An effective cut flower garden should include both annual and perennial blooms. Perennials such as yarrow, lavender and garden phlox provide long-blooming color that brings beauty into bouquets.
Your cutting garden should include plants that produce more blooms with each harvest, such as sunflowers, cosmos and zinnias.
Design
A cut flower garden is an area dedicated to cultivating flowers specifically grown for cutting. These gardens may feature annuals or perennials designed for easy harvesting as cutting flowers, while flowering shrubs or garden staples also play an integral part.
Your cut flower garden should be easy to maintain, meaning the beds should be large enough for easy walking through and weeding without damaging plants. In order to achieve proper drainage, add several inches of compost or leaf mold before planting starts.
Market gardeners commonly cover their beds with landscape fabric, black plastic or cardboard to prevent weed growth and reduce soil evaporation. Although not necessary for home gardeners, this could be beneficial if space is at a premium when cultivating flowers.
Soil
One of the key elements to growing a cut flower garden is providing your soil with rich, loose and well-drained conditions. While a raised bed is ideal, if space doesn’t allow, try selecting an area that receives plenty of sun and prepare it by loosening and adding slow release flower fertilizer to prepare a sunny location to grow cut flowers.
Leigh advises planting flowers according to their mature height and grouping them according to cultural needs, in order to prevent smaller ones from being overshadowed by taller ones. Doing this will prevent short plants from being completely swallowed up.
To extend the picking season, she suggests mixing in annuals with longer bloom times – such as sunflowers and zinnias – that have longer flowering cycles so that fading blossoms can be replaced with fresh new blossoms throughout summer.
Water
Gardening flowers is an immensely satisfying and fulfilling hobby, offering immense joy for both you and your friends and family. A single seed becomes an enormous, flourishing plant which produces armloads of fragrant blooms to fill your house with fragrance and bring joyous surprises for friends and family alike.
Beginners may benefit from starting seeds indoors several weeks or months prior to your last frost date; this will give them time to grow before they need to emerge outdoors and bloom sooner.
Group your flowers together according to their cultural needs for optimal success. This will prevent accidentally overwatering certain plants. For example, tall perennial flowers like sunflowers and sweet peas may require a trellis for support while vining annuals such as nasturtiums require netting in order not to collapse under their weight.
Fertilization
Most flowers require rich, well-draining soil with 6-8 hours of sun per day, as well as wind and rain protection. Some perennials such as peonies, iris and sweet william only bloom for short periods during spring and summer; other seasonal favorites like lupines, coreopsis and shasta daisies only bloom once.
Rooting is an increasingly popular technique used by cut flower farmers to replant blooms after they have finished blooming, by submerging stems in moist rooting mix so they develop new roots and begin the replanting process again.
Begin your garden planning endeavors by perusing seed catalogs. Once you know which flowers you want to cultivate, begin designing your garden plan – consider planting wide rows so harvesting flowers won’t require you to bend over as often!
Pruning
Many cut flower plants must be pinched to promote branching and longer stems, using either your fingertips or garden shears. Pinch frequently when your plant reaches around two to three inches tall to avoid pinching too closely to its nodes, where new stems will sprout from. This should happen between 10-12 hours before each watering session to encourage new stems from growing out from them.
Planting flowers that bloom continuously will keep your cutting garden looking stunning throughout the summer season. Try adding hardy annuals like sweet peas that bloom for extended periods or fragrant blooms like sunflowers to give the best result.
When planting seeds, begin early to allow your flowers enough time to become established before their final frost date. Also remember to space out plants closer than what their seed packet suggests so as to encourage longer stems and blooming.