Growing flowers for cutting doesn’t require an extensive garden space – just a few strategically-placed beds will yield enough variety for creating bouquets or filling vases in other rooms.
Begin by sorting plants according to their cultural needs; this will prevent you from accidentally overwatering or underwatering plants.
Choose Your Plants
Growing your own cut flowers allows you to fill vases of beautiful varieties for use as table centerpieces or home decor, and to make dried flower crafts and gifts for friends and family. Though it may take some trial-and-error before finding the ideal mix of plants, once found you will surely be delighted by what the end results bring!
Your cutting garden should ideally be situated in full sun. Select an area where long, linear beds will allow easy access to blooms – this makes weeding and picking flowers easier without knocking over other plants.
Select perennials and annuals to add vibrant hues to your bouquets, as well as fragrant herbs for fragrance, and drought tolerant plants to extend arrangements into winter. To guarantee you will always have flowers available to cut, arrange your beds based on bloom times.
Soil Preparation
Cut flower gardens can be part of your vegetable garden or landscape design; their goal is to provide long-lasting bouquets for vase arrangements and arrangements.
Begin by identifying what growing conditions your flowers require. Many species need full sun; therefore, plant in a sunny spot. Most require well-draining soil to ensure optimal success of blooming flowers. It’s wise to group plants that share similar requirements together in order to give each one its best chance for flourishing.
Checking the physical structure of the soil should also be performed. If it forms a tight ball when squeezed, that indicates high clay content. Conversely, loose crumbly balls indicate sandy and well-draining soil types; most cutting flowers require loamy soil for optimal performance.
Planting
Cutting gardens can be part of the landscape as a separate section or can share space with vegetables or other flowers. The key to planting a successful cutting garden is choosing perennial and annual cut flower perennials and annuals with good vase lives that provide balance in colors, heights and textures – not forgetting herbs and ferns for foliage as well.
To increase harvest yield, stagger the planting of different varieties to guarantee fresh, colorful blooms throughout the season. Also keep in mind that some cutting flowers require regular feedings; keep this in mind when planting cutting flowers to maximize harvest yield.
Before planting, always test and prepare your soil as detailed above. Plant flowers in wide rows for easier access; make sure your cutting garden can easily accommodate pails of water and vases full of clean flowers (dirty tools spread bacteria). Finally, don’t forget that well-hydrated stems will last longer!
Care
An effective cut flower garden requires more than planting and weeding alone, however. Some species such as dahlias or delphiniums require additional support such as stakes or stakes-and-net (dahlias, delphiniums). Sweet peas may benefit from grow-through netting; other crops (zinnias) don’t attract pests so can be planted closer together; for plants which need staking/support it’s best to spread them out slightly to make harvest/handling easier for harvest/handling/harvest/handling purposes.
For optimal results, it is best to harvest flowers first thing in the morning or shortly after sunset in order to extend their lives. Keep a pail of clean water nearby, as this will enable you to quickly submerge cut stems when harvesting cut flowers; additionally, change out your vase water regularly; Betsy and Cathy both recommend gently wiggling stems with fingers as a test to see how flexible they remain – more flexible stems look more appealing in a vase! A little investment of your time into gardening care will pay dividends all season long with beautiful bouquets!