Flowers We Aren’t Growing this year

This is our seed inventory. We keep all of our seeds in  those cute little photo boxes that you've probably seen all over the place. But they work really well for us and we keep them all labeled a nice.  And then we have this sort of spreadsheet inventory that we do each year just to remind ourselves of exactly which seeds we have so that we don't over-order.

We're trying now to be a lot more lean in our practice  and not to order tons and tons of seeds that we'll just be storing. We'd rather order the right amount and get those planted. But what you can see on here is I've gone through and I've grayed out everything that we're not going to grow this year.

It's a lot. And I know that some people here that work with me are going to be pretty sad about my choices, but a lot of the things that I've crossed off here or grayed out—they're just a little bit too fussy or time consuming for us.

Like the annual phlox:, the cherry caramel, sugar stars, all that stuff is pretty tangly for us. It has to be netted in order to grow well for us. And I'm saying “for us” as much as I can, because I know not everyone's situation is the same. But these are choices that we're making here and why.

I'm also knocking out any little tiny flowers. Like paper, daisies, bachelor buttons. I just find them really cumbersome to harvest and sort of annoying.

I'd rather grow things that are quicker and faster for us to harvest. We're not growing a whole bunch of poppies because of their short vase life. We are gonna be planting oriental and perennial poppies. I love them because they are sort of like attention grabbers for anyone who's driving by our place when we have a lot of poppies going— they always catch the eye.

And actually the seed pods that form after their flowers are gorgeous and they're really wonderful to use. It's like growing a bread seed poppy intentionally for the pods. You can grow these perennial oriental puppies. And they'll do the same thing for you.

Another thing that's pretty cool about the Oriental poppies / perennial poppies, is that, is that they are some of the first nice foliage that we see in the spring time. For Mother's Day, because these are nice big varieties with great big long fern-y leaves,  I'll go out and I'll pick the leaves and I'll put those in vase arrangements that we're making for Mother's Day.

 And it's awesome because there isn't a whole lot else typically that we have to use then. We have daffodils, sometimes some ranunculus and anemone. We have our tulips. We have pussy willow. We might have a little bit of budded foliage that we can forage. And then poppy leaves are out there, which is pretty cool.

All right. We're also skipping scabiosa (except for perennial Fama series!) this year. I just find that it's pretty tedious. Rudbeckia is beautiful, but the tarnished plant bug go after it like crazy here. Silene is a little bit too weedy looking, in my opinion. Calendula— I hate how sticky my fingers get. I’m getting really picky here, and I know that most people won't agree with all these choices.

But these are the reasons that I'm making them. Celosia: I only like to grow celosia spiccata varieties like Terracotta, Flamingo Feathers Ruby Parfait.  There are a couple of other different kinds and the reason is that it dries really well. It's less prone to get aphids. And those two great reasons for me,  

The sort of fuzzy plumosa and cristata types…  they just don't do great for us here. They tend to get lots of aphids and they also are a little bit more frost sensitive. Generally we're using lots of celosia,  at the end of the season, towards frost. And I want to have the types that are going hold up a little bit better.

I'm knocking off all the, almost all of the cosmos. I will probably grow Fizzy White (one white Cosmo), because we use that a lot in event work. Let's see, craspedia— I haven't grown those for a few years. We're just not really warm enough for them to take off here.

And nasturtium— tasty and spicy, but just not worth all the tangly vines to me.

We have always done lots of Nigella and larkspur. Those stay on the list.

A few other things that we've grown before that we aren't growing again:

We won’t grow any flowering tobacco. It's sticky. And the downward facing bellflowers are, you know, appreciated by a lot of florist, by me, but they don't work great in market bouquets and not all of our customers really understand them.

I always do lots of fox glove. We're gonna get our hollyhocks going again.

Dusty Miller doesn't ever grow tall for us here. And some of these grasses just look a little bit too weedy, I might as well just pick the weeds in the meadow. If I need something that looks like them. I think that is the bulk of the things we're not growing.

These are all the veggies. Those are always last on the list. We have lots of really great vegetable growers around here, so I leave it up to them.

So that's kind of a brief rundown on what we're not growing. And I will definitely be sure to share with you any sort of groups of flowers that we grow a certain way, like which annual seeds we direct sew.

And which perennial plants we look for seedlings from. We gather seedlings from them and propagate them that way.

There are so many different great things that are coming up in the gardens outside, and I hope you are getting excited for your growing plots too! I'll talk to you next time.