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Saturday, August 08, 2009

Fresh cut flower bouquets go to market




"The earth laughs in flowers" - e.e. cummings

We've been selling some of our extra garden bounty through the Bailey's Local Foods buying club every Friday. This is part of the "producerism" mentality of our homestead, trying to find ways to make all aspects of our day-to-day life productive - a concept we define as either earning some income, sharing our excess, educating, or reducing our ecological impact. We've offered fresh herbs, wild grape leaves, dried herbal teas, and also cut flower bouqets to the buying club members. I love making the simple bouquets, using black eyed susan, echinacea, zinnias, sunflowers and daisies which are in full bloom right now. I try to keep fresh flowers around the house whenever I can, as well as enjoying them in the garden. We've also been collecting seed from the annuals in the fall (sunflowers, cosmos, nasturtium, borage, calendula, marigolds, etc) . An easy way to keep flowers fresh in a vase is to add 1 tsp sugar to the water. Changing the water daily also helps prolong the bloom life of cut flowers. Here are some photos as I was preparing the bouquets - we take them to the buying club car-free (by stroller), with my little one helping out.

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