White Flower Farm

[wowomom]

My husband Loves to cook, I love to eat the things that he's cooked.  One thing that we see crop up in recipes every now and then is Saffron, which, sadly, is not a part of our strict budget.  I started looking into it and it's part of the crocus flower!  And it will grow just fine here in Zone 7!

After doing some looking around it seems like White

Comments

[greenshadows]

Saffron crocus love dry summers and wet, mild winters - if you've got that, or can somehow protect them from getting too wet in the summer, they're easy and fun. However, once you start harvesting...you will understand the incredibly high price. Labor intensive and low yield.

[wowomom]

They should be ok. I'm in Middle TN, the few winters I've been down here have seemed pretty tame, of course I'm from MN so my perspective may be off a bit, more rain than snow and it doesn't really get colder than low 20s upper teens. The summers are stupidly hot, it's been in the 90s for the past 4 weeks.

I'm planning to put them up by the mail box, its on a slope so any rain that hits it quickly goes away, but it gets enough water that the grass and mini daffodils that live up there are perfectly happy.

As for the yield, for the 3 or so recipes that we want to try that involve saffron the 25 bulbs that I'm looking at aught to grow enough to get us through a year. If not I can always buy more later. :-)

[liminalia]

Mexican grocery stores often have saffron for *much* cheaper. It's called Azafran in Spanish. or you can sub turmeric, but the flavor is slightly different.

[nutmegdealer]

i've only grown saffron in farmville, so i can't comment seriously! i hope you'll post updates because i've never heard of someone growing it for home use.

[rhodielady_47]

BTW: PLEASE SHOP AROUND SOME MORE BEFORE YOU BUY!
WFF is well-known for being high-priced.
Please google Cyndi's gardenlist for a list of bulb nurseries. You might find one of them has a better price.
:]

[wowomom]

Thanks, looks like I'll be doing some more poking around before I buy anything. Talked to my husband about it last night and he seemed pretty excited about having access to some saffron.

[rhodielady_47]

I've thought about trying to grow some for myself too.
:)

[wowomom]

I went with American Meadows. Got 30 bulbs for $24. As well as some daffodils and tulips and a packet of their "tulip topper" flower seed mix.

I've got visions of a small raised bed (3 or 4 feet square) build around the mailbox, with daffodils and tulips in the spring, cutting flowers all summer into the fall (the mix was a lot of native flowers that I've been looking at for sometime), then the saffron crocus popping up in the fall... maybe I'll get some potted mums to put there in the fall too... we'll see how it all turns out.

Looks like I get to build myself a raised bed now. *grin* Woohoo! Power tools!

[squid_ink]

the scoop on White Flower Farm

[wowomom]

Thank you.