Seed Talk #69 – 2023 Wrap-up

Are you ready for a fresh start in 2024? Have you taken some time to reflect on changes you will be making going into the new year? Today, Lisa and Layne wrap up the year with a review of the top-selling seeds of 2023, new things they will be trying in 2024, some flowers they will not be growing, and resolutions for a new gardening season. Listen to the podcast, consider what changes you might make in your own field or garden in the upcoming year, and look forward to a beautiful 2024!

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The “Seed Talk with Lisa & Layne” podcast is produced by The Gardener’s Workshop and co-hosted by Lisa Mason Ziegler and Layne Angelo. Lisa is the founder and owner of The Gardener’s Workshop, where Layne works as Seed Manager. Lisa is the award-winning author of Vegetables Love Flowers and Cool Flowers and the publisher of Flower Farming School Online, Farmer-Florist School Online, and Florist School Online. Watch Lisa’s Story and connect with her on social media. Layne is an avid gardener, seed starter, and engineer who loves learning and applying her technical knowledge to all areas of life, including gardening and growing flowers. Thanks for joining us!
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Hey friends welcome back to another seed talk with Lisa and Lane hey Lane hello almost the end of the year Lisa oh my gosh can you believe 2024 is just around the corner I can hardly imagine it I mean good thing we don’t write checks anymore right remember back in the day

When we wrote checks all the time in the first month of the new year you were always write in the wrong year oh yeah we’re aging ourselves I’m aging me you’re babe in the woods and age so um Welcome Friends this is the seed Talk podcast which is brought to you by the

Gardeners workshop.com which is where laye and I spend our days um creating and facilitating for people to grow cut flowers and to grow them from seed anywhere in the world Y and Lane what are we going to talk about today well well since it is almost the end of the

Year we thought it would be a good idea to look back on 2023 and do a little bit of a wrap-up so we’re going to take a look at our top five selling seeds of the entire year so you can kind of see what everybody else was growing see if

That was something you were growing to or maybe something that you should be growing and then we’re going to talk about a few different things that we’re going to do differently in 2024 so we’ll just go back and forth between Lisa and I and by the way feel free to follow

Along we would encourage you to answer these questions for yourself and if you’re watching over on YouTube you can share in the comments what your answers to some of the questions are or if you’re listening in a podcast app you can use the form Linked In the show

Notes and share with us that way that’s awesome and that is a reminder Lane that they can pop over to YouTube and watch us because you always have such a beautiful slideshow to go along with our podcast so we invite you to do that all right let’s get going okay so let’s go

Through our list of the top five selling seeds of 2023 and number one this is no surprise to Lisa or to myself it is Zenia benari giant mix you know it took me years as a flower farmer to recognize that even though they’re easy to grow

When you give them what they really need people still just love them I mean we was the number one seed we sold it was always the one of the number one cut flowers we sold for all of our Decades of flower farming so yeah totally in on

The yay yes for Baner Giants I mean be it’s the most commercially grown and there’s a reason for that they’re the biggest most volumptuous most disease resistant and the color selection I think they’re up to 13 or 14 different colors you know some years one or two of

The colors may not be available but they’s salmon and I mean I’m just looking at this pen wheel the colors are just spectacular yeah and the fun thing about growing a mix is you can find new colors that maybe you wouldn’t have tried before and find which your

Favorites are and then if you want in the future grow singles of those exactly exactly all right our number two seed of the year was eucalyptus parvula gum and that is the small leafed eucalyptus that Lisa you have come to really love in recent years and I definitely love you

Know it’s not only do I love it because of the look I love that it’s a little darker color you know it’s a little bit it’s not that eucalyptus Lea gray kind of color but anything with a small Leaf gives you more uses you can use it in

Smaller bouquets I mean boutineer work and all that kind of stuff for wedding work it is just Priceless but I will tell you that parvula gum also became one of our top Growers we were able to overw Winter it you know with a little extra

TLC um and it got over like eight feet tall in its second year with a ton of side branching so I mean I would have been just elated to have that when we were in production um but we always saved our eucalyptus till late in the

Season and it’s just a perfect match for fall flowers I love it I love it and I love the smaller more delicate looking leaves and the structure of it it’s just really really pretty and it’s easy to incorporate into bouquet or anything that you’d want and it doesn’t

