Growing Flowers for Cutting

Sharing is caring!

Nearly all flowers, twigs, berries, and leaves can be brought indoors and put in a vase for display. Some flowers, however, are easier to grow, cut, and display than others.

You can plant flowers for cutting. You can even dedicate a bed or even a garden for cutting flowers.

Flowers that are well suited for cutting share certain characteristics. The best flowers for cutting:

• Last a long time in a vase—anywhere from a week to three weeks.
• Have blooms that remain open for a week or more.
• Have sturdy, slender stems that make them easy to group together and arrange.
• Have petals and leaves that are firmly attached to stems and are unlikely to fall off.
• Have either a fragrance or no fragrance—depending on what is desired.
• Are free of sap that makes them difficult to handle or fouls water in a vase or bowl.

Growing flowers for cutting

Now that you know the desirable characteristics of cut flowers, here are a few tips for growing cut flowers:

• Include flowers for cutting in beds and borders; grow them close to a walkway where they can be easily cut.
• Plant cut flowers in dedicated rows and dedicated beds with paths between rows; rows can be dedicated to specific flowers.
• Stagger the planting of cut flowers; sow seeds every two or three weeks during the growing season so that flowers are ready for cutting continuously.
• Grow annuals and perennials in separate beds; annuals can be replaced at the end of a season with new annuals suited the next season, e.g. cool-weather annuals will be replaced with warm-weather annuals.
• Group cut flowers by sun and water needs to make growing easier.

Flowers for cutting