Growing your own cut flowers is satisfying on so many levels. Blooms will be the freshest they can be, the distance they travel from plot to vase will be neglible and you can grow just the flowers you love. Don’t know where to start? Sow, Grow and Harvest by Chantal Remmert takes the mystery out of cut flower growing.
(Review copy given. No payment for the review.)
Chantal, who trained as a landscape architect, has been running a cut flower nursery in Germany since 2018. Sustainability underpins her work with environmentally friendly wrapping, reclaimed vases used for her arrangements and all plant material eventually heading for the compost. She is also the cofounder of the slow-flower movement.
Sow, Grow, and Harvest opens with an overview of things to consider, such as soil type, which tools will be needed and the all important weather. She admits to having several weather apps on her phone and decides on daily jobs according to the weather – planting in spring if it’s going to rain and harvesting everything before the first frost. Indeed, the likely dates of the first and last frosts are vital pieces of information.
From then on the book is divided into seasons and takes us through the year of a cut flower grower. Essential jobs are covered, and there’s a look at the flowers picked at that time of year with a more in depth profile of a few.
Each season also has a DIY project to try. These include making a scented arrangement, a dried flower wreath and a festive centrepiece, all made easier to follow thanks to the illustrative photos by Grit Hartung.
Some of the information isn’t new and a couple of suggestions are surprising. Few gardeners these days recommend rotovating soil as it is so damaging and I for one wouldn’t use garden soil in a compost mix for seed sowing as it’s full of weeds and, in my case, rocket seeds.
These quibbles aside, there is a lot of useful advice in the book, including the best time to cut zinnias and snapdragons to ensure the longest vase life, how making a false seed bed can help combat annual weeds, and recipes for fungicides and willow tea to encourage cuttings to strike.
With winter a great time for planning, this book would be a good place to start.
And as Chantal says: “It’s not just plants, but also hope, confidence and joy that grow while we cultivate flowers.”
Sow, Grow, and Harvest by Chantal Remmert is published by Schiffer Publishing with an RRP of £31.99. #Ad You can buy it here for £28.94. (If you buy via this link, I receive a small commission. The price you pay is not affected.) Alternatively, you may wish to buy from an independent bookseller here. All prices correct at time of publication of this post.
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