The cutting patch in June

The Cutting Patch in June

By June the cutting patch is in full bloom, with beautiful colours and textures on display and the sweet perfume of flowers and buzz of bees filling the air.

At this time of year I'm picking three bunches of flowers a week, and as long as the flowers are picked in the right way, then more blooms will follow shortly after.

Water Heavily, Less Regularly

Due to climate change we all need to consider how often we water our gardens, and hosepipe bans are likely to become more prevalent in the future.

May is the most important month to water as your seedlings will have just been planted out. The key to watering is to really drench the soil and your plants, so that the water will penetrate the soil and draw your plant roots down.

If you just lightly sprinkle the soil with a watering can then the roots of your plants will be drawn upwards in search of the water and this will make them more vulnerable to damage and drying out. If the water is only sitting on the surface of the soil, it is also more vulnerable to evaporation, which is wasting this precious resource.

By really drenching the soil you will find that you won't have to water as often either.

Our Watering Regime:

• we put our sprinkler on for two hours after we have planted out our seedlings
• we then wait for 10 days and then put the sprinkler on for another two hours
• followed by a third two hours 10 days later in June.

It's important to remember that most of these plants come from warm and arid regions and so are used to growing in drought conditions.

Feeding

In the wild you'll find many hardy annuals growing by the side of roads or on brownfield sites. This shows that they do not need rich and nutritious soil to grow, and in fact, if you give them too much goodness they will produce more leaves than flowers.

By keeping them a little hungry, the plant is likely to produce more flowers as it will be worried it may die soon and will be forced into trying to reproduce by producing flowers and therefore seed.

If you've added manure or compost into the soil before you planted, then this is really all the feeding that you need to do for a cut flower bed.

The Time Commitment

While it may seem like a patch this size would take up a lot of time, there is actually minimal maintenance involved.

Overall, I think I spent one hour a week planting seeds, followed by less than one hour a week during the height of May and June. This doesn't include picking the flowers, but does include sowing, planting and maintaining them.