We’re still open for Open Farm Days and our Farm Stand Plant Store thru June 10th! We have plenty of plants to choose from and wonderful workshops happening on the weekends. Hope you can visit! We’re open every day, except closed on Fridays, from 9am to 4pm.
Perennial Seeds Grown at Desert Canyon Farm
One view of the flower seed crops production field
Organic farming, or any type of farming, means being willing to grow different crops as markets shift and change. We started this farm 22 years ago growing fresh-cut herbs for herbal extract companies across the U.S. and the U.K. That was a very good market and allowed us to earn an excellent living, but sometimes industries change and that happened. We had a request from Jelitto Perennial Seed Company in Germany to contract-grow seed crops for them. It was good timing…we started our 18 year relationship (continuing into the future) with Jelitto growing perennial seeds.
Chocolate Flower crop – flowers smell like hot chocolate chip cookies in the mornings
Growing seeds for Jelitto is unique from other seed companies and suits the way we farm. We grow plants well-suited for our climate. We grow 50-60 different varieties each year, and some seed crops have been here 15-16 years, while others are grown for a year or two and replaced. The plants are perennial (meaning will come back each year for many years), so we don’t replant them each year, and some of the plants in our field are quite old. The work is primarily done by hand, as each plant variety has its own requirements for growing and harvesting. The plants are grown in small planting of 1-3 beds of 4′ x 100′ in size. Some seed crops require picking the seed daily May thru November, while others need harvesting all at once. The seed is all hand-picked, except Helichrysum seed which is so light and small we use a vacuum to suck the seed every afternoon around 3pm. If we don’t harvest at that time, it would simply blow away in the breeze.
Chris is picking Denver Gold Columbine seed by hand
Here he is vacuuming the Helichrysum seed – he does this every afternoon from June thru October!
One bed of Penstemon superbus in bloom NOW.
Right now Penstemon superbus (Coral Penstemon) is blooming with bright pink flowers. Shangri-La Sage is gloriously in bloom with purple white flowers, attracting the largest of bumblebees. Another crop called Bear’s Britches, is only pollinated by the very largest of bumble bees and was chosen for us to grow because that bumblebee lives in our region and not in many other places. We are the only production farm growing Bear’s Britches in the world because we have that bumblebee here! In fact, many of our seed crops are here because other farms can’t successfully grow them. We grow Muhley Grass, so beautiful blooming in fall and Turkish Sage because we have dry winters and a long growing season, so the seed has time to fully ripen before winter arrives. Other growers aren’t successful in getting ripe seed. Some of our crops are native plants like Zinnia grandiflora, Indian Paintbrush and White Prickly Poppy. We have a brand new Gaillardia and a white Mirabilis only Jelitto has and we are the only seed producer at this point. There’s an orange Gazania (African Daisy), quite popular with gardeners, but no one still grows seed. Jelitto sent us the remaining seed this year to start re-building the seed supply. There is a rare Clematis and a perennial Kale.
The sea kale is also blooming right now! Beautiful!!
We are successful growing perennial seeds in part because we care deeply about these plants and the work interesting, but really it’s because we have so many different native pollinators and honeybees pollinating the flowers. We have a good climate for this kind of farming. Imagine…perennial flower and ornamental grass seed is grown in Canon City, harvested and sent to Germany each fall. They clean the seed, test germination rates, and then send the seed out to gardeners and growers all over the world. The Bear’s Britches we grow might end up being grown in Thailand, West Virginia or England, or maybe back in Colorado!
A walk down memory lane – nearly 10 years ago in the Farm Stand store.
Open Farm Days continue thru June 10th, every day, except closed Fridays, 9am to 4pm. Visit and take a stroll thru our seed production field. Enjoy those blooming Penstemons or check out the new Tibetan Mountain Onion. Enjoy our gardens, which are test growing areas for future seed crops, and may give you ideas for your gardens. Shop in our Farm Stand store, where many plants we grow as seed crops are available for sale as potted plants. We’re located at 1270 Field Ave in Canon City.
