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The Gardener's Workshop

Easy Cut-Flower Gardening from Seed

Lisa

Why plant flowers?

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Our 3-by-10 foot cutting garden seed collection split in half to frame the front of our sweet farm building.  How are you feeling looking at this photo? Warm and fuzzy? You can have it right outside your backdoor. 

“Why plant flowers?” is a question I hear often. Over the years I have built a long list of reasons for how gardens and yards benefit from having a little flower garden. In fact, I wrote a whole book about it: Vegetables Love Flowers. But today I’m sharing a different reason to grow flowers: it’s because they make us feel better.

Now more than ever, we need a tension release and a little extra relief in our days. I’m not normally an anxious person, but even I have developed a little knot in my gut about the pandemic. Beyond the concern for my family, it’s the ever changing circumstances and disruption to everyday life that contributes to the difficulty for me as a creature of habit. 

Our Flower Caddy full of freshly cut flowers from our garden.

Thankfully, I have a pastime that my psyche instantly responds to without me even thinking about it: messing around in my garden. Sometimes, I just do a little garden gazing and other times some weeding or cutting. You know how one thing leads to another, right? First, my mind responds and then my body follows suit. I just fall in you might say. The effect? It’s like that boulder of anxiousness I’ve been carrying on my shoulders begins to roll right down my arms and then, plunk, anxiety is gone.

There are countless scientific facts explaining why being in a garden triggers good things to happen in our minds and bodies.  I’m not going to attempt to explain those processes because it’s really the end result that I want us to think about: we simply feel better when we fuss over plants.

While I do grow a fairly sizable vegetable garden here and there are countless benefits from growing your own food—- it’s growing a little patch of flowers I want to focus on. 

I find that most folks have never experienced the joy of growing a little patch of cut flowers. The power that is packed into a handful of homegrown flowers for your table or to share with a friend is nothing short of extraordinary. The benefits go on for days as that little handful of beauties continue to remind of time in a garden.

The 3-by-10 foot cutting garden planted, mulched and netted and waiting for the flowers to start.

In addition to all the benefits of making you feel better, cut flowers are really easy to grow and maintain. From a 3-by-10 foot bed you will harvest a handful of beautiful fresh flowers each week.  Planting cut-flower variety seeds or transplants and following a few ground rules will have you reaping abundance all summer and fall. It is hard to understand the feeling and to believe the abundance until you’ve lived with a cutting garden…

Another bonus, a cutting garden results in less work than a veggie garden, especially when it comes to the end result.

Let me tell you a little story:

When I married Steve some 24 years ago, he was a serious vegetable gardener. Living on his grandparents homestead, he had fallen right into his grandpa’s tradition of growing corn, beans, tomatoes and other vegetables for his extended family and for gifting friends. I eagerly joined in when we married. 

We began to grow even more vegetables as I wanted to preserve the bounty like his mom and others were doing. The memories of being in our kitchen surrounded by a sea of 5 gallon buckets overflowing with tomatoes and corn waiting for me to process are still vivid. I loved doing it, but it was a lot of work! 

In the meantime I had added a short row of zinnias in the vegetable garden. My first cut flowers ever. One day while working on canning tomatoes I took notice of those beautiful zinnias sitting on the counter in a vase just looking good, I smiled. And then it dawned on me, homegrown cut flowers offered instant gratification. They didn’t need to be canned, frozen, shucked, or cooked. Just dropped in a vase and let the show begin. Really.

Funny enough it was in the following weeks that I stumbled onto the book that changed the course of my life, The Flower Farmer by my now good friend Lynn Byczynski. I knew I had found my dream career.

A cutting garden can be so beneficial for you, your family, and friends. If you have memories of a labor intensive vegetable garden, put those thoughts aside and give a cutting garden a chance. I promise it will make you feel better in the process.

I have several resources to help you get started:

  • Cut-Flower Seed Collection I’ve included my favorite cutting variety flowers for an abundant summer and fall harvest that includes the seeds, instructions, and diagram for a 3-by-10 foot cutting garden.
  • The Easy Cut-Flower Garden online course is a 80 minute video from getting started to making a simple bouquet.
  • Vegetables Love Flowers is my book that shares the benefits flowers have on a vegetable garden by growing a small cutting garden in the patch. Includes my organic gardening practices, features my top 20 cutting garden flowers, harvesting details, how to succession plant with seasonal diagrams, and more! Be sure to claim the free companion video Book Study here.
  • Seed Starting Made Easy online course is a 90 minute video that teaches how to be successful planting seeds outdoors in the garden and indoors using soil blocking.
  • My Field & Garden Blog of articles and videos on cut flower gardening.

Find the relief you need right outside your backdoor. I hope this helps you to find and embrace some joy.

Fondly,

Lisa Z

Lisa Mason Ziegler is a cut-flower farmer, author, online course producer, and nationally recognized speaker on organic cut-flower farming and gardening.

