We’re in the current Whirl Wedding Guide in a feature on wedding bouquets. As part of the “Whirl Wednesdays” segment, another of our wedding bouquets was featured on Pittsburgh Today Live on KDKA this morning. Here’s the video:
It’s made of mauve duchess roses (the large roses, which are 3-4 roses put together to make them enormous), burgundy ranunculus with green buds and leaves, purple button mums, lavender and rosemary foliage (from our garden – thanks, mild winter!), pink waxflower, and succulents (Portulacaria afra ‘Aurea’, from my greenhouse, plus a little Echeveria tucked in there, too).
We started “greenSinner” with an idea: we wanted to help people be green, in realistic ways. Most folks want to do what’s right for the environment, but getting there — or even figuring out what the “right” thing is — isn’t always easy. We started with this idea, not really sure what it would become. A blog? Yes, partially. A way of life for us? It already was. Maybe even a vocation? We hope so.
We’ve been quiet here on the blog lately, but if you saw last week’s post (or you’ve been checking us out on Facebook or Twitter), you’ve seen we haven’t been idle. We’ve opened a stall at the Pittsburgh Public Market. We’re building on our love of growing things to bring you flowers, and hopefully a slightly more beautiful world in the process.
Flowers always bring beauty. But many of the cut flowers available here in the United States are shipped from the tropics and treated with lots of chemicals to preserve them, neither of which is very good for our planet. It also limits the selection of flowers available to those that are easy and economical to ship over long distances and retain vase life after they’ve been on a plane or in a truck for a week.
We decided we want to help change that. There’s a local flower movement a-brewin’, and we’re joining in. There are already growers all over the country, and we’re glad to say we’re getting started right here in Pittsburgh.
We don’t have any land. What’s a farmer without land? Well, we’ve been very lucky to work with some great partners so far:
We’ve benefited from a very generous offer by Catherine at Prism Stained Glass in Lawrenceville to use space behind her shop for a production garden, create a display garden on Butler Street, and participate in creating some community garden space.
We’ve been able to forage from our own gardens, those of friends and family, and even folks we’ve met through the Public Market, like Scotty and Brenda at the Berry Patch.
We do hope in the future to have a place to create the greenSinner farm, and we’ve been working with Pittsburgh’s Urban Redevelopment Authority to utilize vacant land in the city.
So it’s very much greenSinner. Green, because we’re growing locally, without chemicals. Sinner because, well, we’re still cutting up flowers, after all. They’re fresher and so should last longer, but they’re only temporary. Still, we think it’s worth it for the beauty they can bring, and if that’s not for you, we have plenty of live plants, too.
When I recently met someone who said to me, “You must be the flower farmer,” I thought, “Yes, I am.” And it felt really good to say so.
We’ve got big plans: we’re becoming urban flower farmers and designers.
Why Urban Farming?
Pittsburgh, like lots of industrial cities, has undergone a lot of contraction in the last 30-40 years. It’s done a pretty swell job at reinventing itself focusing around new industries like healthcare and education rather than steel and glass — there’s a reason we keep winning all those “most livable city” awards, after all.
But part of the transition was that Pittsburgh lost a lot of people. It’s now about half the size it once was, and that means a lot of empty space in the city. A compact urban core is great, but realistically, infill of housing can’t fill all that space. So what can we do with it? Some of it will go to parks and other greenspace, which is great. But there’s another greenspace-oriented use that also productively employs land and people: farming.
Why Flowers?
The local food movement has led to lots of local food options. Having grown up in the country, where you can find farmstands along the road with fresh produce all summer long, we’re in love with that. We subscribe to a CSA, we try to eat seasonal foods for this region of the country, and we grow our own.
But flowers… do you realize that the vast majority of cut flowers sold and delivered in the United States come from places like Ecuador and Colombia? They have perfect flower-growing climates to grow things like roses year-round, and they all get shipped overseas and assembled into the bouquets and arrangements you get from your local flower shop. As a result, they’re also not particularly fresh, and they’re covered with chemical preservatives and fungicides and all sorts of things like that.
