Blooming flowerbeds filled with fragrant blooms are within reach for anyone who appreciates gardening. Try your luck at cultivating a cut flower garden with these tips!
Make sure your soil is loose and well-draining to allow for easy planting and watering, and consider raised beds if they will suit your site conditions.
Group flowers that share similar growing requirements together to simplify care. For instance, tall annuals like sunflowers and zinnias can be planted at the back of a bed while shorter perennials and vining plants can be added at the front for easy maintenance.
Sunflowers
Sunflowers make an excellent cut flower garden addition, and you can find several varieties in seed catalogs. Choose those that bloom over an extended period and are easy to maintain; plant them where they’ll get plenty of sun while being protected from taller plants in your landscape.
Not all sunflowers are created equal. Some varieties are best used to produce bird seed or oil and don’t make for ideal cut flowers. For optimal results, plant single-stem sunflower varieties that produce large flowers on just one stem that are popularly used in arrangements.
When growing sunflowers, incorporate plenty of compost to improve soil drainage and nutrition, then water deeply for deeper roots to form. Harvest your seeds when they begin to droop after three to four days – be careful not to handle them too roughly or they could wilt quickly!
Sweet Peas
Sweet peas are an exquisite addition to any garden, providing delicate blooms with the added scent of bouquets. Best started indoors before transplanting in late spring or early summer to extend blooming period and avoid leggy growth without support structures such as trellises.
Train plants to grow on cordons – this laborious technique limits their growth to a single stem and produces Instagram-worthy sweet peas like those found in varieties such as Erewhon and Mollie Rilstone which feature bicolored blooms with charming picotees and delectable fragrance.
To keep sweet peas blooming regularly, harvest old blooms for bouquets and deadhead regularly to promote new flower production. Fertilising with an organic liquid plant food such as tomato fertilizer or seaweed emulsion will also provide extra boost for optimal blooming performance.
Snapdragons
Snapdragons add vibrant, cheery flowers to bouquets. Easy to grow from seed, they prefer cooler temperatures so can be planted early spring. Light feeders, Snapdragons don’t usually need fertilizer unless your soil lacks organic matter.
Give your plants an excellent headstart by layering on several inches of compost or leaf mold before planting, to improve soil moisture retention, drainage and give an additional boost of nutrients. This will also improve moisture retention for moisture-retaining crops like lettuce.
After seedlings have three to five true leaves, gradually expose them to outdoor conditions by moving the containers outside daily and watering more frequently than normal. This allows them to adjust to changes in the weather while simultaneously relieving any stress they might feel from experiencing fluctuation.
Planting a cut flower garden is an easy way to ensure you always have beautiful blooms for your bouquets. Choose hardy annuals and semi-hardy perennials as the foundation of your flower patch, then include bloom-and-come again varieties like cosmos, Larkspur Sweet Peas Scabious Zinnias amongst others for increased success.
Zinnias
Zinnias thrive in full sun with sandy, well-draining soil. Because they’re susceptible to powdery mildew, it’s wise to space out plants at 18″ or further for air circulation and avoid overcrowding. Planting them in raised garden beds allows greater control over their quality as well as helping decrease disease issues.
Pinch cutting (cutting the plant just below its second set of leaves) is recommended for zinnias and celosia, to encourage them to branch and produce long, straight stems suitable for cutting. For optimal results, pinch when they are about a month old.
Harvest flowers on an angle and submerge them in water with some flower preservative for maximum vase life. Always perform the “wiggle test” when harvesting: grasp a bloom about 8″ below its flower and gently wiggle it back and forth – if it stays stiff it’s too early! For optimal vase life cut on an angle and submerge in clean water with preservative.