Conservation helps Alaska's niche peony market bloom
Allison Gaylord, peony farmer and founding member of Alaska Beauty Peony Co-op is maximizing water efficiency with support from NRCS.
Peonies have a special place in Alaska agriculture. Our long summer days under the midnight sun and a late growing season allow for harvest in July and August; a time when most other peony farms in the world have already finished their harvests for the year.
"Alaska has a niche market for peonies because we are the last to harvest them in North America; we fill a gap in production of fresh cut peonies to create a year round market for this favorite feature flower," said Allison Gaylord, peony farmer, founding member and Board Chair of the Alaska Beauty Peony Co-op in Homer, Alaska.
Allison Gaylord hand-cuts peony stems at her boutique farm in Homer, Alaska. NRCS photo by Tracy Robillard.
It all Started with a High Tunnel...
Though she has always been growing plants since she was a kid, Allison started 'officially' farming in 2010. As a new farmer, she reached out to her local USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) for technical and financial assistance to perform conservation practices on her farm, Willow Drive Gardens.
Her first NRCS project was installing a 30-by-60-foot seasonal high tunnel to improve her fruit and vegetable production. She also worked with NRCS to manage her soil nutrients and install an irrigation system inside the high tunnel.
The high tunnel provides a warm, sheltered and controlled environment that extends the growing season for many crops that otherwise would not grow well in Alaska's cold climate.
NRCS soil conservationist Pam Voeller (left) and Allison Gaylord inside her seasonal high tunnel. NRCS photo by Tracy Robillard.
Entering the Peony Market
In 2012, Allison expanded her farm to include peony production. She had heard about the potential for Alaska's peony market and wanted to seize the opportunity. She hoped that peony farming would be something she could do to earn an income in retirement. Like most Alaska farmers, she has a day job and farms as a side gig.
She started with a pilot plot of 350 plants of the well-known cultivar Festiva Maxima and has expanded and fine-tuned her operation over the years across her two acre farm.
She now grows eight varieties of peonies, with a total of 2,500 peony plants in the ground and the capacity to produce over 25,000 stems per year!
Years of Patience
It usually takes 3 to 6 years to get a peony root into commercial production. And before Allison even planted her first peony plant, she spent two years growing cover crops to prepare her soil. She used Austrian field peas and buckwheat for her cover crops.
Cover crops are plants that are planted for the sole purpose of covering the soil rather than being harvested. They can slow erosion, improve soil health, enhance water availability, smother weeds, and help control pests and diseases.
"I knew that once I planted my peonies, I would have them for their lifetime, so I had to take care of my 'black gold' first and make sure I had healthy soils," she said.
A peony plant can easily live for 50 to 100 years depending on the variety.
"You have to be patient because you're in it for the long haul," she said. “I hear people talking about wanting to do this for retirement; I would caution people because it takes so much time and work to establish a crop.”
A Labor of Love
Maintaining a successful peony crop year after year is labor intensive work that requires continual learning, collaboration with others, and problem solving.
- Water: For one, peonies require a lot of water, so having a dependable irrigation system and managing the water applied is key.
- Pruning: They need to be pruned by hand to ensure the healthiest stems are afforded the most energy to produce profitable flowers. Allison usually prunes her plants to maintain 10 blooms each, which is labor intensive.
- Weeds & Pests: They also need to be managed for weeds and pests, which requires installing and maintaining fabric. Allison only uses sprays approved for organic production that are safe for bees and beneficial insects. She carefully manages for thrips (tiny insects) and botrytis (a fungal growth) and is collaborating with USDA and the University of Alaska Fairbanks to learn more about these pests and ways to combat them.
- Winter Kill: The fields require continual maintenance. Fields are scouted for botrytis and these perennial stems are cut back flush to the ground, ensuring that all plant material is removed from the field. Despite following best practices such as laying fields out on a slope, cutting drainage swales around fields, planting in raised beds and mulching with a thin layer of sand over the crown of the plant, winter kill is always a possibility. In 2021, Allison lost about 60 plants as shown in the photo of dead holes. Her best guess is that a clay layer about 12 inches deep is the culprit.
"It's a labor of love," Allison said. “It’s a steep learning curve and it’s a lot of work. We face a lot of challenges in this industry, but we are working together to figure it out the Alaska way.”
