Growing Cut Flowers for Joy

Valentine's Day and Mother's Day are the busiest days for florists. Why? Because flowers bring happiness into our lives. Jeannette Haviland-Jones of Rutgers University and others found evidence that flowers are indeed potent mood elevators. It's not our imagination: flowers do give us joy! Who doesn't recall their genuine eye-crinkling smile when a youngster offered a fistful of bright yellow dandelion blossoms?

A fresh floral arrangement always sat on the kitchen table in my childhood home. It was nothing fancy, just a few flowers tucked into a vase of water. Visiting family and friends often received a handful of flower stems from our cutting garden as they were leaving for home. Can you create a cutting garden that brings joy to you, your family, and your neighbors? Absolutely! Follow these tips for success.

Provide good soil in a sunny location. As with all gardening, the soil is the most critical place to begin. Test the soil for fertility and amend as recommended. Most cut flowers do best in a full-sun location. Raised beds may be a good option for your new floral garden.

Plan to include both annuals and perennials in your cutting garden. Very few perennials provide season-long flowers. Value their foliage when they are not in bloom. Annuals will bloom all season but need to be sown or replaced annually. Add some bulbs, especially for early spring blossoms. Don't forget to grow the flowers that have meaning to you or those you will gift.

Select varieties that naturally have tall stems and have done particularly well in Pennsylvania research trials. Many bedding plants are bushy and short. Be sure to read the seed packet or tag. Often a scissors icon will indicate varieties of plants designated for cut flowers. Planting in rows allows easier access to your flowers when harvest time comes. Some plants may need to be staked, so the stems are not broken by wind or bent over by top-heavy blooms. You may decide to install a wide-gap horizontal mesh to provide support for the plants as they grow through it. Some plants will need to be pinched, and others disbudded or pruned.

Weeds require management. As in a vegetable garden, control the weeds as they emerge. Chemical control is not appropriate in home-cutting gardens. A weed mat of landscaping fabric may fit your needs.

Choose plants that are not prone to pests and diseases. Zinnias are often considered a foundation for cutting gardens. Be sure to select varieties resistant to powdery mildew and provide good air circulation. Overcrowded plants are more prone to problems that will reduce the pleasure of your cutting garden.

No plant is guaranteed to be resistant to deer predation. Plan to substitute "deer delicious" plants, like tulips, with those less palatable, like daffodils. Most repellents will interfere with the fragrance of your cutting garden, so avoid relying on spraying repellents.

Know the best stage to harvest each flower. Fully opened flowers look great in the garden, but soon fade in a vase. Each species has an ideal time to harvest during blooming. The florets of a spray of gladiolus do not open simultaneously and will continue to open in the vase. Some plants readily rebloom, especially after pruning or harvesting the flowers. But when the floral stem of a gladiolus is harvested, that plant is finished for the season.

Plan for long-lasting bouquets. While a shallow basket of flowers appears beautiful on your arm as you snip blossoms from your garden, this process does not contribute to the flowers' long vase life. Harvest the flowers before the heat of the day, and place the cut ends immediately into a bucket of water to keep the stems well-hydrated. Cut the flower stem to ¼ inch above a new lateral flower, lateral leaf, or bud. This encourages new growth and healthy foliage. Deadhead spent or fading flowers, too.

Equipment must be clean and ready before harvest begins. Harvest the longest stems the plant will allow. Arrange the cut stems in a clean vase filled with clean water. Marbles in the base of the vase help hold the stems in place. Alternatively, add a reusable armature made of vinyl-coated chicken wire (hex netting) to support the stems. Most floral foam products are not biodegradable.

Include evergreen and berry-producing shrubs like inkberry and winterberry hollies in your landscape to extend the harvest season into winter. Grow enough plants so that you can share them with the birds.

While a home-cutting garden will provide joy, please don't decide to enter into commercial cut flower production without serious study. Your Pennsylvania cutting garden won't grow all the long-stemmed flowers available in grocery stores and florist shops. Warning: Unless you become exceptionally experienced with cut flower gardening, do not offer to provide wedding flowers. Families are always on edge about special event designs, so this is not exactly a joy-producing endeavor for the cut-flower gardener.

Start with a reasonably-sized cutting garden and create simple yet meaningful floral designs from that garden. Your reward might just be increased happiness, enjoyment, and fulfillment. What would be wrong with that?!