What if the reason your flower photos fall flat has nothing to do with your camera?

Jason Ingram has spent his career photographing gardens for magazines and books, and he does nearly all of it with natural light. He took the photographs in The Cut Flower Patch by Louise Curley, and last year he published his own book, How to Photograph Gardens.

In this episode, Jason walks us through how he reads light, why he almost always shoots with the sun behind his subject, and what flower farmers and gardeners can photograph all winter long, long after the last bloom is cut.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• The simple clock-face rule Jason uses to find the best light on any flower
• Why the backdrop matters as much as the bloom, and how to set up a photo spot on your farm
• What to photograph in January and February when the garden is bare
• How to "get your eye in" when a garden feels overwhelming

If this episode helps you see your garden differently, share it with a grower friend who's always taking pictures of her flowers. And subscribe so you never miss a conversation.

About Jason Ingram:

Jason Ingram is a garden photographer based in Bristol, England. He photographs gardens, plants, food and people for magazines, books and garden designers, and works almost entirely in natural light. His book, How to Photograph Gardens, is a practical guide for anyone who wants better pictures of what they grow, on a camera or a phone. He also teaches an online photography masterclass with Create Academy.

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasoningram
• Website: https://jasoningram.co.uk/
• Book: https://link.amazon/B06NW6hj8

Stay Connected With The Podcast:

• Web: https://thefloweringfarmhouse.com/the-backyard-bouquet-podcast/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebackyardbouquetpodcast
• Newsletter: https://thefloweringfarmhouse.myflodesk.com/backyardbouquetpodcast

Fall is the season most of us treat as cleanup. Pull the spent plants, rake the beds, stop thinking about the ground until spring.

Matt Powers makes the case that those months are the most important soil window you get all year, and the one most growers hand back without realizing it.

In this episode he walks through what to actually do with your beds between frost and spring planting. Why bare ground costs you. What the sun and the wind pull out of compost you leave uncovered. Why leaves beat wood chips. How to treat a compost pile before you spread it so the nutrients stay where you put them. What a cover crop can still do for you this late in the season. And what soil microbes have to do with how long a cut flower holds in the vase.

Much of what he recommends costs very little. Some of it is free and already sitting in your yard.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• Why covering bare ground is the first thing to change this fall, and the cheapest way to do it
• The case for leaves over wood chips, and why leaves are still feeding your soil four years later
• How to treat compost before you spread it so you keep what you paid for
• What's happening underground that decides how long your flowers hold in the vase
• Whether you farm twenty acres or tend one raised bed in the backyard, there is something here you can do this week.

About our guest

Matt Powers has written more than twenty books about soil and regenerative growing. They include The Permaculture Student, a classroom curriculum he gives away free to anyone who cannot pay, and Regenerative Soil. He was a touring bass player in New York and then a high school English teacher in the Sierra foothills of California before any of this, and he came to soil looking for the healthiest food he could grow for his family. Today he teaches soil science and soil microscopy to growers around the world.

Where to find Matt

• https://regenerativesoil.com
• https://regenerativesoilscience.com
• https://www.thepermaculturestudent.com
• https://www.instagram.com/mattpowerssoil
• https://www.youtube.com/@MattPowersSoil

Stay Connected With The Podcast

• Web: https://thefloweringfarmhouse.com/the-backyard-bouquet-podcast/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebackyardbouquetpodcast
• Newsletter: https://thefloweringfarmhouse.myflodesk.com/backyardbouquetpodcast

Most of us think of tulips as a spring flower. Emily von Trapp and Linda D'Arco built their businesses on proving otherwise.

Emily grows 200,000 tulips a year in Waitsfield, Vermont, all of them in crates, in soil, blooming in the dead of a Vermont winter. Her first stems come around January 7th. Linda grows in Jay, New York, up in the Adirondacks. She forces hers hydroponically, and she started in the basement of a little farmhouse.

They met in a Facebook group. Linda saw Emily's photo of tulips blooming in January and asked what the magic was. Then she talked Emily into teaching it. Today they run The Tulip Workshop together.

In this episode we get into:

• What forcing actually is, explained for farmers and backyard gardeners both
• What 5C and 9C mean, and why the variety matters as much as the number
• Soil versus hydroponic, from two growers who each chose differently
• The three mistakes that cost people their crop
• Why your bulb order got canceled this fall, from someone who imports them

If you have bulbs showing up at your door this month, this episode is for you.

ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Emily von Trapp grows flowers in Waitsfield, Vermont, on land her family has farmed for three generations. Her grandparents bought it as a dairy farm in the late 1950s, and her parents ran a retail nursery there for 42 years. She was selling bouquets at the local farmers market by the time she was twelve. Today she grows around 200,000 tulips a year for a winter CSA with 350 members across 13 pickup sites, plus up to 15 markets and shops throughout Central Vermont. Her tulips run January through June. Her lilies run April through January.

Connect with Emily:

• Website: https://vontrappflowers.com ·
• Instagram https://instagram.com/vontrappflowers

Linda D'Arco grows on two and a half acres in Jay, New York, inside the six million acre Adirondack Park. She spent fourteen years in independent schools as an art and design teacher and a faculty dean before flowers took over. She learned forcing at one of Emily's first workshops in 2018, went hydroponic after a research trip to the Netherlands, and now runs Ampersand Bulb Co, a wholesale bulb import company.

Connect with Linda:

• Website: https://littlefarmhouseflowers.com · https://ampersandbulbco.com ·
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/littlefarmhouseflowers

Find them together:

• Website https://thetulipworkshop.com
• Instagram https://instagram.com/thetulipworkshop

Connect with Jennifer, Host of The Backyard Bouquet Podcast:

• Website: https://thefloweringfarmhouse.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefloweringfarmhouse/
• Follow the Podcast: https://www.instagram.com/thebackyardbouquetpodcast/
• Sign up for our newsletter: https://bit.ly/thefloweringfarmhousenewsletter