We’d like to do our little part to change that. (Plus, Jimmy says he can’t cook, so I have to give him something to do, and flowers are right up his alley.) There’s a growing local flowers movement, and if you look, you can find locally-grown flowers in lots of places. We’ll talk more about this issue in some future posts, but start by simply asking your local florist, or looking for flowers at stores like Whole Foods, which sources locally. You can look for suppliers near you that belong to the American Society of Cut Flower Growers (we’re a member!) and they even have a Buyer’s Guide to help you out. Not only are local flowers better because they don’t have to be shipped as far, but they’re also far fresher, and can often last much longer.
We also think this is a great fit for Pittsburgh in particular, which is turning into a real green city: a LEED-certified convention center, the Fairmont hotel, and lots of other initiatives going on.
What’s greenSinner about this?
Well, local cut flowers are a little bit green, a little bit sin. You do cut them and keep them around for a few weeks, then throw them away, after all. But they provide such beauty to our lives, especially to special days like weddings and parties, we think it’s worth it. But while we’re at it, let’s use flowers from local farms, not from halfway around the world, covered with chemical preservatives.
What Are We Doing?
Two things:
We’re starting a farm. We’re currently working with the city and the URA to understand the options and secure a place to grow for the long-term (and that’s why we were so interested in the new Pittsburgh agriculture ordinance). In the meantime, we’re doing some guerilla farming: a few plots here and there in our own backyards and those of our friends and neighbors. My position in this enterprise is Farmer-General.
We’re opening a stall at the Pittsburgh Public Market. We’ll be selling our own flowers and arrangements (made by Jimmy, our Chief Eccentric Officer), as well as a variety of containers, live plants, seeds, and other related stuff. We’re planning on being open by Mother’s Day, so come on down to the market and see us! You can also contact us at jimmy@greensinner.com and jonathan@greensinner.com.
Holy crap, fall came suddenly. And if it sneaked up on you like it did on me, you might have been surprised to see bulbs at the garden stores everywhere, but it really is about the time to think about bulbs for spring, like today’s theme, which is crocus.
There are apparently autumn crocuses (crocii?) but the ones I’m more familiar with bloom in the spring. Crocus is a favorite bulb because it comes so early, often in March in these parts of Pennsylvania if you get the earliest varieties, and I’ve even had it blooming during a warm January thaw once or twice. If it snows, they’ll close up their petals and wait until the sun is out, bless their little hearts. Crocus has thin, almost needle-like leaves (like many other bulbs, the foliage isn’t very impressive or pretty after it’s bloomed), but it’s super hardy and sends up short stalks with flowers in a variety of colors, most commonly in whites, yellows, and purples.
Tulips are always a favorite too, of course, and they range from mid- to late-season bloomers in dozens upon hundreds of varieties. (There are tulip catalogs left and right.) But the squirrels seem to like them as much as I do, and I find that many tulip bulbs end up eaten or transplanted in the middle of my lawn. Of course, you can plant in cages, wrapped in chicken wire, etc., but I just haven’t gone to those lengths to protect tulips (yet).
I also love daffodils though, and they must not be very tasty, because the squirrels don’t bother them. Daffodils are almost exclusively in whites and yellows, albeit a variety of combinations of those colors.
There are two important things to know when planting bulbs:
Make sure it’s pointing the right direction; there’s a pointy end and a root end. You want the pointy end up.
Plant the bulb 2-3 times as deep as its diameter. The bigger the bulb, the deeper it needs to go. This also means you can easily interplant bulbs that go at different depths and flower at different times (crocuses together with tulips or daffodils, for example).
Your local garden center likely has a fair variety of bulbs, but that’s only scratching the surface of the many varieties you can find. I’m from Michigan, and you may have heard of Holland, MI and its annual tulip festival. And one of my favorite places to shop for bulbs is the Michigan Bulb Company. Another favorite many folks know is Breck’s, imported from the real Holland.
So what about you? What are your favorite spring bulbs and varieties?
