The Backyard Bouquet Podcast: Cut Flower Farming Podcast for Flower Farmers & Backyard Gardeners

Ryan Levesque built a software company, wrote the number one national bestseller Ask, and spent his days deep in the digital world. Today his family raises 80% of the food they eat on a 200-year-old hill farm in the Green Mountains of Vermont.
The turning point started with the 2021 Texas winter storm that took down the state's power grid. Then came a summer living in a tent and bathing in a pond while he earned his permaculture certificate. When he texted his wife with one bar of service and said "let's put the house on the market," the first person to see it made a full price cash offer. And they began their greatest adventure.
In this episode, Ryan talks about his new book, Return to Real: The Last Human Advantage in an Age of Artificial Everything, and the three forces he believes are reshaping our world right now. AI is only one of them. He makes the case that the more artificial life gets, the more people will want what's real, and that growers are sitting right where that craving leads.
What you'll hear in this episode:
Why "touch earth before touching a screen" might be the simplest morning habit you can start this week
The three colliding forces Ryan sees, and why the answer to all three looks a lot like a farm
Where AI belongs in a farm business, and the one place it should never go
"Choose your hard," and why every path, including the 9 to 5, comes with its own kind of hard
For anyone who has ever stood at the edge of a big change and wondered if now is the time, this one is for you.
About our guest
Ryan Levesque is a number one national bestselling author, a 7-time Inc. 5000 founder, and has built and sold two companies. He writes a weekly newsletter called The Digital Contrarian, which he writes himself. In 2022 he and his wife and two boys sold their home in Texas, spent a year on the road, and landed on a 200-year-old farm in Vermont, where they raise livestock, tap a thousand maple trees, keep 48 beehives and grow most of what they eat. His newest book is called Return to Real.
Where to find Ryan
https://returntorealbook.com
https://www.instagram.com/askryanlevesque
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlevesque/
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
If this conversation stirred something in you, send it to the friend who keeps talking about "someday."

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

Everyone says dahlias need cool nights, and Robin Blood grows them in Godley, Texas, where the summer hits 105 and the grasshoppers came in like a plague her second year.
When Robin sent off her first soil sample, the lab wrote back that they did not recommend growing there, with no organic matter, no phosphorus, and a pH of 7.9. She and her husband Jeff had already stood up old telephone poles for a fence, so they stayed and built the soil instead. Today B.Blumen is a flower farm and wedding design studio serving Dallas Fort Worth, with a team of designers Robin trained herself.
In this episode you'll hear:
How Robin shades her dahlias through a Texas summer with no trees on the property, why she lets them rest in July, and why ball varieties hold up when dinnerplates struggle
The rabbit manure that rebuilt her soil, and how she traded labor to get it
The second season she lost nearly every dahlia, and what it taught her about stressed plants and pests
How a well shed turned into a design studio once she realized design made every stem she grew worth more
If you've ever been told your climate or your soil makes dahlias impossible, this conversation is for you. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode, and send this one to a grower who needs it.
About Robin
Robin Blood is the founder and creative director of B.Blumen, a flower farm and floral design studio in Godley, Texas. Her German mother called her Blumen, the German word for flowers, when she was a girl. Robin grew up in a German household with a lot of gardening, and one of her first jobs was picking snails off her mother's plants for a penny apiece.
She spent her early career in small businesses, became a director of sales at twenty, and left it all in 2020 to farm eleven acres of limestone and sand. Today B.Blumen grows without pesticides, no-till, and serves weddings across Dallas Fort Worth with a team of designers Robin trained herself.
CONNECT WITH ROBIN
Instagram: https://instagram.com/b.blumenflowerfarm
Personal: https://instagram.com/thebloomboss
Website: https://bblumenflowerfarm.com
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
Robin and I talked about the Dahlia Design Summit in this episode. If you missed it live, All-Access Replay Tickets are still available here: https://thefloweringfarmhouse.mykajabi.com/dahlia-design-summit