Immediately strike you as a eucalyptus like you were saying Lisa exactly I mean people are like what is that and I also wanted to add because I’m a little sensitive to fragrances it’s not quite as smelly as the other eucalyptus so I’m pretty sure it might not produce enough

Oils that people really love it that do that type of um process with it but yeah as a cut flower it is just the best we love it all right moving on to number three and it was sosia Texas plumes mix and this has a rainbow of different

Color in these big beautiful plumes you know I just love Texas plumes since the first day I met them and I love them because their plumes are a little bit bigger this the plant overall is taller than most of the other plume spikes you know in the sosia family um but in

Addition to that with them being taller their blooms are bigger and the colors from shrimp to soft pink to salmon and yellow and almost green white I mean if you can only grow one sosia plume this is the one and we just absolutely love it it’s actually grown for us and um we

Just there’s a reason that it’s worth all that extra effort It’s amazing And we actually have an entire episode about Texas plumes and the growing of Texas plumes and that was back in episode 17 if you want to take a listen or watch that all right moving on to number four

For the year it was blackeyed Susan or Rudbeckia Sahara and this just has such a beautiful variation of colors from Coppers to pale yellows to wines soft Rose there are just so many beautiful colors in this mix it is and you know Lane we this is a cool flower um we

Treat it as a cool season Hardy annual and fall planted and we get the most tremendous length of stem when we do that um I I kind of kept away from Sahara for several years as a grower because I I heard a lot of people bellyaching about oh my gosh they only

Get 12 or 18 inches tall well when you plant them in the fall or very early spring That season we’re getting ready to head straight into in January um you we get tremendous stem length because the colors in here you just don’t want to miss out on they’re so beautiful yeah

They are gorgeous and number five was actually my favorite fever few which is Tetra White Wonder it’s a little double flower and it’s white I love this is one of this I think was actually the first fever F I ever grew and oh really yeah and um and actually it’s been renamed

Through The Years um but it is I think it used to be called balls ultra um but it’s always been this little double flow and it’s just the sweetest little flower and we love cutting it early and then cutting it late and using it all the times in between um it’s just beautiful

In the garden and it’s Priceless in bouquet work yeah and I’ve said this before but I love taking just a big bunch of Feverfew and putting that by itself in a vase it’s so beautiful and like I said this is actually my favorite Feverfew and what’s funny Lisa is your

Favorite VMO single which is the single Daisy like looking Feverfew that was actually number six so it really yes it was well you know they’re just so useful and I think these years of you know kind of right now now in the wedding circles you know baby’s breath had its day and

Now you know the fever fuse are just a great white flower that are so much better than baby’s breath if you ask me but anyway all right now we’re gonna move on to discussing some things we’re going to be doing potentially a little differently in 2024 and the first topic

Is going to be something new we’re trying in 2024 and Lisa’s is more like some experimenting that she’s going to be doing yes um so we’re always on the trail of trying to flush out any plant that potentially may be a cool flower a cool season Hardy annual um which most

Importantly what that means is that we’re we’ve probably not been planting it at the proper time if in fact it is a cool season Hardy annual so I am going to be doing an experiment this year on bunny Tails grass and you know we have tried I have tried to grow bunny tails

For several years and I grow them they germinate and grow but they just don’t get tall enough to make it truly a viable cut flower crop and then I saw on social media somewhere somewhere I can’t even remember where it was somebody commented that they plant bunny tales in

The fall they’re in zone eight winter hardiness is zone eight and it’s a perennial where they live and I thought a perennial where she lives that means that it’s probably a cool season Hardy annual um because most often a lot of times you’ll hear people use those

Terms perennial but in fact that just means it survives winter it probably may not have a long life where it returns year after year so here we are this year we have two plantings of bunny tales in the garden one was a little bit earlier

So it have a little bit more hunk to it when it faced winter and then a a normally planted cool season Hardy annual and we will plant again in very early spring and we’re going to see can we get those bunny tails up to 20 to 24

Ines instead of 12 to 18 inches time will tell yeah and Bunny Tails grass it just has these sweet little toughs that really do look like a Cotton Tail and these are always in our top sellers as well Lisa these are definitely in the