"My fellow cooperative peony farmers who experienced widespread winter kill say that farming is a form of socially-acceptable gambling."
Pictured background: Allison manages for weeds using commercial grade road fabric known as typar, through which she burns 12 inch planting holes with a propane torch. Unfortunately winter kill devastated several of her plants in the foreground. NRCS photo by Tracy Robillard.
A Rapid Harvest
Peonies in Alaska can grow up to eight centimeters in just 24 hours when undergoing cellular elongation. Fields of blooms can shift from rock hard buds to a harvestable marshmallow stage in a matter of hours. That means when it's time to harvest, it happens fast.
Allison checks the flowers daily, sometimes even multiple times a day, to determine the exact harvest date.
"For many peony varieties, you have to wait until they pass the marshmallow test," she said. "They should be soft enough to feel a small air pocket under the petals. That's the best time to harvest."
The entire season’s harvest may occur in just 3 to 4 weeks, so she needs all hands on deck to harvest the buds and get them sorted, cut and stored in the cooler quickly to maintain optimal freshness.
Each bloom must be measured and sorted by size.
From Cut to Cooler
"Our goal is to go from cut to cooler within 20 minutes," she said.
Harvest demands long days of physical labor with the entire family helping out, plus some hired labor. She requires a crew of at least eight people.
“The field on the hillside is like a stair stepper," she said. "During harvest I just keep cutting flowers up to 16 hours per day. I'm moving constantly and lose several pounds every July."
Distribution and Marketing with Alaska Beauty Peony Co-Op
Allison is a founding member and the current board chair for the Alaska Beauty Peony Co-op. The cooperative is a partnership between a dozen farmers to share resources to market and distribute fresh stems to customers throughout the Lower 48.
The co-op processes about 60,000 stems per season. The stems are stored in coolers and shipped from their new distribution facility built in 2020 (pictured background).
The stems are stored in a large cooler and ready for shipping at the distribution facility.
They sell peonies directly to consumers mostly via their website. Their most popular shipments are smaller boxes by the dozen.
The co-op's most popular item: a box of 12 farm-fresh peony stems.
Water Conservation on the Farm
Allison embraces conservation on the farm. She is working with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service to improve her water efficiency and maximize each drop of irrigation water.
Irrigation is a game changer on the farm," she said.
Micro-Irrigation System
With financial assistance from the NRCS Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), Allison installed a new micro-irrigation system that went live in 2019.
NRCS engineers designed the system, which includes tanks (pictured background), a pump station, flow meters, pipeline, and the tubes that drip water into the soil above the root zone.
Tubing along each plant row drips water directly into the soil profile.
At the end of her growing season, she must winterize the irrigation system so that it can survive the freezing temperatures. It's a labor-intensive process that involves removing some of the ground components and blowing air through the pipes.
This underground flow meter requires careful removal after each growing season to preserve it through the winter.
Irrigation Water Management
She is also doing irrigation water management with support from NRCS. She installed tensiometers in her fields that measure the soil moisture levels at 6 inches and 10 inches into the soil profile.
She checks the levels three to four days per week and records them in her log.
“The tensiometers measure the soil moisture in shallow and deeper layers of the soil profile, so she can see where the water is going and make the most efficient use of each drop,” said NRCS Soil Conservationist Pam Voeller.
She waters the peonies every 4 days for about 40 minutes.
“It’s interesting to see how much water the plants actually need,” Allison said. “As they mature and their root mass increases, the plants demand more water.”
“My plants are pretty happy,” she said.
Allison checks her soil moisture levels using tensiometers installed with assistance from NRCS.
Pictured Background: Allison Gaylord and Pam Voeller (right) with the NRCS check soil moisture levels. NRCS photo by Tracy Robillard.
Conservation Stewardship Program
Allison was accepted this year into NRCS's Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), which is for producers who are already doing good conservation work and want to expand their conservation to a higher level. Allison plans to establish pollinator habitat on the farm including bat boxes as part of her CSP project.
Allison Gaylord harvests a fresh crop of peony stems at her boutique farm in Homer, Alaska.
The future is looking bright for Allison, as she continues to hone her management practices and bring more conservation to the farm. Like the beautiful flowers she produces, she is bursting with potential.
“I’m addicted to growing things. Farming is what I have a passion for...it’s a problem to solve, a challenge to figure out. That’s what keeps me going.”