Founder of The Gardener’s Workshop and Flower Farming School Online . Award-winning Author of Vegetables Love Flowers & Cool Flowers. Connect with Lisa on Facebook  and Instagram.

 

 

 

 

Want to prevent weeds?

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March 22, 2020 E-Newsletter
I am having a bit of a hard time focusing on my work at hand. With so much swirling around on TV and devices, it’s hard. My goodness, it’s enough to make even the most optimistic person a sourpuss.

That is until I go out and sink my hands into the soil or start seeds or pet some transplants. It really is an amazing transformation.

So, today as soon as my indoor work is complete, I’m heading out to the garden. I’ll be finishing up my cool season veggie planting and doing some chores in my Cool Flowers garden that is ready to burst into bloom. Gardening to the rescue for real!

As I contemplated where to plant my beets and lettuce, I was reminded how important it is for me to plant to prevent weeds. You see,  I am a self-confessed poor weeder. Basically I ignore problem areas. I like to blame it on how busy I am but the truth is, I just push weeding down the chore list, and meantime the weeds grow out of control.

My weed preventing strategy:

  1. When I plant transplants in the garden, I plant into beds covered with the biodegradable film that suppresses weeds. It is easy to lay and poke holes in and you can top it with mulch if needed. Learn more and watch a video here. LOVE this stuff!
  2. When I plant seeds straight in the garden into bare soil beds, I leave about 8” between the planted rows so I can quickly and effortlessly run the stand upright garden hoe throughout the bed. I do this every 7-10 days which takes less than 15 minutes for a 80 foot bed with 3 rows. This practice prevents weeds! Watch the video of me doing it here and get your hoe!
  3. When I get down on the ground to weed, thin seedlings, and grade mulch or soil I use the handiest hand tool ever, our hand hoe. I use this hoe for so much that I would truly be lost without it. Because of this hoes design we offer it in right and left hand models. See the hand hoe in action here.

These steps are how I keep my garden beautiful. It’s not that I’m a slave to my garden weeding, I just do my best to prevent weeds from getting a foothold.You heard it here— preventing weeds is far more fun than pulling weeds!

Lisa Z

Lisa Mason Ziegler is a cut-flower farmer, author, online course producer, and nationally recognized speaker on organic cut-flower farming and gardening.

Founder of The Gardener’s Workshop and Flower Farming School Online . Award-winning Author of Vegetables Love Flowers & Cool Flowers. Connect with Lisa on Facebook  and Instagram.

How I Use a Silage Tarp

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When I started dabbling with using the silage tarp technique several years ago I didn’t understand how it could impact my gardening and farming future. It solves problems I’ve faced in the past and is an excellent alternative to tilling the soil—-especially if you don’t have a tiller or tractor.

I will admit I stumbled around for a bit at first, not sure how to get started or use a tarp, but now I am a huge fan. Gaining the knowledge and understanding of the tool have really helped me.


Here’s how I use:

  1. New Garden Space: To start a new garden space during the summer, I cover the area with the tarp. Leave in place for 6 weeks. All vegetation is killed by lack of moisture and light plus it gets really hot under there. Weed seeds on the soil surface will sprout and die also. After the 6 week period the area is ready for compost and planting.
  2. Ending Cover Crops: To end or extinguish a cover crop like buckwheat or clover, mow for the quickest results. Cover with the tarp and leave in place until all vegetation is digested. Length will vary with temperature and how much vegetation to breakdown. Once all is broken down it is ready for compost and planting.
  3. Keep an Area Weed Free: I use a tarp to cover the Cool Flowers beds and pathways I prepare in September for the very early spring plantings in February to March. This prevents the vigorous cool-season hardy annual WEEDS like chickweed from taking hold. Plus it heats the soil up. 
  4. Holding The Tarp Down: Don’t use rocks to hold the tarp in place! The steady light movement of the tarp under the rocks from wind can wear holes in the tarp. I keep the tarp in place with weight bags filled with garden soil, sand, or gravel.

My mistakes:

  • Tried using landscape cloth with no holes cut in it to cover a couple of beds thinking it would work. Total fail because water goes through and weeds grew quite well under and up through it to my dismay.
  • I bought poly at the local hardware store. It was not made for agricultural outdoor use and broke down way to quick and was a total mess. Not UV resistant nor heavy duty enough.
  • To my credit, I did understand that the poly needed to be black to block light and to create heat. I wanted to mention it here because I get lots of questions asking if using clear or white will work, the answer is no.

Our silage tarps are made from 6mil heavy duty poly that is black on both sides and is UV resistant. It is manufactured here in the USA. Water does not go through it. Store the tarp out of direct sunlight to increase longevity when not in use.


We offer two sizes:

24’ x 24’(limited supply)

20’ x 50’

Use with weighted Anchor Bags

Lisa Mason Ziegler is a cut-flower farmer, author, and nationally recognized speaker on organic cut-flower farming.

