I spent 4 of the last 7 days at the Young Living Lavender Farm in Mona, Utah, USA. What a great Seed to Seal experience. I invite you all to visit one of our many Young Living Essential Oil Farms throughout the world.
I’d like to tell you first about the Young Living Lavender grown in our large greenhouses. In February 2015 our Mona Farm team planted over 500,000 genuine French Lavender seeds in seedling flats. Water, sunlight and heat allowed these seeds to germinate. These Lavender seedlings were carefully watched, watered, and talked to.
By March a single stock of lavender grew up 3-4 inches. The long slender leaves are slightly gray in appearance. The leaves are situated in a pattern of four, every 90 degrees of rotation around the main stem.
In April the Lavender seedling branched out like a miniature bush of aromatic gray fuzziness, ready to be planted.
Dr Cole Woolley PhD, June 5, 2015
Weeding Lavender
The other day when I was at the Young Living Lavender Farm I noticed a large group of workers out in the lavender fields. My primary goal was to check out the true lavender seedlings in the Young Living greenhouses. I knew I’d be going out to the lavender fields later and see what this group of 30 men were doing.
So after enjoying a relaxing walk through the 500,000 plus true lavender seedlings that were ready for transplanting, I drove over to the lavender field with the busy workers. My eyesight is not as good as it used to be when I was younger, but my colleague informed me that the workers were weeding.
“That’s right. It’s that time of year that the weeds will have grown faster than the lavender. This is when weeding the lavender rows is the most important”. One of Young Living workers expressed.
The first weeding step is to use tractors to hoe the weeds between the rows. This takes care of 60-70% of the weeds. At this point the lavender rows seem to materialize from the field of tall weeds once dominated.
Dr Cole Woolley PhD, June 10, 2015
The second weeding step is to use a “weed-N-ator” device pulled behind a small tractor. I watched them weed with this handy device after I left the lavender greenhouses. The operator sits behind a small tractor to maneuver two rotating arms with rotating “weeding claws” that dig out weeds close to and between lavender plants. The operator seems to be playing a video game as he moves the rotating claws in, then out, as he examines the weeds he intends to eliminate.
The third and most important weeding step is hand weeding – this is what the 30 men were doing. Each worker was busy with their long-handled hoe cleaning the rows on both sides of the lavender plants. It was surprising how many weeds grow closely to the lavender plants and how fast they grew during our last month of Spring rains. This hand-weeding manicured the cleanest weed-free rows of lavender!
I get asked all the time, “How do you weed the Young Living Lavender”? I hope these photos and videos will help. Share them with your group. Share them with those you contact.
Now it’s time for the rapidly growing lavender plants to fill the space between the rows with green branches and long lavender-colored flower spikes. It’s surprising that Lavender Day on June 27th is just around the corner.
Come and visit the Young Living Lavender Farm to create your own Seed-to-Seal experience.
Dr Cole Woolley PhD, June 11, 2015
When you visit the Young Living Lavender Farm in Mona, Utah, USA you may start singing a line from a Beatles song (with a few changes): “Lavender fields forever. Lavender fields forever”.
If you started walking up and down the rows of true lavender growing on the farm, you would be walking a long way. It may take you 2-3 days from sun-up to sun-down to walk all the rows of lavender – more if you stop for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I like walking down the rows of 1 year old lavender plants. They are like small kids. They are still maturing as “teenagers” this year. They will be harvested next year.
The 2-6 year old lavender plants are the most bushy, green, and aromatic. Find yourself in one of these fields and you’ll likely take a relaxing nap on the warm soil breathing in heavenly aroma of true lavender with every breath. This is where you will collect spikes of flowering lavender. Just brushing your hands along the bushy lavender plants will leave you smelling like a bottle of Young Living Lavender essential oil.
The older lavender plants show their age at 7-8 years. Gary Young watches them closely so he knows when to replace them with new-sprout seedling plants.
The aroma of blossoming lavender fields may be described as “running 20 AromaLux™ diffusers with Young Living Lavender in your house”. “Heavenly! Marvelous! Relaxing! Back to nature!” This is how I describe “Lavender fields forever”.
Dr Cole Woolley PhD, June 8, 2015