Baptisia are slow growing and long-lived plants. I bought 3 last November that were "fall bargain" plants. Got 2 of the hybrid Twilight Prairie Blues and 1 Carolina Moonlight for $5 apiece! Planted them in my "xeric" garden, where the drought-tolerant plants are going. The soil is sandy loam, well-drained. It is sunny spot that tends to dry out. I did spread a little compost and water them well to get established. They bloomed well, although I expect they'll be much bigger next year. The Prairie Twilight Blues is a purply-maroon color with a little yellow - hard to describe, but truly exquisite. The Carolina Moonlight is a soft yellow. I tried to take pictures, but couldn't get shots that came close to their beauty in real life. There's alway next year. Perhaps you planted them in a bed that is too rich - which encouraged foliage but not blooms?

Hi there, I am a newbie also as far as growing flowers for market is concerned. We just started late this spring and are beginning small. But, I am in zone 5 too and can tell you some of our plans/thoughts. I am starting perennials from seed, now. This is experimental for us. If anyone has input, I'd be glad to hear it on this subject also! We do not want to spend the extra money on plugs, and since seed is relatively inexpensive, we think this is worth a try. RIght now I have more time than money. :) We are starting seeds of campanula, lobelia, baby's breath, poppy, yarrow, globe echinops, swt williams, etc. and hope to have plants to go into the field by early fall. We are also trying out rooting perennial phlox and monarda. With some luck (or whatever!) they will survive winter and be nice plants next spring with some flowering. Be SURE you are planting varieties good for cutting though! If you have the extra cash available and your hoop house is up and working, you might want to look into delphinium and lisianthus plugs from some place like Gro N Sell or Germania. If we had a hoop house, that is what I'd do early in the spring and you should have flowers by June. We are preparing spots now for peonies to be planted in the fall. You should also be able to plant other woody ornamentals this fall. We are starting cuttings of hydrangeas and willow to plant in the field as summer comes to an end. Supposedly in zone 5 you can fall sow some annuals that withstand the cold temps. This is mentioned in both "The Flower Farmer" and "Specialty Cut Flowers" We will be trying 2-4 100ft rows of fall sown larkspur (depending on how optimistic and energetic we are!) and perhaps bupleurum (never grown this stuff, but seems popular). Yes, I think you can get your soil ready for planting this fall. I would suggest you contact a local county extension office for how to ammend your soil. Having a good idea of what you'd like to plant will help them. I do think an acre on your own is ambitious, but that doesn't mean it is too ambitious. =) There are so many contributing factors: weather, weeds, access to soil ammendments, timing, etc. that I think you do need to just get started and see how it goes. We are two people doing the flower farming part time, and we decided on half an acre next year. Part of our concern over doing more is having more flowers than we can cut and market. Hopefully we all find our balance eventually. :) We are finding weed control to be a major problem in the few rows we tilled this year. Much of our time is spent weeding and mulching..and boy is it hot and humid. Good Luck! Keep up posted!

Baptisia is a great plant. No pests, insect or mammal, have ever bothered mine. Mine was a gallon pot purchase and was in the ground two years before blooming. It's been in about five years now and its spread (Flop some might say but it is "solid" not floppy - looks like a full shrub. I don't stake/prop it up.) is about six feet. The size surprised me and I've had to move some plants out of its way. Worth it. Mine is in sandy soil, full sun. No extra water, gets compost top dressing in the spring as does the rest of the garden. It dies back in the winter. The stems look sort of "woody" as you've described but they aren't. The one possible downside is that it reportedly has a tap root that goes down for miles and so doesn't like to be moved. A friend of mine, however, moved one at his house and ended up with a healthy transplant and a healthy plant where he no longer wanted one. He's a laid back kind of guy so he decided he likes it both places.

Thanks for all the help! (I feel like such a newbie - I thought I checked off email notification of replies in my OP, but I guess I didn't, as I didn't get any, and then I couldn't find my own thread to see if there were any replies!) I'm adding some pics, so everyone can see what I'm talking about. [IMG]http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d161/syk731/kitchen/IMG_1982.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d161/syk731/kitchen/IMG_1986.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d161/syk731/kitchen/IMG_1985.jpg[/IMG] They've offered to replace the 24 inch panels with 30 inch panels and build the over the fridge cabinet out to 30 inches. However, I think this might also look strange because the cabinet that is next to it is only effectively 16 inches before the corner. I think it would possibly look weird to have the fridge panels and over the fridge cabinet be 30 inches in depth, and then have a 16 inch wide cabinet be 24 inches in depth, and then turn the corner. Do you think that would look weird? What I think would look aesthetically most pleasing is for them to do the 30 inch panels and build out the over the refrigerator cabinet. I think they should also move out the cabinet next to it to 30 inches, so these are flush. But this means that they'd need to replace the cabinet around the corner with a less wide one to accommodate that cabinet being moved out. This would also be the most labor for them. The head carpenter that I spoke to this morning said that he wasn't sure the owner of the contracting company would agree to pay for the additional cabinet, in addition to all the labor. (The owner is on vacation this week, but will be back on Monday). I don't know how much to push for this. Like other posters have said, the other options are to just remove the panels. As I think I said in my OP, I did not know that there were going to be panels. We had planned to not have panels, so I'm highly irritated by the fact that I paid for this, even though I didn't even know about it. I did tell the carpenter today that if we did just decide to remove the panels, I'd expect them to refund me for the panels, since I'm not willing to pay for something that I didn't agree to in the first place and that ends up not being used. But now that I'm looking at it, I don't know that this would look any better, again, because of the narrow cabinet next to it. (Just to be clear, the layout I saw was before ordering was obviously not to scale, as it didn't look bad to have the refrigerator sticking out beyond the cabinet. But I think IRL, this will look strange.) The other option, I guess, is to leave it as is. I'd probably ask for compensation if I chose this. The spec on my fridge do not specify whether the 31.25 inches includes the door/handle or just is the carcass. The fridge is being delivered tomorrow, so I guess I'll find out. Would that affect your decision? Thanks for the help!