Planting a cut flower garden is an enjoyable and sustainable way to grow beautiful blooms that you can use in bouquets made at home. Plus, this option can often prove more cost-effective than purchasing them from florists or grocery stores!
Choose annual and perennial flowers with low maintenance needs that produce blooms over an extended harvesting season, such as zinnias, cosmos or sweet peas that come back for another harvest cycle. For maximum impact consider using cut-and-come-back varieties like these to extend harvest even further!
Planting
Cutting gardens are easier to manage than traditional flower beds. To do so, the key is planting in blocks or rows and staggering each flower variety; that way, your arrangements will have access to an assortment of blooms for use throughout summertime.
Before planting flowers in your soil, check to ensure it drains well and add compost for additional nutrition. Your flowers need these nutrients to grow successfully!
Create an eye-catching bouquet by selecting annuals and perennials with similar heights, growing conditions, and flowering times to form your mixed bouquet. Sweet peas and climbing nasturtiums may need stakes or supports to keep from flopping over as they grow; pinch young plants like zinnias and Celosia when they reach 10 to 12 inches to encourage branching for longer stems to cut from later.
Soil
Flowers have the power to transform any room in our home, and growing your own provides you with an ongoing source of fresh blooms without draining garden beds. Unfortunately, retail store flowers often come from vast fields sprayed with pesticides and stored with various holding solutions before arriving in homes; cultivating your own allows you to avoid these chemicals while having an intimate connection to your plants.
Select a sunny spot and make sure the soil is loose and weed-free before adding organic matter and an all-purpose organic fertilizer when planting time arrives.
Plan out your garden in rows like you would a vegetable patch to make weeding and harvesting simpler. Take into account each plant’s mature height as well as whether or not they bloom once, like zinnias. Some vining species, like sweet peas and climbing nasturtiums will require support such as trellises.
Water
Add grasses and shrubs for texture and depth while providing attractive bouquets! Not only are these plants beautiful in the garden, they’re great additions for cutting bouquets.
Watering the flower garden regularly for optimal results is vital to its success. Many cut flower varieties require full sunlight and well-draining soil in order to thrive; check seed packets to learn their exact needs in terms of sunlight exposure.
Locate a sunny area for your flower garden and carefully consider its layout. Block planting can make maintaining and harvesting simpler. Also plan the garden so it provides easy access to all flowers while grouping similar ones together for easy harvesting and maintenance.
Pruning
Growing cut flowers doesn’t require extensive garden space or an avid green thumb – all you need is proper planning to turn a cut flower garden into part of your landscape.
As part of your planting plan, consider the amount of sun each plant requires. Most cut flowers require 6-8 hours of direct sunlight each day; for other varieties please see seed packets or descriptions of plants for recommendations.
Stagger your plantings so that different varieties bloom at various times to make managing your garden simpler, since you won’t have to pick everything at once. Also remember to regularly deadhead faded flower heads using shears or sharp knives in order to encourage new growth and extend vase life of cut flowers.
Harvesting
Freshly cut flowers from your own garden are absolutely enchanting, especially when harvested as cut-flowers for arrangements and bouquets. Designating part of your garden to this activity makes harvesting enough blooms for cutting much simpler and will result in an abundance of vases being filled.
Choose annuals and perennials with long bloom periods as the basis of your cutting garden, such as yarrow, garden phlox, larkspur and peonies, while bulbs such as tulips, daffodils and narcissi can extend harvest season further into early spring.
Annuals like zinnias benefit from pinching to encourage branching and longer stems. To reduce disease risks, keep pruning shears and snips clean when pruning these annuals, and when harvested flowers are ready to be used submerge them in water mixed with flower preservative.