By Paul A. Thomas
Georgia Extension Service
Volume XXVII
|
Most gardeners have to have planned ahead to cut flowers from
their gardens
to actually harvest them without guilt. That never seemed to
bother my grandmother,
though.
She raided the family garden every Saturday morning, often to
the anguish of
my grandfather, who loved his hollyhocks almost as much as
Grandmother.
If you’d like a garden you can dip into on a weekly basis,
you need to know
a couple of things: One, it’s time to get started, and two, if
you don’t cut
them, you’ll lose them.
It’s true. Most cut flowers do best when cut regularly.
Otherwise, they go
to seed and stop flowering.
They aren’t hard to grow. It’s easier and less costly to grow
them from seed.
Almost all annual cut flowers are grown from seed.
Perennials often require an extra year of growth before
becoming truly productive.
When you can’t grow them from seed, or when it’s important to
perpetuate certain
traits, you can propagate them from cuttings. Either way, it’s
easy.
Planting time and conditions
Most annual cut flowers will grow best if you plant the seed
in mid to late
fall directly onto the soil surface. If the mix of flowers you
want has many
tender annuals, you can plant them in early to mid-March.
Perennial cut flowers are best planted as seed in late
summer. Keeping the
seed moist in August can be tricky, though. You may want to
buy young plants.
But you can do well with seed if you prepare a good seed
bed.
You need not do anything special for wild flowers. Just kill
the weeds, till
the soil at least 4 inches deep, rake it smooth and then seed
it. A light peppering
of fertilizer (not too much) can help roots grow.
Most cut flowers require full sun. Any level, open area will
do nicely. If
the soil is very poor, add compost. Your main goal is to have
well-drained soils.
Cut flowers are vulnerable to winds from storms or driving
rain. Fences, or
staking, can make damage less likely. Growing them in large
colonies can let
the collective stems support each other.
Many seeds will germinate as soon as they ripen or dry.
Others may require
moist chilling. Still others may benefit from a chemical or
physical treatment
to help break down hard seed coats. And some may have
combinations of these
requirements. Learn as much as you can about what your seed
requires.
Don’t bury, dry or fertilize them to
death
Don’t bury the seed. Broadcast it on the surface and barely
rough it in by
smoothing it down with the back side of a hard rake. This is
how nature intended
it to be.
Some cases, where seeds are slow to germinate or seedlings
slow to develop,
require patience. Some seeds planted in fall may not germinate
until March or
April.
Be careful not to let the seeds or seedlings dry out. Protect
them from frequent,
soil-compacting tramplings. And don’t let them get covered up
with leaves. You
may need to pull large weeds, too.
Most cut flowers need only be fertilized in early spring just
as the plants
begin to grow. Use one-half pound per 100 square feet of
bed.
Fertilize again after the first large harvest of stems,
watering heavily just
after you fertilize. With repeated cutting, most cut flowers
will produce four
to five generations of flowers per summer.
