Cut flower gardens make an attractive addition to any vegetable or herb garden, providing both beautiful blooms and ample drainage. Start by choosing a spot in full sun that receives good drainage.
Set out to grow flowers, selecting varieties whose hues complement or contrast one another. After that, plan out your space according to plants’ growing conditions.
Prepare the Soil
Success for any cut flower garden hinges upon its soil. Raised garden beds offer optimal drainage and amendment of soil as needed, using organic compost or leaf mold mixed with topsoil as an enriched soil mixture for your cutting garden.
Examine the location for your cutting flowers to ensure they will receive enough sunlight. Most cut flower varieties require at least six or more hours of sun each day, preferably early in the morning.
Select easy-to-grow annual and perennial flowers, such as annual zinnias and sunflowers, for year-round cutting supply. In limited spaces, plant them in rows or blocks for easy weeding and maintenance. When growing larger plantings add trellis/netting supports for tall plants like certain zinnias/sunflowers to prevent them from falling over as they mature – pinch back young plants to promote branching with your fingers or with pruning shears for maximum cutting opportunities.
Plant the Seeds
Cut flower gardens provide an easy and colorful way to add vibrant blooms to bouquets and arrangements. Choose a mix of easy-to-grow annual flowers such as zinnias, sunflowers and marigolds alongside perennial varieties such as cosmos and phlox for best results. Also add fragrant plants like lavender or sweet peas for fragrance; consider including foliage to complete arrangements.
Assess your garden space to make sure it receives enough sunlight for an thriving cut flower garden. Most cut flowers require six or more hours of direct sunlight daily for their survival, ideally in the morning hours when cool light rather than hot afternoon rays are more prevalent.
Many of these flowers self-seed, so once they finish blooming you can collect their seed heads to save for next year. Biodegradable plantable pots allow for faster growth with stronger root systems as well as easier transplanting seedlings.
Water and Fertilize
Cultivating a cut flower garden adds color and beauty to your landscape while providing fresh blooms for your home. Proper watering practices are key to maintaining an thriving cutting garden; finding an equilibrium between too much or too little irrigation is crucial in order to prevent stunted growth, disease, and rot from taking hold in your plantations.
To maintain healthy, weed-free soil, add organic material like compost or leaf mold as mulch before planting. This will improve its ability to hold onto and drain moisture while providing slow release fertilizer.
Consider grouping your flower varieties together based on their individual growing requirements to ensure you provide them with exactly what they require without accidentally over or underwatering certain varieties while neglecting others.
Water your flowers early morning for optimal results by minimizing evaporation and encouraging deep root penetration, while simultaneously helping prevent fungal diseases and promote health foliage. For maximum bloom times, succession plant by sowing seeds a few days or a week apart in annuals such as cosmos and Larkspur that only produce one bloom annually.
Harvest
Imagine watching small seeds sprout, grow and produce armloads of fragrant blooms from mere grains! If you’re new to gardening, start small by growing annual flowers such as zinnias and sunflowers – both are easy-care options that should produce impressive blooms over time.
Flowers that bloom at different times should be planted at various intervals so as to avoid having a sudden flush of faded blooms all at the same time. Also consider mixing cold-season perennials and warm-season annuals into your garden bed beds so they complement each other beautifully.
Arrange a cut flower garden so that tall plants such as sunflowers and zinnias are in the back, medium-sized flowers in the middle, and shorter-stature plants up front. You could also organize them according to height of mature plant if you prefer. Pinch long stemmed plants (cutting below each set of leaves) at least once every month to promote new growth and flower production.