Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Perfect for gardening enthusiasts at any level, this podcast is your companion to cultivating success and beauty in your own backyard or flower patch. Hosted by Jane Westoby from Fuchsia Blooms Florist and The Hampshire Seed Company.
Each episode is a treasure trove of practical tips, expert advice, and insider flower farming guides designed to help you sow and grow with confidence and harvest with pride. Whether you’re dreaming of rows of neat vegetables or cutting flowers for bouquets all year round, we’ll walk you through every step.
Let’s grow together!
Jane Westoby (00:02)
Hey there and welcome back to the Blooming Garden podcast. I'm Jane Westoby and today is a solo episode where I'm diving into one of my favorite topics, which is squeezing every possible last bloom out of your flower plot. So if you're growing flowers for cutting, whether you are a flower farmer, gardener who loves fresh bouquets,
just someone who wants more blooms from less space. This episode is for you. So I'm going to talk about the three biggest tricks for getting the absolute most out of your plants. So today we're going to talk about cut and come again flowers. So why some flowers actually thrive when you keep cutting them, pinching and why that works and which plants love it.
and then succession sowing. So how to keep those flowers coming all season long. So if you want a continuous and abundant harvest without planting miles of rows, these techniques are really non-negotiable. So let's get down to it. Let's start with cut and come again flowers. So these are basically the gift that keeps giving.
Instead of producing one bloom and then calling it a day, these flowers love to be cut repeatedly and they respond by producing even more stems and even more blooms. So think of it a little bit, maybe like a haircut. You know, the more you trim, the fuller it grows back. So which are the best flowers for this method? So some of my
Top contenders are zinnias, which are super productive and they just keep going. So from about August onwards here in the UK, because they're real heat lovers and a late season crop for us. So they bloom at the same time as dahlias and also make a great pairing. So they absolutely love, love, love to be cut. Cosmos is an absolute must have. If you don't cut them, they will actually slow down.
So by keeping on deadheading them and cutting them, it keeps them blooming for much, much longer. So sweet peas. Yeah, the more you pick, the more they will bloom. So from an autumn sown crop, you can actually start picking them in around Maytime through to, I'd say, about the end of July. But by then...
I say mine because I pick them so often, you I pick them like every other day. They get quite worn out, they get quite exhausted because they're desperately trying to reproduce and they keep failing because I keep cutting those blooms. If you want slightly later blooms, then maybe sowing them in springtime is a good idea. And I do do some really late sewings in spring. So I will also sew
some sweet peas in April time, but we'll talk about succession sowing in just a minute. So the other flower which really, really loves to be cut are dahlias. So these are one of my favorite cut and come again blooms. And I cut everything which is ready every, essentially every three to five days max. I wouldn't leave it any longer than five days. And that ensures a real continuous supply.
And then my last one that I would really recommend for this are snapdragons. These are a total work, a total workhorse in the garden. They will repeat flower for weeks and weeks and they'll pump out more and more and more blooms. And if you choose your groups right, you can be cutting different varieties of snapdragons right from spring all the way through summer and into the autumn.
So they're fantastic. Now the trick to all of this, all of this cut and come again, is to cut deep. So don't just snip off the top flower. That's what you do in the garden border. That's called deadheading. And that's super important for a garden border. But if you want cut flowers, you need to cut really, really deep. Deep is best. So take a long stem down to a
healthy leaf node and then you'll encourage more side shoots to come out from that leaf node once it's cut. If you just nip off the top flowers, the dead heading I just mentioned, then you won't get that explosive growth and those really long stems.
So if you're still nervous about chopping back your precious plants, trust me, just do it. They will thank you for it with those long stems and they will repay you and reward you handsomely for that. So the next thing that we need to think about is pinching, which despite his name, it has nothing to do with stealing cuttings from your neighbor's garden, although that's always good to do as well. So pinching.
is when you take out the top growth of a young plant to encourage it to grow bushier. So instead of one tall, leggy stem, you get multiple strong branches, which means way more flowers across the course of the season. But not every plant likes to be pinched. So I do have a quick cheat sheet for which varieties do you like to be pinched.
You can download that from the show notes and I'll pop the link in there for you. So some of my favourite flowers for pinching are Cosmos. So when it's around 10 centimetres tall, you pinch out that top and then it will branch beautifully throughout the season. Snapdragons. I actually plant those pinchings and I know a lot of you do too. Make sure you plant them. So dahlias.
Anzanias also really love to be pinched so that's really early on in their life. This isn't you know later on in the summer, this is when they're all maybe 10 centimeters or so tall and they have maybe two to three sets of leaves. Once they've got those two to three sets of leaves you can pinch out that tip. There are also flowers which really do not like to be pinched so Stox, Asters,
some sunflowers as well. So anything with a single central stem, those shouldn't be pinched, okay? So it feels really brutal the first time you do it. You can do it with snips, you can do it with a nail, but within a week or two, you will see lots of new shoots popping up and lots of branching. So if you want more blooms in less space, pinching is really, really essential. Okay, so.
