How to Grow Peonies

The Beet: A Podcast For Plant Lovers

Epic Gardening

Home & Garden, Education, Leisure, How To

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 13 November 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Karen and her husband were suburbanites when they decided to buy a 10 acre property. Initially, they wanted to be equestrians, but eventually converted one half acre to a peony farm. What resulted was Midsommar Farm, one of the only local peony farms of its kind in the US. Epic Gardening Shop Homepage: https://growepic.co/3N0bMcf Botanical Interests Shop Homepage:https://growepic.co/3QB6pRF Book Collection Page: https://growepic.co/49Glmuu EG Homesteading Book: https://growepic.co/3SAhK6T Learn More: 11 Tips For Beautiful Peony Blooms This Season Connect With Karen Gesa: Karen Gesa is the owner of Midsommar Farm, a part-time 1/2 acre peony farm in northern Virginia. Karen is passionate about spreading the word about this business model as she's found it to be a great income with minimal investment of time, money, space, and know-how. Or, if you're not interested in selling, how to create a private peony cutting garden and fill your home with fresh bouquets all spring. Instagram Facebook Website Karen’s Book Shop the Store As an exclusive for listeners, use code THEBEET for 5% off your entire order on our store, featuring our flagship Birdies Raised Beds. These are the original metal raised beds, lasting up to 5-10x longer than wooden beds, are ethically made in Australia, and have a customizable modular design. Shop now and get 5% off your first order. Get Our Books Looking for a beginner's guide to growing food in small spaces? Kevin’s book, Field Guide to Urban Gardening, explains the core, essential information that you'll need to grow plants, no matter where you live! He also wrote Grow Bag Gardening to provide you with specialized knowledge that can bring you success when growing in fabric pots. Preorder Kevin’s newest book Epic Homesteading if you are looking to turn your home into a thriving homestead! Order signed copies of Kevin’s books, plus more of his favorite titles in our store. More Resources Looking for more information? Follow us: Our Blog YouTube (Including our Epic Homesteading and Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello my friends welcome back to the show I'm actually super excited this week
0:16.0	we have Karen Jessa on the show who's the owner of Midsummer Farm which is a part-time
0:20.7	half-acre peony farm in northern Virginia.
0:25.0	We've had some flower growers on the show, Karen,
0:27.2	no one that has specialized in peonies,
0:29.6	which I frankly don't know a ton about,
0:32.1	so I'm excited to have you on.
0:33.7	Oh great well thank you for having me I'm really excited to talk about it I've got lots to
0:37.2	share. Yeah well let's get into it so part-time half acre which I think to me that I think that's awesome. It's like super accessible for those who might be interested in
0:47.2	Shifting a bit of their focus to a lifestyle closer to what yours is so maybe we could just start with the description of the farm
0:53.8	and sort of how you came to be running that. Sure. Yeah my husband and I had this dream
1:02.3	that I wanted horses growing up, so we ended up purchasing this property with 10 acres, and with the idea that we were going to put on a barn and get horses and all of this and I mean we were suburbanites
1:15.6	basically so we didn't really know what we were doing we had this we brought this right on mower that was just
1:20.3	far too small for the property and come to find out that 10 acres is more than you need for a horse or two.
1:28.0	And we had all of this, all these fields that weren't being used, but they needed to be mowed, you know, so, which was a drag.
1:36.1	And I really got it in my head that I wanted the property to, you know, pay us back a little bit and, you know, be less overhead and more revenue.
1:47.1	So we did a bunch of research and talked to the local farm co-op and about what we might be able to grow or raise, you know,
1:55.8	animals or crops. And for small acreage like that it just kept coming back
2:01.4	again and again as ornamentals being the best bet.
2:05.6	So the other thing they mentioned was Christmas trees was a good way to go.
2:10.3	That would have been kind of fun.
2:11.6	Yeah, yeah. So we went ornamental's and you know I just I just took that and ran with it. It sounded like a lot of fun to me.
	...

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