January

January is a time for crop planning, ordering seeds and preparing the soil for the season ahead so I thought I'd talk you through what I do and the things I think about when gearing up for a new season.

Preparing soil

I normally try and get my beds ready in October/ November but we had the flu last year (in total the family was out for about 8 weeks) so it didn't get done.

I haven't touched the beds since Autumn so the plan going forward is to strim it all back (Dan will do this because I'm not physically able to strim). A layer of cardboard or newspaper will go down and then a really thick layer of straw.

Hopefully that will be rotted down enough to plant through in early April and suppress the weeds throughout the season.

Last year some straw seed did germinate but it was a cool grass that I was able to use in bouquets.

For nutrients I'm going to put down some chicken manure pellets and seaweed. In the past I've just used seaweed as mulch but it's very labour intensive to get enough to smother weeds, so I'm going to put a thin layer down under the straw.

I don't (and never have) used compost. It's too expensive and I don't have good enough road access to the field to get large quantities delivered. Seaweed was too labour intensive so by using straw I'm hoping it drastically cuts back labour time, stays pretty cheap and is still beneficial for the soil.

So to mulch about 1/4 of an acre it'll cost:

£4.50 per straw bale x 20 = £90

10kg of chicken manure= £12

Then the days labour it would be to strim the field, collect some seaweed and spread it out across the beds.

Crop planning

I missed the window to autumn sow so I might have flowers a few weeks later than I originally planned.

I did get some godetia, agrostemma, sweet William, honesty and sweet rocket in the ground but not loads of plants.

This year I'm building upon the what was successful last year and growing more of what was easy to grow. At the moment I'm only really thinking about hardy annuals. On my seed list is:

Cornflowers (mixed colours)

Scabious (white and bright pink)

Snow princess calendula (I didn't grow this last year and really missed it. I grew the peach one and hated it).

Ammi majus

Agrostemma (White, pink, purple)

Clary sage (mixed colours)

Feverfew

Godetia (memoria and the spikey one in whites and corals)

Snapdragons (Potomac lavender, white, mixed colours)

Specialist seeds I order from Chiltern seed and the mixed packets I get from....Lidl. They're 25p a packet and literally the same seed as the expensive seed from the speciality seed shops. Im trying to keep my seed bill as low as possible.

I've also planted a few thousand ranunculus, iris and alliums.

I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible this year. I'm mostly growing for gift bouquets and my own wedding orders with some larger plantings of certain crops to sell wholesale (I'll do a separate post on this at some point).

I'm moving plots in September so the large order of roses and perennials (hellebores, geums, astilbes and shrubs) is on hold and I'm focusing on growing almost entirely from seed for another season.

I hope that was vaguely useful if you're thinking of growing cut flowers this season and I'm always happy to answer any questions 💕💐