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I love Colorado, no doubt about it. However, Colorado isn’t necessarily the best place to be a flower farmer…
I live in Colorado Springs, a place that isn’t exactly known for it’s lush climate. Between our erratic Zone 5b weather, high altitude, and unpredictable spring frosts, flower farming in Colorado comes with a unique set of challenges. Whether you're an aspiring cut flower farmer or a backyard gardener, understanding the realities of the Colorado growing season is the first step to helping your blooms thrive.
FAIR WARNING
This blog post is not made to complain about living in Colorado at all, more it is to educate people, farmers or potential farmers, about the difficulties that come with our centennial state.
These are some of the biggest tips I have for flower farms/farmers all across Colorado
Watering Routine
Understanding humidity/climate control
Picking the right kind of flowers
knowing your timing
Watering is an important To get around this we have to utilize an effective watering strategy across our multiple plots. I cannot understate it, you must have good watering practices to succeed in Colorado, sorry we’re not Michigan… Because the Colorado sun will strip moisture from the ground in minutes, we pair our watering routines with heavy mulching and organic matter. Laying down a thick layer of straw or wood chips across our plots acts as a shield, locking in moisture and drastically reducing our overall water consumption. Additionally, group-planting our cut flowers based on their specific water needs—a practice known as hydrozoning—ensures nothing gets over- or under-watered in our sandy clay soil.
Understanding humidity/climate control is where many high-altitude farmers get caught off guard. Colorado’s notoriously low humidity means your plants are constantly fighting dehydration. To counter this, we rely heavily on covered growing structures like hoop houses and high tunnels, which allow us to trap ambient moisture. By utilizing horizontal airflow (HAF) fans and automated misting systems, we can manipulate the microclimate, lower the Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD), and prevent our delicate blooms from scorching before they ever harvest. We employ monitoring systems for our insulated plants.
'Picking the right kind of flowers comes down to mastering the frost calendar. With our unpredictable spring freezes, relying solely on heat-loving summer varieties is a recipe for a short, frustrating season. Instead, we stack our fields with hardy annuals like snapdragons, sweet peas, and bachelor’s buttons that can handle a light snow and thrive in cool soil. Starting these cold-tolerant cut flowers early allows us to get a massive head start on the local market long before the last frost date passes (see the pictures below)
Knowing your timing is the difference between a high-yield harvest and total crop failure in the Centennial State. Along the Front Range, our frost-free window is frustratingly tight—usually squeezed between a final spring freeze around mid-May and a sudden first fall frost by early October. But out here, averages are just guesses. You have to learn the art of succession planting and keep frost cloth on standby, because a late-May snowstorm is always on the table, and the real Colorado planting season doesn’t truly begin until the soil temperatures catch up to the air.
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