It’s cold and gray. Winter is quite chilly in our old farmhouse, so we bundle up in sweatshirts and spend lots of time by the wood stove in the evenings. I have also spent lots of time buying flower seeds for next spring. Soooo many flower seeds! Talking to Jeff, drinking a bottle of our dwindling supply of French wine we brought back with us from Europe we came up with this amazing idea… LAVENDER. While living in Germany, we made a trip to the Provence region of Southern France just to see the lavender fields in bloom. It was a bucket list thing for me, not so much Jeff… can you tell by the look on his face?
We had a great trip! A little side adventure to a tiny countryside French hospital where they didn’t speak any English, we used Google Translate to communicate and the ER Doc wore capri pants and flip flops… but that’s another story. I’ve been a little obsessed with lavender ever since that trip. Doing a little research for growing grapes on the farm, it looks like the sandy soil we have in some of the fields would be perfect for growing lavender! I contacted a few other lavender growers in Maryland and identified the varieties that seem to do well with Maryland weather. I just received my first 200 little lavender plants, they are currently in my greenhouse growing roots. We will plant a few hundred plants of different varieties on the farm this spring and see what thrives, and plant more this fall and the following spring. Jeff pointed out we are re-creating France on the farm, he’s quite right!
The post Lavender Fields Forever appeared first on Susannah's Watch.