Advice on cut flower garden

[ClarkL]

I spend an absolute fortune on cut flowers each week, so have decided to save my money and instead have a cut flower garden. I have started clearing the bed which is 2.5 metres by 10 metres. I don't have a green house, (yet - working on persuading the husband) and ideally any excess will be sold, just out the front of the house. We often put apples and plums out from the orchard so picture this in a similar manner with an honesty box

With this in mind, how do you plan what to include? Does anyone have any plant recommendations to provide value for money. I think I need to avoid the likes of tulips and daffodils that can be bought so cheap but also dont want anything SO expensive or one off that if it gets pinched I'm upset.
I am thinking things like dianthus, dahlias and gypsohlia so far. Any advice/recommendations?

Another one green with envy
Bought some peony buds today...hope that I'll get more time from them than if I had bought more open ones. I can't imagine the joy f having a garden with them in.

All this cut flower talk has been the impetus needed...we are finally putting our name down for an allotment. Dh can grow his fruit and veg and I can have cut flower galore. Think the waiting list is quite long but never mind!

This thread persuaded me to brave the rain and cut some flowers. The light isn't good but hopefully you can see the various roses. The jug is about s foot high so the stems are pretty long. I'm really pleased that it all came from the garden.

Peonies! I don't have them, but want them desperately. They are, in my opinion, amongst the best cut flowers and you so rarely see them sold as cut blooms (at least, I don't). They really dislike being moved though, so don't plant one until you've planned your garden and know the conditions are right for them. Good luck with your plan OP, I'm very jealous; I dream of cutting flowers from my own garden.

That's lovely sugar

Thanks Hoggle. I can't grow peonies, would love to. Bowles Mauve perennial wallflower is quite useful, you have to strip the stems a bit and leave the top flowers but then they last a fair time. Expensive to buy but then easy to take cuttings and make more. Quaking grass (Briza) is also a good filler. Alstroemeria is another (I hope!) plus some of the scabious varieties plus snap dragons.

Peonies take quite a long time to get establishe

Peonies take quite a long time to get established. Mine was in about 5 years before flowering, and I had warned it that if it didn't start doing something, it was destined for the compost heap. Fortunately, it paid attention, and is looking lovely at the moment (as far as I can tell through the driving rain.)

You need to think about when things flower - gladioli in summer, dahlias are late summer, sweet peas are never (but I've got a lot of fat slugs...) So as well as going for things you like, you should think about whether you've got a long season of blooms. Start with looking at the perennials and then fill in time gaps with annuals. Not that they'll spread their flowering times just as you want!

For roses, I'd start by looking at a rose specialist site like David Austin - you don't necessarily have to buy from them, but you can find out about different types of roses.

Beautiful Charlie! Your dd will have a gorgeous wedding.

Wow, amazing flowers from posters' gardens
Have you all got really big gardens? How quickly will plants like sweet peas and peonies flower again?

Those are lovely Charlie, lucky DD ! My cosmos are tiny still so I'm jealous.

Sweet peas are great as the more you cut the more they flower, though the stems generally get shorter as the season goes on. You have to make sure they don't go to seed or they stop producing .

I'm finding things are flowering earlier than I expected even though we had such a cold spring and things seemed slow at first. Some years I seem to wait for ever for my sweet peas but I've been cutting them for 3 weeks. The cosmos pink picotee are gorgeous, I really hope they last for another month! Still have the larkspur, marigolds, cornflowers and Nigella which haven't bloomed yet, but I think the lovely yellow annual lupins will be over. Unfortunately flower arranging is not a talent of mine, so it's lucky we are going for an informal look.

Wow! Amazed at your blooms Charlie and Sugar. I'm still waiting for cosmos and zinnias to bloom, and no sign of the dahlias yet .

My garden is a very much first timers cutting garden with weeds and random self seeding tomatoes I will take a photo of it on Tues, as rain forecast all day tomorrow.

Sugar, I actually don't know what "going to seed" means in a garden context? I, hoping to absorb as muck knowledge as possible ready for when I have a garden! The most excitement here is for a balcony rose that has one bud so far!!

Much not muck!

TooMuch an annual plant grows, flowers and dies in one year. If you keep cutting the blooms they keep producing them because they need to produce seeds to complete their life cycle. If you leave them to produce seed the cycle is over and they die.

Sorry! Basically when a flower is finished the plant starts to turn it into a seed to reproduce itself. Once it has produced seeds it will generally stop flowering . A sweet pea develops a little green pod that looks like a pea. If you leave it will get bigger and develop little black seeds inside. You want to stop the plant doing this so by picking the flowers regularly it stops it and the plant will produce more flowers .

If you weren't growing to cut flowers then to keep your display going throughout the summer you would cut the flowers off as you fade. This is called dead heading and has the same affect.

Thanks, I feel foolish for not knowing that!

If the go to seed in a garden, then presumably the seeds would drop and set up a new plant?

Don't feel foolish, it's the sort of thing you don't think about until you need to. Yes usually the seed will fall and hopefully form a new plant. Different plants have different methods of dispersing their seeds. Some are very light so travel well in the wind and germinate on top of the soil. Others have exploding seed pods. Some have berries that the birds carry.

Not all plants produce new plants from seed that look exactly the same, hellebores are a good example. So,evplajrs are better at producing seeds which produce new plants than others - these tend to be called self seeders. Nigella, marigolds and foxgloves all do this well. Foxgloves are biannual though which means they take two years to flower rather than one.

And some plants spread more by making new rhizomes under ground rather than by seed eg. Japanese Anenomes. Other plants you are better off cutting a chunk off in the spring or Autumn or taking cuttings in the winter such as roses or Cronus .

What a lovely thread. Here's my "everything posy".

I love those colours

wow, I haven't been here all weekend and look at all those lovely flowers and advice!
I did go to the garden centre and treated myself to roses - they got distracted, went totally off list and came home with agapanthus and some iris's - Whoops!

I did a bit of weeding and clearing yesterday and filled another builders sack with waste and sadly ran out of time for planting up, I really hope the rain stops soon so I can pop them in, although if my husband comes home grumpy like he has been all weekend I may just pop my wellies on and a rain mac :)

Actually question for those of you with Peonies...I have a couple and they have some buds on them, what is the best point to cut them, do I wait until they are just about to burst open or wait until they are actually open? Also if I cut them, will it affect their flowering ability next year?

Gorgeous arrangement Clarkl
Alstroemerias might be nice in a cutting garden
Roses seem to take 2 years to flower from cuttings