The next one is succession sowing. Okay, so we've covered how to make individual plants more productive. So now let's talk about the timing. So succession is sowing is when you stagger your plantings and you stagger your sowing instead of sowing everything all at once, all at the beginning of the season. And as a result, you will then get a constant supply of fresh flowers. Or if you're growing vegetables,
it might be a constant supply of fresh vegetables. So you could do this with maybe something like lettuce, for instance, which will then give you a continuous crop. So, and then you don't get the big glut, then followed by a flowerless void. No one likes a void, especially not customers. They certainly don't like a flower void. So the simplest way that I do this is every two to three weeks is just so
new batch of seed and what I do is I separate my seed packets into separate envelopes. So I have one seed packet which is the original packet those seeds came in. I then take you know maybe two or three or four blank just craft envelopes, small ones, and I split my packet of seed and then I write on each packet of seed which month I want to sow that seed.
So I'll end up with, let's say, four packets of seed and they will say on them February, March, April and May. And then what I do is within my seed box, my seed box is arranged by month. So I know all I have to do every single month is take out all of the seeds that need to be sown that month and then throughout the month, because I really struggle to sow them all the same day, we have a lot to sow. And then I just work my way through the pack.
Okay, so then I know I'm going to get a little bit of everything every month. So I'm essentially just following my own instructions that I've given myself. And that way I'm not left thinking, well, did I already sew these? And how many did I sew? And how many do I need to sew now? I can keep track of what I'm doing and what's going to be coming into bloom so that I don't have any gaps. And I really like to think of succession sowing like
like baking bread. So if you go and bake 10 loaves all at once, you're gonna be drowning in bread all week and then nothing. But if you bake a fresh loaf every few days, you've always got something ready. So if you want a steady stream of flowers from spring right through to the autumn, then succession sowing is definitely the way to go. So let's talk about what all of this actually means.
If you're growing flowers to sell, whether you're a full-time flower farmer or you're running a small cutting garden for some extra income as a side hoppy, then you know these aren't just nice to have, they are business changing. Just imagine having double the number of blooms per plant without actually needing any more space. That's what cut and come again flowers actually give you. More flowers,
Equals more bunches to sell, more subscriptions to fill and the more wedding orders you can say yes to. And then what if your flowers were stronger and taller and more resilient with just one simple step? That's what pinching does for you. Instead of weak floppy stems, you get sturdy branched plants that can stand up to the wind and the rain and more importantly,
all that transport and handling as well. So you've got less loss, you've got more saleable stems. And then succession sowing. So this is the difference really between having flowers to sell all summer long versus a mad, crazy two week scramble followed by a dry spell. Without succession sowing, you are at the mercy of one harvest window.
Don't make that mistake. By staggering your plantings, you can extend your selling season, you can smooth out your workload, and you can keep customers coming back. So, if you're growing flowers as a business, these techniques mean higher revenue without needing any more land, more stems per plant, longer sale season, and less waste. If you're growing for yourself,
They mean more homegrown bouquets, more colour in your garden and more joy from all your hard work without that frustrating moment when everything blooms at once and then disappears. And if you're just getting started, then mastering these three really simple techniques will set you up to success right from the beginning.
Instead of struggling to get your flowers to last all season long, you'll have a really steady, reliable supply, just like the pros. So these are the small, really intentional changes that separate the growers who thrive from the ones who feel like they're constantly fighting against the elements. And the best part is, is they're so easy to implement. You don't need any more space. You don't need expensive tools.
or complicated setup. Just a little bit of planning, a few strategic snips here and there, and that discipline to keep sowing. So if you take just one thing from this episode, let it be this. You can have more control over your flower fields than you think you can by working with your plants natural growth habits, cutting, pinching.
So in succession, you can unlock their full potential. And that's when growing flowers stops feeling like a guessing game and it really starts to feel more like success. So I hope you put a plan into action and I hope you found this episode helpful. So head over to my blog where I've got a full breakdown of how to put all of this into action. And if you try any of these techniques, I'd love to hear about it.
So if you found this episode helpful, hello, hello, hello. So if you found this episode helpful, then head over to my blog where I've got a full breakdown of how to put all of this into action with some extra downloads in there for the flowers which really like to be pinched, the flowers which have cut and come again. I'll put a link into the show notes for you. We also have a,
We also have a podcast on cut and come again flowers. I'll pop the link to that in the show notes too. So if you do try and these techniques, then I'd love to hear about it. Please share your success or even your questions. Just share with me on Instagram. You can find me at the Hampshire Seed Co. So please do take a look. And don't forget, if you're enjoying the podcast, just leave us a really quick review. It really helps.
more growers to find this content and keeps me going to share more and more tips with you. So that's it for today, quite a shorty episode, but happy growing and I'll see you next time.