Cut flower gardens can bring beauty and joy into any home. With some planning and succession planting techniques, you can cultivate many blooms even in limited spaces.
Choose perennials and annuals that bloom throughout the season to create a colorful display in your beds. Use bloom cycles and heights as guides when planning them out to ensure a productive mix.
Planting
Most cut flower gardeners usually sow seeds indoors or outside in early spring to give themselves an early start on the growing season, while there are certain hardy perennial plants like peonies and larkspur that bloom all season with regular pruning.
Successful cut flower gardening requires choosing a location with ample sunshine. Many perennial flowers require 6-8 hours of direct sun each day in order to bloom, so take time out each day to look over your yard and identify which areas receive more light than others.
Select flowers that meet both your color palette and bloom duration needs. Annuals like cosmos, zinnias, and scabious produce abundant blossoms all season, while perennials such as yarrow, garden phlox and Japanese anemone provide blooms over an extended period.
Watering
Grow beautiful blooms for bouquets or drying with cut flower gardening! A garden will provide long-lasting blooms compared to supermarket bouquets. When planting, opt for an area with ample sunlight and well-draining soil; add organic matter such as compost or leaf mold before planting to improve moisture retention in the soil.
When planting, space seeds or plants according to their ideal maturity size. Also consider how wide your rows should be to facilitate easy picking.
An ideal cutting garden contains both annual and perennial flowers. Annuals provide blooms throughout the season while perennials bring color and texture; examples of annuals are cosmos, larkspur, sunflowers and sweet peas; hardy perennials can include yarrows, garden phlox, japanese anemones or peonies.
Fertilizing
Flowers that depend on extra nutrients to produce abundant blooms require extra nutrition during their growing seasons, and organic fertilizer should be applied every two or three weeks during this process.
Fresh cut flowers should always be harvested as soon as they’re picked, yet many varieties last several days in water. To extend their longevity, cut your blooms during morning or evening breezes and submerge their stems in a bucket filled with floral preservative-infused water.
For optimal success in your cutting garden, plant plants that flower at different times throughout the year. Combining annuals and perennials will guarantee you an abundant supply of fresh blooms through summer and fall; cool-season annuals such as sweet peas, zinnias and snapdragons will even flourish well during spring or autumn blooms!
Deadheading
Planting a cut flower garden is both enjoyable and satisfying; however, some maintenance will be required in order to maximize bloom production.
To maintain healthy flowers, it’s essential to provide them with ample water and fertilization on an ongoing basis. Furthermore, deadheading faded blooms as soon as they begin looking dull is also highly recommended if they begin looking unsightly or dull.
Cut flowers typically thrive in full sun. To ensure optimal conditions, be sure that the area in which you select receives at least 6-8 hours of direct sunlight each day. Test the soil to gauge its quality and determine whether additional nutrients are required before adding organic matter before planting. When watering, early morning is optimal as this allows it to soak deeply into the ground without evaporation causing more waste water than needed.
Gathering
Plant your cut flower garden during spring for optimal results; however, indoor sowing in fall may give your plants an early headstart and ensure you see blooms sooner.
Create a garden of cut flowers with an assortment of flowers and colors, from perennial blooms such as yarrow, garden phlox and peonies to annuals such as cosmos, larkspur sweet peas and sunflowers that will add brightness throughout the year.
Carefully review seed packets and plant tags to ascertain what growing conditions each requires, grouping plants with similar requirements together so you can provide what they require without accidentally over or underwatering. When planting cutting flowers in rows for easy harvesting when ready, consider planting wide rows for easy accessing their stems when the time comes.