Growing Flowers for Cutting

A lot of people imagine that in order to grow flowers for cutting you need a huge patch. While it would be nice to have a dedicated area for growing flowers purely for cutting, this can actually be achieved on quite a small plot or even in among your borders, as long as they get plenty of sun and shelter. You should have freely drained soil with lots of added organic material. Most of the flowers we grow for cutting are annuals and their lives are short, so they need all the help they can get. While some annuals will perform under any conditions, such as snapdragons (Antirrhinum), the likes of sweet peas and dahlias like rich, well-drained soils.

If you are growing your flowers from seeds you should clear the soil of all annual and perennial weeds before planting. Ideally you should dig it in winter or the previous autumn and make sure that you pull out any couch grass, ground elder and bindweed. If you cover the patch in early spring you'll warm the soil and can therefore plant or sow a couple of weeks earlier.

If your soil is light sandy or chalky, dig in plenty of organic matter to ensure good growth. If your topsoil is very thin, you might consider making raised beds. Digging in plenty of organic matter and applying a mulch in late spring will also save you quite a bit of watering in the summer.

When choosing the flowers you want to grow you should try to sow or plant for as long a period as you can manage. You should attempt to have cut flowers from early summer until the late autumn. Just imagine how much money this would save you, as these days even the supermarket flowers are expensive.

You should start with hardy annuals, which can be sown early because they will tolerate the cold. These start blooming in June and July. Among my favourites are sweet peas, 'Matucana' and 'Zorija Rose' are highly scented and lovely for cutting. Salvia viridis 'Blue', Ammi majus and black scabious all make great early cut flowers.

Once the early flowering plants are past their best, they can be replaced with late-sown half-hardy annuals such as Moluccella laevis, zinnias, snapdragons, cosmos, cleomes and the climbing Cobaea scandens. You can sow zinnias, snapdragons and cosmos as late as May, to be ready in late July. Most of these go on until late October, as long as they are picked regularly. Late summer also gives us dahlias and whether you like the showy, large flowered varieties such as Thomas A Edison or the small flowered ball variety, like 'New Baby'. Some of the dahlias flower well into November, providing a welcome source of fresh flowers.

If you can find a spot for chrysanthemums, they will flower from September until Christmas, as long as they are properly staked and sit in a sheltered spot. The small, green 'Froggy' grows happily outside and is particularly suitable for flower arranging.