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Celebrate American Flowers Week! Buy local

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Debbie Arrington PUBLISHED JUL 1, 2019

A dress covered in gerbera daisies, designed by Jenny M. Diaz, represents California in American Flowers Week's botanical couture collection. (Photo courtesy Jenny M. Diaz/American Flowers Week)

Support California growers of ‘Slow Flowers’

The last time you bought flowers, did you wonder: Where did these come from? Who grew these blooms and how?

This is American Flowers Week, a celebration of the nation’s flower farmers. It’s the ornamental equivalent of farm to fork. This is field (or garden) to vase.

Getting to know more about the source of bouquets is at the crux of Slow Flowers and American Flowers Week. Like Slow Food and its connection to locally sourced ingredients, Slow Flowers emphasizes locally sourced blooms and decorative material.

Slow Flowers expert Debra Prinzing came up with American Flowers Week in 2015 to draw attention to attempts to bring back commercial flower farming to the United States. About 80 percent of all flowers sold in the U.S. are grown overseas.

“I get asked this question often: Why should I care where my flowers come from?” Prinzing said. “The parallels between the Slow Food movement and the Slow Flowers movement are obvious. When we know where, who and how flowers are grown, we vote with our pocketbook.”

To show off some eye-popping blooms, Slow Flowers floral designers across the country created dresses entirely out of flowers. The botanical couture collection is featured in Florists’ Review magazine and at AmericanFlowersWeek.com .

Jenny M. Diaz, a Fresno-based artist and graphic designer, represented California in the collection with a '60s-style mod shift studded with hundreds of California-grown gerbera daisies. Diaz photographed the stunning pink and orange dress in her hometown.

“It's projects like these that help elevate and raise awareness about U.S. domestic floral agriculture and sustainable floral design,” Prinzing said. “The public and professionals are invited to download a library of free resources from the website (AmericanFlowersWeek.com), including graphics, images, floral coloring sheets and social media tools. Participation in American Flowers Week is open to all.”

Is American Flowers Week catching on?

Prinzing measures its impact via social media. In 2015, American Flowers Week made 400,000 social media impressions (Facebook shares, Instagram hits, etc.). Last year, it topped 4 million.

Its impact continues all year long as more farmers get into growing flowers.

Said Prinzing, “What I find really exciting is the amazing diversification, especially in small-cut flower farms, including those in the Sacramento Valley, who are growing unusual and heirloom annual varieties of cut flowers from ageratum to zinnias, highly valued garden roses for the floral marketplace, and flowers that the home gardener might never try growing, such as lisianthus.”

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Keywords:

American Flowers Week cut flowers Sacramento Sacramento Valley commercial flowers farms events farm to vase gardening Fresno Slow Flowers blooms flowers

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Garden Checklist for week of April 21

This week there’s plenty to keep gardeners busy. With no rain in the immediate forecast, remember to irrigate any new transplants.

* Weed, weed, weed! Get them before they flower and go to seed.

* April is the last chance to plant citrus trees such as dwarf orange, lemon and kumquat. These trees also look good in landscaping and provide fresh fruit in winter.

* Smell orange blossoms? Feed citrus trees with a low dose of balanced fertilizer (such as 10-10-10) during bloom to help set fruit. Keep an eye out for ants.

* Apply slow-release fertilizer to the lawn.

* Thoroughly clean debris from the bottom of outdoor ponds or fountains.

* Spring brings a flush of rapid growth, and that means your garden is really hungry. Feed shrubs and trees with a slow-release fertilizer. Or mulch with a 1-inch layer of compost.

* Azaleas and camellias looking a little yellow? If leaves are turning yellow between the veins, give them a boost with chelated iron.

* Trim dead flowers but not leaves from spring-flowering bulbs such as daffodils and tulips. Those leaves gather energy to create next year's flowers. Also, give the bulbs a fertilizer boost after bloom.

* Pinch chrysanthemums back to 12 inches for fall flowers. Cut old stems to the ground.

* Mulch around plants to conserve moisture and control weeds.

* From seed, plant beans, beets, cantaloupes, carrots, corn, cucumbers, melons, radishes and squash.

* Plant onion sets.

* In the flower garden, plant seeds for asters, cosmos, celosia, marigolds, salvia, sunflowers and zinnias.

* Transplant petunias, zinnias, geraniums and other summer bloomers.

* Plant perennials and dahlia tubers for summer bloom.

* Mid to late April is about the last chance to plant summer bulbs, such as gladiolus and tuberous begonias.

* Transplant lettuce seedlings. Choose varieties that mature quickly such as loose leaf.

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