the book, 50 Mile Bouquet. Nope, but I will have to go look her up. Yep. Deborah Prinzing, she's an author. She started a movement called Slow Flowers that when I was first looking at becoming a flower farmer, it really intrigued me about

12:40
Purchasing flowers locally in season um and being patient for that. If you've grown dahlias, you have to be patient. It takes a long time to get that bloom from  when you first start them. uh And just the idea of, oh as people are shopping locally for food, are they thinking about shopping locally  for flowers? And can you find flowers within that 50 mile radius of where you live?  And so it was fun to meet her. um

13:10
at that workshop, but that really, I would say helped me get my mindset that I need to charge accordingly for the time and labor and product that I'm growing and creating, which is hard to do when you suddenly go from giving all your flowers away to telling someone this is going to be, you know, $25, $30 for what you've been giving them for free.

13:36
is a hard, hard shift. And your first customers are, you know, your friends and family. Um, so that's tough. But I, so I want to talk a little bit about, you know, where, what my revenue is and where, who I  sell to.  A lot of flower farmers depend on those farmers, weekend farmers markets. And that just isn't going to work for me. I have a full-time job.  Um, I'm a HR director at a private school in Fairbough and it's a year round job. So.

14:06
My Saturdays and Sundays are my garden days. So to cut and arrange and then be gone for most of a Saturday just doesn't work. Well, it won't work for me right now anyway. And so I've had to get creative and find different ways to sell these flowers and I'm growing. I have a CSA that has 30 members.

14:31
And I've capped it at 30. I definitely could add to that. And I get asked a lot. I've got a waiting list,  but my, people have been with me from the beginning and no one's, no one's leaving that list. got, they know they've got a good deal. My CSA I deliver.  Um, and so on Mondays and Thursdays there's, there's two groups with it. Um, they're getting flowers every other week, July through September delivered to their, their home or business.  And it's prepaid, you know, they prepay in the spring.

14:58
Um, so the deliveries go pretty fast in the morning. deliver, like I said, on Mondays and Thursdays before I go to work. But it's, you know, it's a drop and go, but I've, I've capped it at 30. just can't the time can, you know, consuming a vet of the delivery. I'm just, you're one person with a limited amount of time. That's how it works. So then I've, you know, I'm a little off the beaten path of things. I'm on a gravel road. I I've thought about it's like a, you know, the

15:28
driveway, stand. I just don't have a ton of traffic  where I'm at. So I've done DIY buckets. I've sold a lot of those where I call it farmer's choice and I'll pick the best blooms that I have and I'll fill a bucket. ah And those work out great for people doing, you know, small backyard, baby showers, bridal showers,  girls get togethers,  you know, small parties. I've done those DIY buckets for them. But what I'm really trying to uh

15:57
to get going and it's been the last two years I'm trying to work on on the farm experiences. We've built some areas here that can host  small groups. I've done Bible study groups and garden clubs and Girl Scout troops, small office retreats.  We've done a couple farm to table  lunch and a dinner. did a full moon dinner. Oh, fine. Where you come here, you experience the farm. We talk a little bit about oh

16:26
The other farming that's happening here, my husband's a full-time beef cattle farmer. So we talk about that and where your food comes from. So we add some of that in and then everybody leaves with some pick your own flowers. So I'm really trying to push those events just because the feedback I get when people get out here is that it's, you know, a slice of heaven. It's peaceful. It's relaxing. It's quiet. It's so different from, you know, everything else they're doing in their life. And so I, and it's

16:53
That works for me. I've got evenings and weekends. I can schedule and plan that. And then I do pop up. I do pop up. You pick events quite a bit in August and September. Just trying to get people out here in the, in the winter. I do some gift certificate sales for, you know, like a garden party in the summer. So you, would buy a gift certificate from me to bring, you know, yourself and five friends out to have a little picnic and pick flowers. I tried something new this year. I did a flower power pass, like a punch card.

17:24
Uh-huh. And I'd like to try that again. You know, I think sometimes things take a couple of years to get going. I'm not going to give up on that one yet. I just, didn't sell it as many as I thought, but uh that's something I want to keep working on. Nice. So you've got all kinds of,  I don't know, tendrils  spreading out for your business on how you're doing it.  I've had, like I said, get creative because that's the standard farmer's market. don't think it's right now anyways, in my

17:53
my phase of life right now isn't going to work. Yeah. Um, I now remember what I was going to ask you. What kind of flowers do you grow? mean, you grow dahlias, but what else do you grow? Sure. I grow a of stuff. Um, of the dahlias, I think I've got about 230 ish dahlias planted this year. And of those 230, would say there's about 36 varieties of dahlias in there. Mostly ball shaped water lily.

