Abigail Anderson

Me standing outside of the cut flower field at the AAUFRC with two buckets of flowers I had just harvested. Right after the picture, I took the flowers back to the office and made arrangements for whoever wanted to take flowers home.

On the first day of my fourth week, a lot of big things were happening at the Urban Farming Research Clinic. On the farm we are growing four varieties of blackberries, and this week many berries were ripe and ready to pick. So, my mentor and I headed out to the farm to assist one of our Master Gardeners in picking the blackberries. Together with the Master Gardener, my mentor and I helped pick the remaining ripe blackberries on the bushes. After weighing the blackberries that we had picked, our first day we had collected a total of 19.2 pounds of berries! My mentor said that more berries will be ready to pick throughout the coming weeks. 

A detail that I haven’t mentioned before in my blogs about the urban farm is that there is a hop yard. The yard is growing hops that were given to us through a partnership with a local brewery called Pherm Brewing Company. The hops, along with the blackberries and the jalapenos from our high tunnel, will be collected and infused into two beer brews. The farm made a collaborative brew with Pherm in the previous year, and they called the beer the Spicy Urban Pharmer. I can’t wait until we are able to pick these crops and hand them to the brewery to make the beers that the whole community can share! 

On the premises of the farm we also have a cut flower field which I have been working on more recently. My mentor informed me this week that it was time to harvest the flowers that were fully bloomed and ready to be cut. At my previous job I had worked at a florist, so I was very confident in fulfilling the task of processing flowers for use. The steps to processing flowers that will be used in arrangements consists of three general steps: make a fresh cut at an angle at the bottom of the stem, pick any leaves on the stem up to the base of the flower, and immediately after cutting, place the flower in water. Typically in a regular flower arrangement you use other greens to fill in the arrangement. However, as I only cut and collected the flowers and was worried that the arrangement would lack these parts. So I used some of the lower stems of the zinnia as filler greens. Once back in the office, we found some jars that would be suitable vases and I started to make arrangements that I offered to anybody in the office. I have a feeling that as more flowers arise, I will be collecting them and making arrangements for, possibly, the rest of my internship! 

This is a picture of the three arrangements that I made out of the flowers harvested from the cut flower field. The flowers in the arrangements mostly consist of zinnias, with the inclusion of some celosia and snapdragon. One arrangement was placed at the front desk, and the others were displayed in the kitchen. 

This is the fourth arrangement that I made at the end of the week. There was a new color variety of snapdragon that had grown in the cut flower field and I wanted to make a new arrangement featuring them.