The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Growing => Gardens => Topic started by: Jakebob on September 04, 2016, 08:58:21 pm
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Do any of you friendly people grow flowers to cut? I love having cut flowers in the house and just wondered how easy it would be to grow them myself. Thank you.
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Depends on how much space you have and also what flowers you want.
Perennials are good - year after year growth.
Annuals - yearly but need to be direct sown or into pots and then transplanted etc.
99% of our garden is perennials, shrubs and bulbs and I would say that flowers wouldn't be a problem.
It would also depend on what your soil is like.
Bulbs are good value too.
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I do and year in year out have plans for more, though that's easier said than done. The biggest issue is space and what you want to achieve flower wise. Carse Goodlifers is spot on. They showy ones you buy in shops can be trickier, often because they take more space, need staking and are often biennials.
Browse catalogues and look first for perennials and bulbs that will naturalise for your basic stock. 'Scatter and grow' plants are good fillers, things like Nigella and Shirley poppy mixes. Gladioli and Dahlia are good bets, though the former need staking and the latter might need lifting over winter, depending on where you live. Both are perennial and require little more than staking and keeping the slugs at bay. I always grow plenty of sweet peas and cosmos, cheerful and reliable... even if I still have to battle with the voles who seem to love shredding the latter!
My biggest problem growing flowers to cut? Despite all the best laid plans I often find I haven't the heart to cut them in the end. The roses look too lovely where they are, the stocks are never in enough profusion at the same time to feel that I would be doing anything other than denuding the garden and the bees etc. are clearly having such a lovely time of it that I can't bear to deprive them! Thank garden heaven for the sweet peas, dahlias and cosmos... :bouquet:
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Do any of you friendly people grow flowers to cut? I love having cut flowers in the house and just wondered how easy it would be to grow them myself. Thank you.
My mum grew them for a time and they were quite handy, we used to grow marigolds, calendulars, sweetpeas, I'm not sure about sunflowers though maybe ??? It is quite easy to grow them yourself. Here is some info for you....
https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=603 (https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=603)
Hope this helps and all the best :thumbsup: Can we see some pics when you grow them plz? :excited:
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,,or you cheat and just grow everlasting flowers every few years :roflanim:
http://www.thymegarden.com/Everlastings (http://www.thymegarden.com/Everlastings)
statice and helichrysum are both dead easy to grow...chuck the seeds in a bed
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Thank you all. We do grow sunflowers and have great success with them. I'm off to get my Parkers catalogue.
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I've had a chance to ponder this question after my early rapid knee-jerk response.
It depends what it is about cut flowers you like: just the fact of colour in the room, the potential for showiness in arrangements (just for yourself or to brag about) or the scent aspect of flowers.
The inherent problem with cut flowers is that they die. the only real advantage is managing to cram lots into one vase or arrangement.
Before i bought this farm and lived in Sth London it wasn't worth growing much in the way of veggies in a small garden with grass for the kiddies: so i had a conservatory as a plant room and a double glazed greenhouse. While my bigger interest was in growing difficult stuff: citrus, pineapples, bananas.. I also grew some showier stuff: Orchids, other bromeliads like the urn plant, strelitzia (i left behind several huge staghorn ferns - no flowers but superb interest plants)
Now if the idea is mostly some colour then orchids..particulalry phaleonopsis give huge value for money. they're easy enough to look after, last for weeks to months in bloom and will grow bigger and more flowering spikes year on year. Cymbidium are more showy but don't flower for as long. More showy still but shorter flowering are the dendrobiums and pansy orchids. Some of the monkey orchids actually have a scent - I had one that smelt of chocolate. Out of all of them the phals are easiest.. avoid overwatering, feed little and regularly and rest between flowerings.
If you're after scents then miniature roses potted indoors and tea roses outside... roses are a bit of a ain with their common need for disease control but if you get into a routine then not so bad..specally if the aim is for indoor results.
For foliage as part of an arrangment then a baby's breath shrub in the garden will supply lots and add white dottyness when flowering.
You can also have early lilly bulbs indoors and then move them out (so long as no cats to eat them) - and the varieties are legion.. as indeed humble tulips and daffs.
Now if you really want to get showy and prepared to devote the space, time and conditions then ginger or even bananas - now they really take some space to get going ;D https://uk.pinterest.com/hatetheheat/flower-banana/ (https://uk.pinterest.com/hatetheheat/flower-banana/)
Essentially I'm widening the remit and pointing out that flowers are flowers .. and they don't have to be cut to have indoors or grown specially for cut flowers - as simple as pot mums indoors (easy to grow and weeks of flower).
I loved my strelitzia.. you can pot-bind them to have in the house but back then mine were in dustbins dragged out of the greenhouse for the summer and dragged back for the winter - a job for a younger version of me: a dustbin of wet soil weighs seriously. It;s probably just as well that my attempt to grow a giant white failed - they can get to 20feet and a dustbin isn't quite enough :)
Or you can go to the really dramatic - plumeria. I started growing some from seed a couple of years ago but abandoned the project and let them take their chances overwinter unheated greenhouse (they died) because I've got enough to do. My OH won't let me have them in the sun room here.. house isn't as big as the one we had before..and illogically she hates pot plants. But plumeria are stunning and loads of varieties.. and even graftable for mixed flowers on one rootstock http://www.plumeriasuk.com/hawaii.html (http://www.plumeriasuk.com/hawaii.html)
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I'm another one who ends up not picking flowers as they are so good in the garden, to look at and for the bees, butterflies etc. I never pick roses - I grow climbers and ramblers and their blooms look best where they grow. I do grow sweet peas which are of course more productive the more you pick them, but don't last very long. About the only annual I grow for cutting is helichrysum, but then the bees and butterflies are in ecstasy on them, so I often end up not picking them either ::)
The flowers I do pick are the tiny ones. I have lots of tiny coloured glass vases, jugs and pots, and I love to fill several with tiny arrangements which I stand on the cross bars of our sash windows, so the light shines through. I grow lots of tiny alpine plants but those are too precious to pick.
I have larger house plants such as pelargoniums, begonia rex, scarborough lily etc, which are colourful and easy.
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Definitely the same here Fleecewife, and I save any empty Swartz spice jars I don't need for small arrangements as they have such a lovely shape for somethings that's often just recycled/thrown away. Put a bit of hessian and lace around them and they look lovely (though I often leave mine as they are as I enjoy the reflective qualities of water and clear glass on the windowcill). Not quite 'ikebana', but just as lovely ;)
One thing I have enjoyed lately - I had to cut back some of my rampant marjoram that was flopping over some of my other plants and swamping them. I normally leave it till the flowers have finished as the bees love it so much, but this time I had no choice - cut back some or risk losing other plants. I brought the trimmings inside and hung them up - my kitchen now smells wonderfully like a hay meadow.