18:20
Small cactus,  really no dinner plate. think that cafe au lait is probably the largest uh size bloom that I grow at the Dahlia's.  then um a lot of gumphrinia, cilicia, eucalyptus. My eucalyptus won the Rice County Fair, the open class champion cut flower this summer.  Very nice. Yeah. Small town fun there. uh Some sunflowers.

18:49
Feverfew, ah yeah, I don't grow any tulips in the spring.

18:57
Lots of dahlias.  Zinnias,  all different. And I try to find different zinnias,  not just the standard giant zinnias pack, but I've got  one called agave, uh Cinderella,  the Cinderella series, some kind of more specialty zinnias, I would call those.  Yeah, zinnias are a lot easier than dahlias.  They are.  They are. But I don't think people want to pay for a zinni when they can grow it with

19:27
you know, $3 C-packet themselves.  Oh, yeah, absolutely. And we grew some and I was like, yeah, I don't like those any better. like Dahlia's, I'm sticking with my peonies. And my husband looked at me, he said, you are peony obsessed. I said, yes, I am.

19:41
And then, um, I kind of go through my timeline. I started doing, you know, finding more things. I want to keep learning. Right. So I, I attended something called the slow flower summit that was in Minneapolis in 2019. And through that summit, I got to tour the twin cities, uh, flower exchange, Lynn, Lynn, uh, Len Bush roses, uh, another farm in Lakeville called blue sky flower farm. I don't know if you've ever seen them, they're great people and have, they have a fun.

20:12
farm stand at the end of their driveway that they sell a lot of. And then in 2020, I took the U of M Master Gardener course and I did it in person. I worked with my employer and it was every Friday and Saturday, January and February of 2020. And it was up at the University of Minnesota's the Landscape Arboretum.

20:38
You know, my college degree before this was in, in human resources and, uh, business administration. So I had never taken a lot of botany and pest management and herbicide classes. And I learned so much at that time. And that was a lot of fun. Uh, I'm still a master gardener. So they've got some, a volunteer component to it.  If you are a master gardener, they, they want you to be continuing to spread knowledge and  sharing.

21:06
good knowledge, you research-based horticulture information, not just kind of made up wives' tales kind of stuff. And so I've been able to do that here on my farm and with the Master Gardener Group. Fantastic. I was going to ask you about that, but you got to before I got my question out. So this is going to sound like it's a really dumb question, but it's not. How hard is it to become a Master Gardener? Is it a lot of memorization or is it just showing up and

21:35
being there and learning, not just reurgiting. No, not being there and learning. that's it. The time is the hardest part. They've got so much online now through the University of Minnesota's websites. A lot of the actual class, think, can all be done online now. was probably one of the, even with the pandemic out there, I probably was one of the last groups to do it in person up there. yeah, just time. It's pretty easy to get into.

22:05
Yeah. And you mentioned the arboretum.  Minnesota has one of the best arboretums in the United States, as far as I am concerned.  And if you are at all into gardening or plants, or you just want to go somewhere that just feels good to visit,  that's the place to visit when you come to Minnesota.  Go to the arboretum in,  is it Chanhassen?  Chanhassen, yeah. it's, if you

22:28
Even older, you if you've got somebody with mobility issues, you don't have to walk it. You can drive it. They've got a great driving path up there. Yeah. Yeah. And they're even open in the wintertime. So if you're, if you're a sound of body and have lots of energy, it's a great place to go cross country skiing, snow hiking. It's just beautiful any time of year. So I'm not, I'm not sponsored by them. I have no affiliation with them at all, but I've been there. I love it. And people should visit it. Great. Great resource for sure.

22:59
Yeah,  Minnesota is so  good about those kinds of things. The  camping available here, the hiking available here,  just all the things that are outdoors. Minnesota really tries to provide that and it's one of the things I love most about the state. oh

23:20
I made some notes here that I want to talk about as far as growing dahlias and how I do it, which is a Oh, yes, please. So  I have, all of my dahlias are up in raised beds and that's,  we've been working at, we've been adding raised beds every winter, building them in the winter and adding them in the spring. So I have 78 foot sections of  raised bed, which is a little different than how most people I think are growing. uh

23:49
flowers to the scale I am. I've got everything growing in raised beds except for my sunflowers. Those are still uh in the ground.  But I do the raised beds.  My husband has designed and built an irrigation system with timers. Everything gets watered at night. And then I do use the weed barrier cloth and burn holes ah in those raised beds to help with the weed control. And it helps.  It helps a lot, but the weeds still  come up around.

24:19
There's still some, some, uh, weeding that has to happen, but,  um, it makes the digging in the fall so much easier when they're up. And then  you're familiar with Minnesota weather last, last summer, last June. We just, I mean, we got rain after rain after rain and those raised beds were able to drain out.  And I think that saved me having them up, up off the ground.

