How To Get More Blooms from Your Cut Flowers
Though much of my gardening experience has been growing veggies, herbs and fruits, growing flowers that bring in pollinators has become another passion of mine! The best part is many of these flowers are also easy-to-grow cut flowers as well, meaning that not only do they bring in bees and butterflies to help with pollinating the entire garden, but they also produce gorgeous blooms that can easily be made into arrangements.
Many of these flowers are also cut-and-come-again, meaning that the more you cut, the more they will produce! Who doesn’t want to get the most out of their cut flowers in the garden every season, especially for annuals? To get the most out of these flowers, I also like to ensure that they are pinched (if needed) when they are started from seed!
What is pinching?
Pinching your flowers is essentially a method of pruning, where you remove the main portion of the flowers stem above two leaves. When you pinch a plant, this is going to force it to put energy into creating side shoots where more flowers can grow, and bloom from, which in the long run provides you with more blooms on one plant during the growing season.
How do you pinch a flower?
Pinching your flowers is actually very simple – the most important part is waiting until your plants are well enough established to be pinched. You can either do this by hand, with snips, a small pruner or even with scissors. A general rule to follow is once your flower is big enough, and has at least 4 sets of leaves, you will simply cut off the stem to just slightly above the third set of leaves. A few days later, you will start to notice stems forming near the remaining sets of leaves! That’s all there is to it.
What flowers can benefit from pinching?
There are various cut flowers that you can grow in your garden that will benefit from pinching, and in fact, should be pinched if you want to get the most blooms from them! Some of the most popular types of flowers that benefit from pinching are:
Dahlias
Sunflowers
Zinnias
Cosmos
Snapdragons
Sweet Peas
Strawflowers
Marigolds
There are many other varieties of flowers that also benefit from pinching that aren’t listed here, these are just some of the most popular flowers grown for cut bouquets. Additionally, depending on the type of flower you’re growing, there are some general heights that they should reach before pinching, so if you’re curious as to what height you should pinch your cut flowers, a quick online search would be beneficial.
What’s also great about all of these flowers is that the more you cut, the more flowers that they will produce in the garden! In addition to all of these, some spring season flowers that also benefit from being frequently cut are ranunculus and anemones.
Many of these flowers look gorgeous together and come in a wide variety of colours meaning that there is a palette for every gardener! It’s important when sourcing seeds that you are looking into reputable places that are non-GMO and have good farming practices as this will directly affect the quality of your flowers as they grow in your garden! What are your favourite cut flowers to grow? Let me know in the comments!
