cut flowers

[helly]

Hello, i'm thinking of growing cut flowers this year to add to the veg plot. Can anyone help with easy and popular ones to start with, I'm kind of new to growing fowers.
cheers Helen

[ginger ninger]

Sweet peas are great to mix in with runner beans & climbing French beans. They attract bees so helping with pollination of the bean flowers, plus they smell wonderful as a cut flower. Sunflowers also look great, they attract lots of bees and when the flowers die back...the seed heads feed the wild birds that eat the bugs on your plants.
Calendula or Pot Marigold are good for keeping asparagus Beatles at bay, plus you can eat the petals.

[Jeanied]

I grow a patch of pinks on my allotment - gorgeous scent and a lovely flower to pick.

[Kristen]

I grow Sweet Peas (I only choose the varieties with highest Pong Rating!), Gladioli and Dahlias

"Sweet peas are great to mix in with runner beans & climbing French beans."

Beware that Sweet peas are poisonous - just in case they accidentally got picked with the beans

[goddess]

I started growing cut flowers last years as well.Dahlia is great as it needs minimum work for lovely flowers.from seeds i had bunches and bunches of rudbekia from one sowing around march inside and then planted outside around May.Ammi majus is lovely and very easy if you like them.Zinnia seeds from Lidl did really well for me too.

[Alison]

Beware that Sweet peas are poisonous - just in case they accidentally got picked with the beans

But look sufficiently different to peas and beans that you're unlikely to get it wrong so it's not really risky at all

[Kristen]

I'm not in the Nanny-state camp, but plenty of kids who come here and are told to "go pick some beans" would not know the difference, and plenty of townies who visit us and help in the Catering Department, and who have only ever bought clean-washed veg in pre-packed bags from the supermarket, might well think that my slightly-loopy hobby of growing my own veg means that weird shaped things are "normal" here.

But no point being anal, I agree. Our kids know to wash their hands after picking Aconites, but they pick them nonetheless.

[crazii_c]

ive decided to grow some cut flowers this year as well. i had good results with rudbeckia last year and have been spurred on by this. ive already got lots of tulip bulbs in the ground and these are very easy to grow. im also planning on growing- Sweet Peas, Nicotiana (lovely fragrance), Zinnia, Sunflowers and Calendulas. all these will be sown from seed this year around spring.

[Dottie]

I also grow blue cornflowers with poppies, I cut loads of cornflowers for home. I collect loads of seed and also let them self seed, which in Nov I transferred the seedlings to a range of locations around the plot. I've put quite a few clumps in my rhubarb bed, hoping they will be big enough by the time the rhubarb leaves cover the ground.

Love-in-a-mist I live and self seed in 4 beds, I just pull out clumps when I want to sow or plant. I view them as my all year round delicate and light in bed flowers, keeping the beds covered, as bit like a green manure. Except I don't dig them in, as they are no-dig beds.

Poached egg plants now seed themseves in my raspberry and strawberry rows and beds. Plus I have Crane's Bill, lillies and a range of plants from my garden, which are on the boundary of my plot fence and the public footpath and road. Grow lots of chives at the end of paths for the flowers and to keep pest at bay. Sorry these are not for cutting, I just like having lots of flowers for meand the bees and stuff.

Sweetpeas and stuff that have already been mentioned, I do cut.

[jojo2910]

I'm starting a cut garden bed too. I'm trying sweet peas (lots of them), gladioli, dahlias, delphiniums, lupins, love in a mist and a few more.

If you want some inspiration try Grow your own cut flowers by Sarah Raven. I borrowed it from the library and it was really good in terms of advice and varities. Lots of the flowers mentioned above (bulbs and seeds) are in the pound shops, so now is a good time to get thinking about what you fancy. Or at least I hope so...

[Two_Sheds]

I find sweet peas more trouble than they're worth, tbh.

Sunflowers, calendula, limnanthes, nemophila, cornflower and verbena bonariensis* all seed themselves now on my plot. The bees love it


* this really attracts the cabbage whites. When they are feeding, I grab em and dispatch em

[nick the grief]

just look in the seed catalogues for any that show a pair of scissors - that'll help.

I agree with Pink, I usually have 1 wigwam of sweet peas, Chrysanths (probably the best cutflower) Dahlia's - pick the small or minature varieties and you'll get a vase every few days (lost all my tubers this winter ) and some of the smaller sunflowers are good for something different

[helly]

thanks for all the info looking forward to getting started I bought quite alot from lidl and aldi to start with.
cheers