24:44
And then even this year when we've had some of those really heavy, you three, four inch rains all at once, uh it's got some way to drain versus just sitting there  in a puddle.

24:58
Awesome. I'm trying to talk my husband into getting raised beds for some of our farm to market garden. he hasn't,  he has not gotten on board yet. And I keep telling him that that one corner of the garden that everybody has in their garden where it floods out. keep asking him if he would start there and just try a couple of raised beds there. Cause that way we don't lose everything if we do get a month of rain again.  Yeah. I highly recommend it if you can do it.

25:27
It's  been an investment for sure, but it is paying out for us.  then the dahlias,  we got into the big dig that's coming up.  Some of my tips and tricks that I've learned over the years. Once I get everything dug, I do get everything back down to that greenhouse just to buy me time to sort and deal with it. uh I'm uh pretty fanatical about my labeling. I usually put at least two different labels on.

25:54
Yeah. know, something rubber banded on something tied on just because all all dial you tubers look exactly the same when you pull them, pull them out of the ground. And so I like to know what I've got. I do wash my tubers. I get all of the  ground dirt off of them before I store them. So wash them then give them at least a few days to dry. And then I do pack them in peat moss. I have tried the sawdust. There's, you know, pine shaving.

26:22
type materials and that hasn't worked well for me. I've ended up with some pretty rotten tubers with that. So heat moss that works well. And then I do move all of them up into our attached garage to our house that we keep at 45, 46 degrees all winter long. they, so they don't freeze up there. So that's, that's the time consuming part is just getting them washed and then stored. And then I don't divide tubers until in the spring.

26:49
Some people do in the fall, but I'm a spring divider. can see it better. can, and I just, at that point I've got a little more energy to do it too. Yeah. I have a question about that. Do the roots continue to grow at all over the winter or are they completely dormant? They do have some little, little fine roots that will grow. And that's actually helpful in the spring to kind of really tell your healthy tubers when they're, starting to wake up and their, their little white roots are starting. Um, you know, for sure that you've got a nice healthy diet ready to go.

27:19
Okay. And do you sell any of your,  is it bulbs? Is it roots? is it? Tuber's. They call them tubers. Yeah. I don't sell them and that's something else. That  could be a revenue stream. I feel like I've gotten the storage part down now so  I can kind of foresee what I would need to keep and what I would have for extra.  I'm getting closer to that. Yeah. then,  sorry, got tickled. um Do they...

27:49
Do they spread like if you plant lilies, know, the tubes, the tubers will multiply. And dahlias are the same. Okay. Different varieties will multiply, you know, better or worse than others. But they all, you know, you start with one, one and you will get a clump afterwards. So, you know, some, I grow a variety called blizzard and a huge clumps of tubers come out of that. So, you know, one tuber from 2025 could be.

28:18
know, 12 to 15 next year. Yeah, that's what I thought, but I couldn't remember. And I'm bad at this again. Dahlia's are not my baby.  They're your baby.  And you know all about it. So I wanted to make sure that people understood how it works. um I actually looked out my kitchen window this morning and I have one yellow daylily blooming right now. They haven't bloomed in a month and a half because they were done.

28:43
One bloom. was like, oh, well, some bee is going to be very happy to see that and then be very crushed when it's closed tomorrow.  This weather has been nuts. I took my son  to the doctor a year ago at this time and the lilac trees that they had along the parking lot were blooming. And I would bet they probably are blooming right now. It wouldn't surprise me. My lilacs are not looking good this year.  No? Not a good year for those.

29:13
I think uh I had some other perennials that didn't winter very well. We had really no snow cover here last winter. And I think  that frost really went down deep.  And I have some bee balm and uh black-eyed Susan, things like that. they came back, but not like they normally do. Yeah, because  interestingly enough, snow is an insulator. That's why we need snow in the wintertime in the cold states. Yeah, we don't mind having to shovel and plow and deal with it, but it does insulate.

29:44
Yeah,  it's so hard right now being a garden person, Erin. It really is because you don't know what the weather's going to do. And I feel like that's always been true, but I feel like it's really been true the last two years. It's been exceedingly difficult. A lot of extremes, oh Yeah. And it worries me.  mean,  I'm not laying in bed, you know, staying awake at night worrying about it, but...

30:11
We kind of need mother nature to cooperate, to be able to grow things. And if she's going to dump water on us every day for 40, 50 days in a row, that causes a real problem is trying to get your garden in the spring. Well, that's going to be directing control the things you can control. Right. So if you, if you can get, you know, add a greenhouse so you can get a jumpstart, you know, our season extension at the end, uh, the race, you know, raised beds. I've got.

