A summer full of flowers? Extend the flowering with these 7 tips
Do you also get so happy from a wealth of flowers in your garden? Then you naturally want to enjoy them all summer long. Whether you prefer to put your flowers in a vase or want to avoid empty spaces in the garden or on your balcony: with these 7 tips from experienced growers you can extend the flowering throughout the summer.
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In the Achterhoek, in a romantic hidden spot, lies a beautiful picking garden and sustainable seed nursery: Do It Yourselves . Grower Marloes Bijlsma created a flower paradise in Winterswijk and knows better than anyone how to keep flowering plants beautiful in the summer. These are her most important tips to extend the flowering period:
Marloes: “Keep picking lots of flowers throughout the summer, because this encourages the plant to grow new flowers.”
Marloes: “Dare to remove the old flower stems from summer bloomers such as cosmos , cornflower , poppy, dahlias and zinnias quite rigorously every now and then. Not just the wilted flowers, but also the entire stems. You will see that you will be treated to lots of new flowers a few weeks later!”
Brenda Gruppen has a seed nursery in her own garden: Zaden uit Zalk . On a few square meters she grows the most beautiful flowers and harvests seeds herself. It is almost always in bloom and it is a garden full of life. Of course Brenda also has a few important tips for extra summer bloom.
Tip! Both Marloes from Do It Yourselves and Brenda from Zaden from Zalk can be found together with a lot of other sustainable nurseries and crafts at the annual Craft Plant Market at Landgoed de Wiersse. Are you coming too, on September 27-28?
Brenda: “You can sow fast-growing annuals until the end of June, such as cornflower , flax, lady-in-the-green and sunflower. You can even sow sunflowers and Phacelia in early July.”
And not unimportant: “Also think about early flowering for next year by sowing biennials now, such as foxglove , damask flower, honesty and sweet william.”
Brenda: “To have flowering follow each other, it is useful to sow at intervals of 4 to 6 weeks. It is most useful to have one or more seed trays with plants on hand, so that you can plant them in places that become available when early flowering plants have finished flowering. For example,delphiniums have finished flowering at the end of June or the beginning of July. If you then have a tray with strawflowers on hand, for example, you can plant them in that place.”
A lush cut garden is a party for pollinators and… for you! With a good plan, you can put home-grown flowers on the table all year round. In this special edition, we give tips for the best varieties, and how to grow and care for them. This way, you can fill your arms with the most beautiful cut flowers every season!
- Growing and sowing tips for the most beautiful cut flowers
- Do's and don'ts from experienced growers
- With handy annual calendar
Near Ghent, Lies Couckuyt runs the nursery and picking garden Fleur-Couleur, with a lively webshop full of flower seeds . As a trained biologist with deep green fingers, she easily grows the most beautiful, poison-free flowers (on Instagram @lies_fleur.couleur ). These are her tips for extended summer flowering.
Did you know that... you can divide flowers into repeat bloomers, medium bloomers and mayflies?
Lies: “With continuous bloomers, you can cut off the faded flowers , which is called deadheading . Continuous bloomers are flowers that bloom for a very long time, provided you cut off the faded flowers. If you don't cut them off, the plant will set seed and will have done 'its job' for that year, namely producing offspring. As long as there are no seeds, it will continue to produce new flowers to achieve that goal. Continuous bloomers include zinnia , cosmos , statice ( Limonium ), dahlia , phlox, and paper button. You can also do this with medium bloomers, but after a while they will become exhausted and will no longer bloom. Think of branched sunflowers , tail statice or snapdragon.”
“You can still sow beautiful types of millet now. They can be used fresh in a bouquet, but you can also let them dry beautifully. If you leave them in the garden, their seeds will serve as food for the birds in the autumn. If you sow sunflowers and amaranths with them, you will soon have a beautiful buffet that garden birds will feast on. Millets, sunflowers and amaranths develop very quickly. If you sow them until mid-July, they will be beautiful at the end of September-October and with a bit of luck also in November.”
Lies' favorite types of millet:
“There are still quite a few perennials that flower late in the summer, such as the orchard ( Sedum ), Michaelmas daisy, and chrysanthemum. It is no longer possible to sow these. Well, you can sow them, but they will not flower this year. You could still look for these species in nurseries, and if they are already large in pots, then there is a chance that they will flower this year!”
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