A guide to picking your flowers

A Guide to Picking Your Flowers

Whenever I come out into the garden to pick flowers I will always bring two buckets with me. One will be two-thirds full of water and will be left to stand in a cooler part of the garden, while the other will be empty and ready to receive any stripped foliage for the compost heap.

I always try to pick before 10 am or after 5 pm as this ensures that most of the flowers will stay upright instead of flopping over as the weather isn't too hot.

Cutting the Flowers to Prevent Them Going to Seed

With the cerinthe and the salvia plants I don't cut too low down on the flower stem. I generally cut around three flowers down, which gives the axillary buds below the chance to form and produce new growth and flowers.

It's also important to cut above a pair of leaves, as this is where the axillary buds are most likely to form.

Cutting the Plant in the Right Place to Promote Flower Growth

When cutting flowering stems, you want to cut enough of the stem so that you can use the flower in your arrangement but you also want to ensure that the plant will be able to go on flowering.

In order to ensure this, you need to cut above a pair of leaves where you can see another leaf is forming. This means that an axillary bud is very likely to form here if you cut directly above it.

The more I pick, the more the plant will flower. If I don't pick them, the plant will quickly go to seed as it is trying to reproduce and then it will be useless as a cut flower plant.

Always cut your stems with sharp scissors as this will ensure a neater cut.

Weeds

When you have dense planting in your patch, you're always going to get some plants which self-seed and throw up volunteer plants into your orderly planting scheme.

It's really up to you which ones you want to keep and which ones you wish to weed out.