Cut flower gardens provide long-lived blooms for indoor arrangements while simultaneously providing food sources to pollinators colonies and wildlife.
Plan a combination of perennials and annuals with varied bloom times in order to extend your picking season. Bulbs such as narcissi and tulips work great as connecting pieces between early blooming flowers and later-blooming ones.
Layout
Most people envision their cut flower garden as being comprised of rows of colorful dahlias or rose bushes, but there’s so much more involved with cultivating one!
No matter where you decide to plant your flowers – be it raised beds or the ground – the key to successful production and minimal maintenance is creating garden paths so you can easily access every bed for planting, harvesting, deadheading and deadheading tasks.
An essential factor when creating a cutting flower garden is row orientation. Since most flowering plants thrive best under full or partial sun, positioning your growing patch so as to provide as much sun exposure is crucial. Also consider succession sowing seeds of fast-growing, one-hit wonder flowers (such as sunflowers or single stem zinnias) every two weeks while slower producers such as snapdragons and larkspur can be planted every three or four weeks.
Soil
Growing cut flowers from seed is an amazing, rewarding, and sometimes magical process. What may appear like an insignificant seed can become something remarkable: an armload of brightly-hued blooms for you to harvest.
Before planting any seeds, it’s essential that the soil is rich and draining well; consider raising beds to maintain an ideal garden soil environment. Most flowers need 6-8 hours of direct sunlight with sufficient drainage; choose your site carefully!
To maximize results from your flower garden, arrange it so that tall plants, such as sunflowers and zinnias, are planted at the back. Medium-sized plants should then be added in between, followed by shorter flowers in front. Some flowers, such as sweet peas and climbing nasturtiums that require support may require nets or trellises for proper growth.
Don’t overlook an annual soil test and amendment with compost to enhance its quality and give your garden the highest yields possible. An abundant, loose, and loosely graded soil will encourage root development for optimal yields.
Water
Growing flowers by hand is one of the most gratifying, rewarding garden tasks you can undertake. Witnessing those seemingly lifeless seeds emerge and turn into large, stunning plants producing armloads of fragrant, colorful blooms is truly remarkable.
Annuals that bloom continuously should form the backbone of your cut flower patch, such as cosmos, larkspur, sunflowers, sweet peas and zinnias. Hardy or semi-hardy perennials should also be added – such as yarrows, garden phlox, lilyturfas peonies and veronicas are great additions to this category!
Careful consideration must be given when grouping flowers together according to their cultural needs, so as to provide each flower with everything it requires for optimal growth. Tall annuals like sunflowers and zinnias may need support structures like stakes or supports in windy conditions or heavy rain; vining flowers such as nasturtiums and climbing hydrangeas require nets or trellises as a support structure during heavy winds or rainfall.
Pruning
A cut flower garden is a collection of flowers grown specifically for cutting. This usually consists of annuals and perennials with some filler plants mixed in for good measure. Growing your own cut flowers is highly rewarding (almost magical) experience: watching seeds sprout into armloads of vibrant blossoms bloom into colorful, fragrant bouquets is captivating to witness.
Ideal Cut Flower Gardens Should be Planted in Raised Beds In order to maintain complete control over soil quality and health, leading to stronger plants capable of withstanding the demands of a cut flower garden.
To optimize your harvest, keep in mind that certain of the plants you plant need to be pinched throughout the season to encourage branching and longer stems. This is especially true of annuals like zinnias and celosia; perennials such as snapdragons and bachelor’s buttons also reap benefits from pinching.