Flower Farming This Summer
Hello friends,
One day while I was doom scrolling on Instagram, I came across a reel from a local flower farmer, searching for local flower growers to sell their excess flowers to her for her floristry business. Since I was at the time in the middle of completing Floret Flower Farm's online Flower Farming Workshop, I thought this was a good opportunity to do some practical work for the workshop, by harvesting my flowers and foliage and selling them.
In summer my home garden is full of many flowers including varieties of dahlia, hydrangea, zinnia, scabiosa, cosmos, calendula, as well as many other precious goodies including my grown from seed dahlias. Most of these flowering plants are used in the floral industry for selling as cut flowers, and also many of these plant varieties that I grow do not travel very well over long distances, meaning that local florists need to find local growers to provide them for their floral work.
I contacted the flower farmer, and within a few days she came to my home to look at my garden, and also to pick her first bucket of flowers. She was impressed with my flower varieties, and especially my dahlias and Floret zinnia plants, and she quickly got to work photographing the flowers, and also harvesting them for use in her floristry business.
One of her favorite dahlias to harvest was a Floret Petite seedling dahlia of mine, which is currently named FP6, and it is an unusual anemone dahlia in shades of pink, red and yellow. I'm very happy with this dahlia, and intend to grow this as a second year seedling dahlia next year.
It wasn't long before she contacted me again, with the intention to buy more flowers from me, which I was very happy to do. This time she taught me how to harvest all the various flowers in the garden, so in the future I could harvest flowers for her myself.
This came in handy the next week which was Valentines Day week, the busiest time in a florist's year. For the first time I harvested all the flowers and foliage by myself, and I really enjoyed the process, harvesting the flowers that usually just flowered in my garden, and then processed them ready for her to pick them up.
I had so much fun harvesting zinnias, dahlias, hydrangea, and also filler flowers like calendula, cosmos and coreopsis. I also picked foliage plants like rosemary and dogwood for her. When she came to pick up all the flowers up after they'd been harvested, she asked to pick some more, as she planned to make over 100 bouquets for Valentines Day. By the time she left, my garden had provided her six buckets of flowers and foliage, and I was so pleased to have the experience under my belt.
From here on out, she is happy to buy flowers from me whenever she has the need for flowers, and I'm willing to sell them to her. I'm very pleased with this arrangement because it's a way for me to do some flower farming without committing myself to owning a full on flower farm, and all the commitments that come with it, but it also means that any income I receive from this means I can invest it into more plants for my garden, and most likely more dahlia varieties...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Cosmos Flowers for the 2024/2025 Summer Season
Hello friends,
Today I thought I'd share with you some of the cosmos varieties I grew in our flower garden over the summer.
First up we have the Xsenia variety, which I grew from seed I got from Emerden last winter. This cosmos variety is just stunning and really unique, and I love the dark band of pink on the edges of the petals. The shade of pink in the petals do change as the flowers get older, so by picking them at different times, you will get a range of colours from just one variety.
Next up we have the Apricotta cosmos variety, that I got from Kings Seeds. It has a similar apricot/pink colour to Xsenia, but the flower is much more open. It wasn't really my favorite, when compared to the Xsenia variety, so I won't be sowing any new seeds next spring.
Then we have the variety, Cosmos Cupcakes White, which I bought as seed from Susie Ripley Gardening. And wow, this cosmos variety really stands out in the garden. I love the cupped flowers, that really do look like the bottoms of cupcakes. These flowers blow daintily in the breeze, making a lot of movement in the garden on windy days. I'm definitely growing these again next year.
I also bought Cosmos Cupcakes Blush seeds from Susie Ripley. They're the same as Cosmos Cupcakes White, but they're a light pink in colour. They weren't as nice as the white variety, with the pink colouring not being even on the petals, so I don't think I'll buy them again.
And finally, we have my new favorite cosmos variety, Cosmos Fizzy White, which I also bought as seed from Susie Ripley Gardening. These white cosmos flowers come in all sorts of variations of fizzy white flowers, and they're just so beautiful in the garden. Of the ten or so plants around my garden, each flower type was slightly different, but each one was just stunning. I'm definitely going to grow a lot more of these in the garden next spring. And as a bonus they were complete bee and butterfly magnets all summer long.
I hope you've enjoyed taking a look at all the cosmos varieties I grew this last summer. I can't wait to begin growing them again next spring.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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