Mid-Summer Garden Tour: How’s it Going?!

I’m so excited to share a little update on how the cut flower garden is coming along! I was out of town this weekend and came home to find SO many more blooms since I left. Naturally, I threw together some bouquets to stare at! This was a surprise bouquet for Audrey!

I’ve spoken to several friends who are doing a cutting garden and are really enjoying it! Others ran into some difficulty (deer attack) and burn outs. These gardens can definitely be time consuming – particularly when there is no rainfall for 2 weeks and 90 degree temps – but it’s a hobby for me so it is worth the work.

How to Plan and Plant a Cutting Garden – PART I
How to Plan and Plant a Cutting Garden – PART II

Here’s an update on how things are going and some answers to questions I’ve received.

First off, look how everything has grown since mid-May planting…

Why do you have an empty plot?

In my perennial plot, the middle square is empty – this is because I want to put the right things in there for next year. I’ve been watching when things start popping up and thought it would be neat to have some spring flower for this area along with roses!

I had two roses fail last year and dug them out this spring so I’ve been dragging my feet. Would love to hear any perennial suggestions you have!

What do you do about deer and pests?

To be honest, deer have never come close to my cutting gardens. I knew deer do not “prefer” dahlia, zinnia, cosmo and snapdragon flowers – so honestly, it never crossed my mind. Deer do not like anything with strong scents or rough textures, so if I did notice some nibbles, I would probably step in and look to add some russian sage, lavender, salvia around the outside to protect any flowers that get affected.

Bug wise – I am definitely seeing some bug attacks on my plants.

Black Aphids: Super tiny insects that I found on the stem on a couple of my dahlias.. I ended up seeing that spraying a strong “jet” stream of water in the evening will dislodge the insects – so that worked for me

Japanese Beetles: These pests started emerging right after the long stretches of heat we’ve been having. I plan to throw up a beetle bag in the yard to draw them away from my flowers and might even spray each plant with a beetle spray my Mom recommended!

Slugs: I’ve seem many at home concoctions you can lay around the base of your plants to prevent from slug damage. You can tell you have slugs if there are big holes all over your plant’s foliage. They’ve only attacked my Holly Hock plant right at the base, but if I start seeing other things being attacked I will end up either spraying an insecticide or make the homemade concoctions!

What did you plant in the new bed?

Well, I planted an assortment of plants in the new garden bed – zinnias, cosmos, gladiolus, celosias, dahlias and asters. I think I planted several things late and I’m not sure what is going on with the things that are not sprouting – particularly the celosias, asters and some cosmos.

Definitely marking all this info down in my garden journal!

How frequently are you cutting your flowers

I feel like I will go out and deadhead every day. In terms of putting arrangements together I like to go outside and look every morning to see if something looks ready to be cut! Sometimes I will come up with a new arrangement – other times I will add the flower to an existing arrangement!

The point of the cutting garden is for the flowers to be cut, so it is good to keep cutting/pruning so they keep producing!