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The Lavender Hill Summer Update

Posted 6/13/2019 12:45pm by Martha O. Wilczynski.

Lavender Hill Farm of Niles, Michigan LLC

1219 Morris Dr., Niles, MI 49120, 269-684-0123

www.thelavenderhill.com www.facebook.com/thelavenderhill

Dear Lavender Friends:

As Spring is slowly turning into Summer our farm gift shop is now open Wednesday through Saturday 10 am to 4 pm. We are busy pruning winter damaged branches from our lavender plants and waiting patiently for the new growth to extend into buds on our English lavender plants. Our English lavender should flower lightly this summer but our hybrid lavenders were more devastated by the winter weather and will not bloom much this year. We do not anticipate having enough blooms to hold an open U-pick period like we have in previous years. Instead we plan to hold some smaller crafting events that may include picking some lavender to use in a class such as lavender wand or wreath making. Please keep an eye on our facebook page for event listings, or on our "classes" page on our website here: http://www.thelavenderhill.com/store/classes for information and tickets to events/classes. We currently have some events posted utilizing dried lavender in wreaths and crosses, as well as lavender decoupage vases. Other classes will be posted soon.

Additionally, we could use some help in the next few weeks cleaning up the prunings from our lavender maintenance activities as well as help with hand pruning and weeding. If anyone knows of someone (16 or older) who is interested in this type of work, have them contact me by email as soon as possible with a letter of interest.

Folgate English Lavender field

A mix of green and gray, dead branches this week in our Folgate area.

A close-up of a newly pruned Folgate English Lavender plant. Note new growth from center of plant.

Bill pruning in our Folgate area with a brush-cutter blade.

Hand pruning dead branches out of a Royal Velvet English Lavender plant.

Removing these dead branches now will make harvesting flowers later much easier.

I hope your lavender plants are showing some green by now. If not, we still have plenty of lavender plants, all our main varieties: Folgate, Royal Velvet, Grosso, Super and Gros Bleu, available for sale at the farm.

If you are wondering how to keep your plants alive over the winter, many growers use white, row cover fabric to protect their plants in winter. In our area we have usually been able to rely on lake-effect snow to protect our plants when the extreme cold hits. Unfortunately that snow cover wasn't here when we needed it last winter. We too may try row covers in the future to mitigate extreme weather conditions.

Feel free to contact me if you have questions about our plant varieties or how to keep them thriving in your conditions.

yours in lavender,

Martha