Family-owned and operated since 1965, Cramers Farm of Lancaster, PA mixes passion with purpose. From annuals to perennials, early spring to late fall, the farm provides stems of high-quality, American grown floral product to Potomac Floral Wholesale. We caught up with the co-owners, Keith and Erin Cramer, to learn about their early season offerings and the 2019 growing year.
Q: Which flowers are coming into production right now? Which blooms are you most excited about for spring?
A: Italian Ranunculus is our first flower crop of the season, and they are just getting started! This is our 5th season growing ranunculus, the fourth for the Italian varieties. An October planting of corms inside our four season high tunnels provides blooms from mid-April through late May. This has to be one of my favorite flowers: large, beautiful, super long shelf life – hard to find a weakness other than the relatively short harvest season. Sadly, once temperatures start rising they shut down. After that – and if Mother Nature cooperates - we should be harvesting some peonies before Mother’s Day from inside our tunnels.
Q: How do you keep up with the demand for blooms like ranunculus and peonies?
A: I am not sure that we have the capacity to keep up with demand on these items, they sell like hotcakes each season. On our farm, we try to have some production of a wide variety of products. We don’t like to put too many eggs in any one basket. Last I checked, we are growing well over 200 varieties including annuals and perennials. Because market trends can be so short lived, it’s risky to jump into any specific item on a huge scale. (With that said, we have nearly 65 acres of total production so it’s not like we are growing too little of any specific item either!) We find that diversity keeps us in good shape throughout the year.
Q: How are you able to grow and offer summer product such as sunflowers and yarrow in the relatively cool Mid-Atlantic spring?
A: Included in our 65 acres of production are approximately five acres of 3 season high tunnels. These are effectively low-tech greenhouses that moderate cold weather. The poly goes on in mid-March and comes off in October. They allow us to have annual and perennial cuts available anywhere from 3 to 6 weeks earlier than our outside production. Our first sunflowers were seeded into flats in our greenhouse on March 16th, they were transplanted into the high tunnels on April 9th. We started a second run of sunflowers on April 1st to follow the early seeding. We also roll the dice a bit in the early spring and direct seed sunflower seeds into the fields in mid-March. These won’t come on as fast as the tunnel production, but hopefully come on not too far behind.
Q: How are you preparing for summer and fall product? What can we look forward to in the coming months?
A: We have lots and lots of seeding and planting schedules! We have become quite adept at using Excel spreadsheets to keep it all straight. Perennials don’t require too much attention in regards to scheduling, but annuals are complicated. We transplant annuals into the tunnels, we transplant them outside on a different schedule, then we start putting seeds straight into the soil for the bulk of our summer production. These direct seedings happen every two weeks starting in late March continuing through early August. Each seeding is approximately 2 acres of new crop. The list changes as the calendar turns – in the early part we are seeding things like Ammi Majus and Ammi Visnaga, Safflower, Agrostemma, Sapponaria etc. When the temperature starts to rise, we switch to zinnias, celosia, and millets. Our website offers some broad estimates of when each product becomes available.
Thanks, Keith and Erin! To find out more about Cramers, check out their website, http://cramersfarm.com. Contact your sales representative to learn more about purchasing Cramers Farm’s product from Potomac Wholesale Floral.