I got hooked on dahlias a few years ago.

I then tried glads, goodness those were fun too!

Things changed a bit then changed again, I’m hoping my life is done changing for a while, now I’m living on 40 acres in Everson/Sumas, where the ice storm we had last winter took a good deal of our orchard, it’s a lovely micro climate that’s going to be tricky to figure out.

My husband & his family bought the place 45 years ago, had cattle & other live stock, and vegetables in the garden every summer!

Flowers weren’t a thing so much until I came along….I came with my tubers & corms and colored things up a bit!

I planted a fairy garden – cosmos, godetias, sweet peas, statis, poppies, snap dragons, lupine, holly Hocks, sun flowers…it was small & compact (4 equal rows in a 10×20) then had two rows of sun flowers both 40 foot long of various kinds, them my glads I think there was 70? & dahlias (28) and some four o’clocks.  Our gourd patch was 70×6 feet.  

It was a rough summer, the heat was horrendous!  The sun flowers were well over 15 feet last year, but this year they were only 13 or so.  The fairy garden struggled a bit, the dahlias were stunted until we had rain from the sky in late September, the pumpkins were small, I knew the soil is part of the issue, but it wasn’t my dirt, and I didn’t know what to do, but we made the best of it, I sold $14 last year in my road side stand, this year I made 60$ by adding ornamental gourds & pumpkins.

Joe has seen my love for growing things, and as my first Christmas present as a married couple he purchased Erin’s book from Floret Farms in Skagit Valley, WA, https://www.floretflowers.com/blog/ thereby opening Pandora’s box!

So, I’ve sent away for our soil kit from http://www.simplysoiltesting.com/index.html and taking notes in the planning kit that comes with the book as a digital download.  I’m eagerly awaiting the boxes so we can start stringing out the plans for the gardens and send out the soil to see what needs to be done first!

Hopefully, things will be a bit better this year, there’s no magic numbers in Erin’s book as far as what our soil is supposed to have in it, but by the looks of it the soil testing place will have recommendations for us.   I’m ready to gear up with some soaker hoses, landscaping cloth, heat pads & lights and see what I can grow this year! First we build a green house!!