Grow Your Own Cutting Garden: 5 Cut Flowers for the Beginning Gardener
If you’re new to growing flowers for cutting I want to offer you 5 flowers that are fantastic for the beginning grower.
Master these and then you can move on to more difficult ones next year.
#1 Calendula is an easy and prolific flower.
Varieties I love are Orange Button and Ivory Princess. Orange Button is the classic bright orange calendula flower. Ivory Princess is a unique soft yellow.
Strip the petals off for a salad garnish or to dry and then add to salves or use as a natural dye.
You can start these directly in the garden or inside. I’m seeding mine in week 14 and week 17 in order to have 6 weeks of continuous blooms. I also leave the calendula patch clear in the garden because they readily self seed. You could plant these once and then simply let a few plants go to seed each fall. You will then not have to re-seed ever again!
Fun fact: some people feed calendula to their chickens to create a more orange yolk. I’m not sure it changes the nutritional value of the eggs but it does make the yolk beautiful.
Ivory Princess Calendula in the Turnstone Farm garden
#2 Bachelor Buttons are one of the earliest blooming flowers in the annual garden.
Blue Boy, Classic Magic and Black Button are fantastic varieties. I plant these once in week 14. You could definitely plan for at least two plantings for continuous blooms all season. I opt not to since cutting these small flowers is very time consuming on a large scale. They are valuable to me in the early season though, since they are one of the first to bloom in my garden.
Fun fact: Bachelor Button flowers are edible. They make for a great garnish.
Bachelor Buttons in the Turnstone Farm Garden
#3 Marigolds are one of my absolute favorite flowers.
Every year I grow Giant Orange. It is the best for cutting and produces loads of big, fragrant blooms.
I’m planting two successions: one in week 14 and one in week 16.
Make sure to pinch marigolds back when they are 4-6 inches tall. If you don’t pinch, you will only get 1 flower per plant. If you pinch, you will get many, many blooms.
Most cut flowers, including marigolds benefit from being supported by netting (shown below). This helps support them in a heavy rain or wind storm. It’s easy to lose an entire crop in one storm if you fail to do so.
Fun fact: Marigolds dry great hung upside down. They hold their vibrant color well and make for fantastic fall dried arrangements.
Giant Orange Marigolds
Be sure to net your flowers so you don’t lose them in a storm.
#4 Poppies are one of the most cheerful additions to the garden.
My favorite varieties include any Breadseed variety (they are the best for pod production) and any Shirley variety. They both come in many colors! Pick a few to start with and have fun.
Don’t forget to save your own seed as it is very easy to do so. I usually just let poppies self seed in the garden from the pods of the previous year. If I’m starting a new variety, I’ll start these indoors in week 20 and week 22.
The only way you’ll ever get poppies in an arrangement is if you grow your own or buy from a local farmer. Since they have a short vase life, they do not transport well. Even with the short vase life they are so worth the effort.
Harvest for the vase right when the bud is about to pop open and you can just start to see the color of the bloom.
Fun fact: poppy pods are fabulous dried and made into fall arrangements or popped into a bud vase.
Shirley poppy in the Turnstone Farm garden.
#5 Strawflowers are an easy and whimsical addition to your garden.
Copper Red, Purple Red and Apricot are my favorites. Although there are so many kinds, so you can’t go wrong.
Strawflowers benefit from pinching. If you don’t, you will get one flower on one very thick stem.
I’m seeding my strawflowers in week 14 and week 17.
Fun fact: harvest at different stages of bloom to get different looking elements in your arrangements: bud stage, just about to open, and fully open.
A dried Turnstone Farm arrangement with strawflowers.