Rindge farmers Craig and Megan Jensen scrambled to adapt to pandemic conditions at Sun Moon Farm this spring while interest and sales exploded. As they readied vegetable seedlings in greenhouses and finalized CSA subscriber lists throughout April, a wrenching decision weighed on them: Should they plant dahlias?
Sun Moon Farm grows commercially extinct varietals for the niche mail-order company Old House Gardens out of Ann Arbor, Michigan. It’s an heirloom bulb company that supplies avid home gardeners with delicate flower rarities. Trouble began when the company closed for two weeks in response to stay-at-home orders, right after they’d received the farm’s 2019 tubers, but before spring orders shipped out to customers.
It was enough to make the Jensens pause before they spent a week planting the finicky bulbs. For a while, Craig Jensen said he wasn’t sure whether he’d get paid for last year’s bulbs, or whether the distributor would still be in business by harvest time this fall.
Biology compounded the dilemma. Much like an apple tree, if you were to plant a dahlia seed, it wouldn’t grow the same variety as its parent plant. Instead, gardeners plant dahlia tubers of known varieties in the spring, which flower throughout the summer. If the Jensens chose to sit this season out, the tubers packed in sawdust in their cellar would be unviable by next year.
Read more at the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript (Abbe Hamilton)