Top 10 I mean and that’s why boo and I knew that this would definitely be worthy there’s a lot of people interested in growing bunny Tales I mean who doesn’t want that little bunny tail in their bouquet well I certainly do they’re adorable it is adorable all

Right so something new that I’m looking forward to trying in 2024 is something called carthamus or safflower and Lisa grew a variety last year called zanza bar and I was intrigued right away when I saw it it has this beautiful dark green foliage and these really interesting orange and golden yellow

Sort of powder puff blooms but I actually like them before they even Bloom because the flower buds have this really geometric look to them they look almost like an artichoke and they just add so much interest to an arrangement or out in the landscape so I’m looking forward to trying some carthamus this

Next year and seeing what the deer and rabbits have to say about it yeah I agree I love it all I love every stage but you we find it really useful early mid and even after the blooms because we dry it and it dries beautifully too it does and if you’re

Using this before it’s actually bloomed by the way you can use it almost like you would use a sunfill sunflower exactly it’s excellent filler and it’s a great grower and it branches so it’s a great crop it’s a great cash crop I don’t know why I didn’t grow it for many

Years I think I didn’t really understand that it was a cool flower you know what I mean so the timing wasn’t right yeah yeah okay now we’re going to move on to something we are not growing in 2024 and if you’re watching over on YouTube Don’t

Panic when you see that Lisa’s half of the screen has a sunflower on it it’s not that she’s not growing sunflowers it’s just that she’s going to be cutting some different varieties of sunflowers from her grow list and the one we’re looking at is Premier orange yes um so

This is kind of the EB and flow of not so much being just a gardener but particularly as a business person sometimes there’s just seeds that there’s really by no fault of their own is it that they are going to get cut um for us this is one that we just can’t

Get a steady supply of seed from um and that’s enough for me to cut you from the list um you know anything business is complicated enough without added complications and added complications is having a particular sunflower in my rotation because you know we plant sunflowers every week um if I remember

Right um doesn’t Premiere isn’t that like a 45 day Bloom time or something it is faster yes yeah it’s really fast to try to get that into our calendar and then not to have the seeds was like a total pain so yeah so we’ve cut Premiere and it’s there’s nothing wrong with

Premiere She’s a Beauty if you get to grow her that’s the problem that is a very pretty flower and it’s always hard to cut things for your grow list but it really is true that deciding what not to grow can be just as important as deciding what to grow yes I agree okay

Now we’re going to move on to my pick for something I’m not growing in 2024 and my pick is going to be amaranth and it’s not actually that I’m not growing amaranth at all next year it’s just that I’m not planning on growing it until late summer and fall and the pest

Pressure from pigweed flea beetles at that time of year is almost non-exist cons istent for me compared to earlier in the season when it’s pretty extreme and even though I do love amaranth at any time of year fall is when I find myself craving it the most and

Appreciating it the most so I’ll be trying to stop myself from starting amaranth until later in the season next year so we’ll see how that goes yeah that’s really smart Lane and I think that is another thing people have to really resist is to find out when maybe

If you have a pest issue or a Environ mental issue temperatures or whatever find like Cosmos Cosmos just perform so great late summer into fall they’ll grow earlier in the summer but they don’t quite hold up as long you know what I mean so I think it’s hard to make those

Decisions because you want them as early as you can but that’s smart all right now we’re going to move on to some 2024 resolutions and I’m sure we both have multiple but we tried to just settle on one each to share so Lisa’s resolution is something that’s pretty challenging

For her because it involves downsizing yes so the if you’re watching us on YouTube that is a view from upstairs in my studio down on one of our Gardens and those beds are about 12 feet long and um there’s a bunch of them and there’s a bunch more that you can’t see

And that’s us in high production and I love everything about that um but we no longer need that volume of production because you know the bottom line is if you want a garden to keep producing you have to cut it clean twice a week y’all

The more you cut it the more it produces so Bobo and I are committed this year oh my gosh I’m saying it publicly so now I’m really gonna have to do it uh oh that we have downsized our garden and we’re going to make the space that we’ve