30:38
You know, like our irrigation is on timer.  you know, it's going to get watered if we're  in a drought.  I can turn them off  if we're getting too much rain. em know, pick the sunniest spots. You know, I've given tubers away and my friends have said, well, I only got one bloom. And I'm like, well, where is it? Well, it's on the side of my garage. Well, then it's, you know, it's not, I'm only getting half a day of light where I've got them there full sun all day long.  Yep.  Absolutely. There's all kinds of conditions that you have to have to make it

31:07
perform the best it can. friend of mine lives on a lot that has lots of shade. She has so many trees, it's ridiculous.  And  she finally found the one spot on her property that she could grow a peony plant. And she got her first bloom this year after five years of trying to figure out how to make it go. Is she hooked now? Oh, she's always loved them. Okay.  Always.

31:33
And so I don't know, I assume she is. She seemed very happy about having the one bloom. So  if I had my way, our property would be all peonies and sunflowers because that's what really grows here well for flowers.  But my husband says no because he wants his veggie garden. So  I just keep taking free em peony roots when people have them and offer them and we put them in. m

32:00
By the time I die, maybe the whole place will be peony plants. I don't know yet. Do you,  in your sunflowers, this is one of the things that  in my goals every year, know, kind of like look back and make your goals. Yeah. Sixth session planning is always like, okay, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it next year. I'm going to remember in the, you know, third week of June that I should be starting sunflowers again. And, and I always  just get caught up in, in,  in the,  what's in right in front of me and I don't get to that. So.

32:29
Do you do any succession planting with sunflowers? We don't with sunflowers, but we sure do with tomatoes.  Okay.  Because we learned the hard way two summers ago that  if you plant again, they grow because the first planting of tomatoes died because of the water. Second planting died because of the water. Third planting did okay, but it wasn't nearly enough plants.  So yes,  succession planting is really important. um I'm assuming that...

32:57
if we wanted to, could plant sunflower seeds in April, as soon as the ground's soft enough and warm enough. And then we could plant in June and you could probably plant again in August and you would have sunflowers all summer long. because some of those varieties are, you you can find a 65, 70 day. Yeah. You know, and then if you get weather like this in October, it would all work out. Yeah. And we learned the hard way the first time we put sunflowers in that you can't

33:26
really sell great big double the size of dinner plates, sunflowers to people because they don't know what they're going to do with them, right? They don't know do with them and they don't have a base big enough for them. So we picked up some of the more, I don't know, ornamental sunflower seed plants. Yeah, I grow a couple. I grow one in the Pro Cut series and then there's a Vincent series. That's a smaller, smaller one.

33:53
I have learned that the closer you plant the seeds, the smaller the blossom  is. oh if you pack them tight when you're planting them, you'll get some smaller, more manageable blossoms. People like pollen free,  if you can find the pollen free sunflowers for, if you're going to put it in a bouquet and then put it  on a table or something that it's not going to shed the pollen like some of the other varieties will. Yeah. Is the planting them close together for the smaller blooms? Is that because they're competing with each other?

34:21
Yes.  All I know is we bought a variety. don't know what the name of it was now, but it was a burgundy center with like a cream ends of the petals.  Oh, so beautiful. I don't, don't remember what it was and I wish I could cause we'd get them again, but different.  So gorgeous.  buy a lot of my seeds  through a catalog. It comes in a catalog and online called Johnny's.

34:51
And I, Johnny's is a great resource because they've got so much information. Every  seed that you purchase from them, the variety, they've got just all the data and  tips for when to plant and  just a ton of information with their seeds. And  I've got great germination rates from there.  Yes, I highly recommend Johnny's. Yeah. They're based out of Maine. Yep. Yep. I grew up in Maine, so I know about Johnny's.

35:20
And I get seeds from all over. mean, Baker Creek,  Seed Savers,  some of my dahlias have come from Swan Island.  I shop,  once they find you on Facebook or in the mail, you're going to start getting seed catalogs from everywhere. ah I try to spread it out a little bit, but  Johnny's, would say, is probably one of my main sources for seeds. Well, shout out to Johnny's because I think they do pretty good too.  All right, uh Erin, where can people find you online?

35:48
Aaron's acre and it is one acre not plural just Aaron's acre My husband farmed 700 acres and you know, there's a little joke in our house about Aaron's just a little one acre So Aaron's acre calm. I am on Instagram and Facebook Okay, awesome fantastic and as always people can find me at a tiny homestead podcast calm

36:15
and check out my Patreon. It's patreon.com slash atinyhomestead. Erin, thank you for talking to me about dahlias because like I said, they're not my thing, but I think they're absolutely gorgeous. And I know lots of people who want to get into growing them. So hopefully the stuff that you shared will help them get started. Well, thank you. I appreciate talking with you today. All right. Have a great evening. Okay, you too.