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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Floret Flower Farming Online Workshop 2026
Hello friends,
By the time you've read this blog post, I will have already been studying for one week in the 6 week online Floret Flower Farming Workshop.
Every year in October, Floret Flower Farm opens registrations for their yearly online Floret Flower Farming Workshop. It's an in depth 6 week workshop covering all things flower farming: including whether flower farming is right for you (and what you might want it to look like), planning and mapping out your flower farming operation, making a start at flower farming, growing your flowers, sales and marketing, and finally harvesting cut flowers and selling them in whichever way works for you.
Their online workshop has a massive course book, and hundreds of video lessons to go through, along with question and answer video sessions, and an online community for those learning together in the workshop.
I've wanted to do this workshop for many years, and when registrations opened last October, hubby encouraged me to register and finally fulfill my dream to study with Floret. After registering, it wasn't long before a heavy package arrived in the mail from Floret, containing the course book and other workshop goodies.
I spent a long time flicking through the pages of the workshop course book, getting excited for the workshop starting in early January 2026, and then in early December it was time for workshop orientation. There were some online videos to watch about what was to happen in the workshop, along with some administration tasks to accomplish ahead of the starting date. One exciting part was a trip to a stationery store to buy workshop supplies including a poster board, graph paper and tracing paper, and a new A4 binder to hold all the worksheets I would be downloading and filling out...
And now it's January, and the Floret Flower Farming Workshop has begun. I'll be super busy with the workshop for the next 5 weeks, but I already have enough blog posts lined up to cover this period (hopefully, if everything goes to plan...).
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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November Dahlia Update
Hello friends,
Yes, I did buy more dahlias after I said my garden was completely full and I couldn't fit any more in, but I promise this time I had good reasons to do so...
First of all, I lost a number of dahlias this spring due to tubers rotting/eyes not forming, including:
- Arthur Hambley (DP)
- Cafe Au Lait (DP)
- Islander (DP)
- Muchacha (Dec)
- Salmon Runner (Dec)
- Tranquility (Col)
- Impression Fomoso (Col)
- The Phantom (Ane)
From my observations over the past couple of years, dinner plate dahlias seem more prone to rotting, and for this reason I am not planning on buying anymore dinner plate dahlias in the future, they're just not worth spending all that money on, just to end up rotting in spring.
Secondly, when my NZ Bulbs dahlia order arrived in early October, one of my collarette dahlias, Dark Tiger, was not in the package due to them being out of stock, and they replaced it with the waterlily dahlia, Twiggy. The dahlias in this order weren't in the best condition, and two of them (Tranquility and Impression Fomoso) are actually in the lost dahlias list. They didn't form any eyes at all, and then they rotted. I don't think I'll buy from NZ Bulbs ever again when it comes to dahlias.
Twiggy is a waterlily dahlia with warm pink suffused petals and a light yellow center.
And thirdly, I got rid of our small plastic pond in the back garden. When hubby installed it three years ago, he promised he would take care of it, and keep it clean, and that just didn't happen. So after I cleaned it out this spring (again), I talked with hubby, and he agreed with me that it was time for the pond to go. This freed up a large space in the right part of the back garden, and after some rearranging of dahlias in that area, it gave me more space for dahlias to go into the ground.
And fourthly, during the big North West storm in October my Avalanche camellia snapped off at ground level, and it left an open space in the garden which I could fill with another dahlia.
Luckily this all happened around the time that Bulbs Direct and Mount Mera Botanical restocked their dahlia varieties on their websites, so I bought some dahlias I missed out on earlier in the year, and with discounts too.
From Bulbs Direct I picked up Purple Haze, an anemone dahlia with deep plum-coloured blooms, darker in the centre, and rich dark green foliage.
From Mount Mera Botanical I picked up the following dahlia varieties:
Muchacha a small decorative dahlia with shades of rose pink, violet, and white, to replace the one I lost this spring.
Bacardi, a decorative dahlia with muddy-rose colouring and dark raspberry tips and centers. I lost this dahlia last spring due to it rotting, and I really wanted to replace it.
Platinum Blonde, an anemone dahlia with a fuzzy butter cream center and white petals.
Rockstar, an anemone dahlia with beautiful deep cranberry petals and fuzzy cushion centers.
Take Off, another anemone dahlia with soft, orchid-toned petals which encircle a lighter, fluffy center.
Princess Nadine, a collarette dahlia with double ruff of pink and plum petals and an apricot center.
And lastly, Skyfall, a collarette dahlia with luscious crimson petals and a gold heart.
As soon as these dahlias arrived by courier they all went straight into the ground, and they have already sprouted and begun to grow.
And finally just when I thought all my dahlia buying was done for the year, an opportunity came up that I just couldn't turn down. Emerden Flower Farm had Floret Petite dahlia seedlings for sale, and I couldn't miss out on buying some after I missed out on buying their Floret Petite Dahlia seeds last year. I bought 8 Floret Petite dahlia seedlings, and when they arrived by courier a couple of days later I planted them into a small section of our vegetable garden (bad of me I know, but I was desperate), and gave them a good watering. I'm excited to see what flower types and colours I'll get from them.
With summer fast approaching now, I can't wait to see all these new dahlia varieties flowering in my garden.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Planting Out All The Garden Seedlings
Hello friends,
The last couple of weeks have been very busy in the garden, with the weather now being warm enough to plant all the seedlings, plants, and dahlias in pots, out into the garden. This was super important, as the glasshouse was completely packed with plants, and my tomato, cucumber, and chilli and capsicum seedlings really needed to get planted in their final positions in the glasshouse.
The first plants to go out into the garden were the dahlias I had in pots, and also all the dahlia seedlings I'd grown from seed, which I put into two of the new side garden beds.
Next to plant out were all my natural dye plant seedlings into another new garden bed in the side garden, including tango cosmos, calendula, and Japanese indigo seedlings.
The vegetable garden beds also had to get weeded and dug over, so the corn, black turtle bean, lettuce, cabbage and bok choi seedlings could be planted into the garden.
After that, it was time for all the flower seedlings including cosmos, calendula, and pansies, to be dotted around the garden areas to fill out
empty spaces I leave for annual plants. This took about a week as I was very enthusiastic in sowing seeds this spring.
The last of my Floret zinnia seedlings (Unicorn, Precious Metals, and Dawn Creek Blush) went into two spare vegetable garden beds so they can self-pollinate with each other in blocks this growing season, to give me a stash of Floret seeds of my own for the coming years. There is no guarantee that Floret seeds will be imported into the country again any time soon, and I wanted to keep some seed stocks of these varieties for my garden.
And finally once the glasshouse was all but empty it was time to add compost to the glasshouse, dig over the soil, and plant out all my tomatoes (Pomodoro, Juanne Flamme, Hera, Island Bay, Lebanese, Grosse Lisse), capsicum (Marconi Red, Candy Cane), chilli (Serrano), and cucumber (Mini Me, Crunchy, Medici) varieties, and erect their climbing frames. I had some leftover plants which were given to family members.
Once the bigger plants were in place, I planted out my basil plants (Genovese, Gustosa, Lettuce Leaf) into the empty spaces. With that all done I scattered fertiliser, added Saturaid to help with water retention, replaced the yellow sticky traps to catch plant pests, and gave the glass house a good watering.
There are two more vegetable garden beds to be weeded, have compost added, and dug over for planting, but they are for special projects that will be dealt with by the time you read this blog post.
It's been a lot of work to get to get my garden to this point, and I've been neglecting weeding the garden to do this, so that will be my next big gardening job leading into summer in a couple of weeks.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
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