Designated which is about I mean I’m even going to say I haven’t measured it we’ve just made it a little bit bigger on one side so they’d be le um the same on both sides but I’m going to say it’s about a quarter of an acre which doesn’t

Sound like much but that is still a lot of blooming flowers and it’s really hard it’s less seeds to S less you know it’s less everything but we are looking forward to really being able to maybe keep our timing more on schedule and to squeeze as many flowers out of that

Small space as possible so we’re excited but I’m also really scared so you’re going to be doing more with less basically exactly well I think you’ll enjoy it Lisa me I just don’t know if you’ll be able to hold to it yeah we’ll see because I do have a lot of available

Space y’all yeah all right so we’re gon to move on to my resolution for the year and like I said I have several but one that I will share is my resolution for 2024 has to do with plant support so most of the flowers that we’re growing

Here in our home Garden are integrated out in the landscape rather than being in distinct beds and that can make it a bit more challenging to incorporate supports and still have everything look nice but I always regret not getting out there and having some sort of supports

In place before the plants grow and get completely out of hand so I’m going to be making an effort to do more of that earlier on in the season good luck with that but that’s that is but you know that’s exactly what we’re trying to do

Too you know what I mean is to do our chores more timely because it’s less work with a better result in the end how much happier will you be with all your beautiful digitalis that you grow standing upright and not laying down yeah because netting even gets away from

You Lisa out on the farm oh yeah I mean every I mean I’m constantly having to confess because we do so much video in here I have to say you know this flower really should be netted but there’s actually there’s actually a picture in my new book where it shows a cool flower

Garden for the year that we had that really weird not weird just you know the normal craziness of February where it got really warm everything started shooting up but then it was getting cold again so I really couldn’t net but before I knew it the Snap Dragons were

Too tall to net and they got away from me so that whole it’s a picture of it says this Garden should be netted but it you know didn’t happen and you know happens to me too so yeah all right well that does it for our 2023 wrapup we just

Wanted to say thank you so much to everyone who has supported us this year and we appreciate so much if you’ve left ratings and reviews in a podcast app it really helps us and you have no idea how much we appreciate your kind words we

Read all of them so thank you so much and thanks for spending some time with us this year and we just wanted to say cheers to our best Garden ever in 2024 that’s great Lane yes so we want to thank you and friends if you haven’t you

Know posted a review or subscribed or um you know or sh shared with a friend with all of that helps us it tells the platforms that are showing our podcast to people that you know people are really enjoying this content and we appreciate you guys um actually doing

That we just love being connected to you guys so friends I also want to say as we’re moving into 2024 um that you know the gardeners workshop.com where which is what keeps Lane and I busy you know during our our work days um has a fully stocked online

Garden shop we many of the items that we mention here on the podcast all of the seeds um and you’ll find them over there as well as our online library of online courses um but I just wanted to mention that if you are new to see seed starting

Or you are really ready to ramp up your game um we have a kit that’s called the complete seed starting kit and it has everything that you need to go from starting the seed sprouting it growing it up indoors then um how to get it out

To the garden and protect it and feed it there and the complete kit has the grow light and the it has my online seed starting Made Easy which is about a 90minut course um just really takes you by the hand and walks you through it and

We love starting seeds and both Lane and I both are big soil blockers right lane yes yep I start basically everything in soil blocks either the small or a larger size yes and um anyway so that kit is available so if you’re embarking it really takes you by the hand and the

Thing that I think probably attracted Lane is same as it did me it takes up so little space this little grow light that’s a tabletop oh only takes up a footprint of 12 in by 24 in that’s like two square feet y’all and you can grow

Like 240 plants in that small space and you know whenever I talk about this Lane I think how revolutionary that is for people that are growing in trying to grow in pots and sell packs and and it grows an incredible little transplant so find that over at the garders workshop.com I

Just thought I would mention it as we are heading in to the biggest seed stting season of the year early spring and um we’d love to see you um over there at the gardeners workshop.com all right friends here is to seeing you on the flipside in 2024 to meet us right

Back here Lane and I will be rolling out seed talks and um we love to hear from you we do we’re ready to do some seed starting are you ready to get back into it Lisa oh my goodness I already have some started don’t tell anybody oh me

Too we can’t help ourselves y’all all right friends happy New Year until we meet again ciao bye