Founder of The Gardener’s Workshop and Flower Farming School Online . Award-winning Author of Vegetables Love Flowers & Cool Flowers. Connect with Lisa on Facebook  and Instagram.

How to Grow from Seed

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Celosia Sunday seeds just cracking. There is nothing else quite as satisfying as birthing baby plants.

Folks are often surprised to learn that when I started farming 22 years ago, I truly started out at ground zero in the gardening and farming knowledge department. My greatest struggle? Seed starting. I failed at it horribly, over and over.

After spending a couple of years of just being a seed starting disaster, I decided to figure it out or give up my dream of becoming a flower farmer. Well… you may have already figured out the ending to this story since I’m sharing my seed starting successes here!

What I learned about starting seeds is simple –it boils down to a few ground rules that you can apply to any seed you want to start. Once you know what a seed needs to sprout and you provide it, nature takes over.

Bells of Ireland seeds planted straight in the garden.  

Ground Rules to Know

  1. How does the seed prefer to be started? Indoors in a control environment, outdoors in the garden, or is it one of those seeds that will sprout either indoors or outdoors? If the seed packet doesn’t instruct you, enter the question into a search engine for an answer.

  2. When to start the seed? The easiest plants to start from seed are annuals. There are warm-season tender annuals (like tomatoes, basil, and zinnias) and cool-season hardy annuals (like lettuce, parsley, and snapdragons). Both plant groups live for about one year, but they have very different seed-starting and planting times. When starting indoors aim to have the transplant ready to go in the garden as its preferred season begins. When planting seeds outdoors in the garden you must wait until it’s preferred seasonal conditions are in full swing before planting the seeds in the garden.

  3. Cover the seed with soil or not? Seeds that require light to sprout should not be covered with soil. Seeds that require darkness to sprout should be covered with soil. If the seed packet doesn’t instruct you, enter the question into a search engine for the answer.

  4. What temperature does a seed need to sprout? As a general rule, most seeds prefer a consistent 70 to 85 degrees to sprout. Cool-season seeds on the lower end and warm-season at the higher end. For the highest rate of sprouting: indoor seed starting requires a seedling heat mat and planting seeds outdoors in the garden requires conditions conducive to the seeds need–i.e. warm-season seeds nighttime temperatures staying above 60 degrees and cool-season seeds nighttime temperatures below 60 degrees.

I’ll warn you, once you follow these rules to success, seed starting can be a bit addictive.

Each of these rules is crucial to successful and easy seed starting. Not following these ground rules is what generates most of the questions I receive about seed starting failures.

If you would like to learn more about how-to start seeds using our tabletop method of soil blocking and how-to plant seeds directly in the garden checkout my online course: Seed Starting Made Easy. The 90 minute online course is $19.95 and you have lifetime unlimited access. This means you can watch it as many times and as often as you’d like.

I hope my tips give you the courage to grow a garden from seed. There is nothing quite as satisfying as witnessing the birth of baby plants—-and you did it. Amazing.

View my online garden store stocked with my favorite seed starting equipment, seeds, and tools— the very same I use!

Lisa Mason Ziegler is a cut-flower farmer, author, and nationally recognized speaker on organic cut-flower farming.

Founder of The Gardener’s Workshop and Flower Farming School Online . Award-winning Author of Vegetables Love Flowers & Cool Flowers. Connect with Lisa on Facebook  and Instagram.

Beat the heat and get garden chores done.

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As commercial growers the work has to go on heat or not. So we have learned to get the job done without roasting.

We are off to a great season here. My flower and vegetable garden is really coming into its own and it looks like we will have a bumper fig harvest this year too. The zinnias and sunflowers are just so beautiful and so welcomed. One would think that after all these years of growing I won’t get so excited, but I do. And thankfully our customers feel the same way.

The heat of summer is exactly what jump starts warm-season annuals. In fact, it’s what they live for. The hot conditions make it tough on those tending the garden and even discourages us from getting the job done—but don’t fall into that hole! As a person that doesn’t particularly like to work in the heat, I have some tips that have helped me stay on top of garden tasks even in the heat of summer. The reality of summer is the garden will go hog wild if you let it go and then the job just gets bigger and harder and its getting hotter. This sadly is the end of the story for many wanna-be gardeners.

 

I have kept control of this garden, so far anyway. A weekly walk through pulling the few weeds that have popped up is a pleasure and quick.

Here are some of the ways I beat heat:

  1. It maybe too late for this one: don’t plant more than you can take care off.
  2. I prefer getting up and outdoors at 6 am and being done before the heat gets started. Have you ever sat on the back porch at 8 am sipping coffee feeling smug because you’ve already done the garden job for the day? It’s awesome.  
  3. I always eat the ugly frog first, the hardest and worst job is done first thing.
  4. Better for most of us to do two-to-three 60 minute chore times in the garden than one 4-hour grueling session. Short and sweet is the ticket and you get more done too.
  5. Don’t miss your date with garden maintenance. Plants grow (weeds and your plantings) much faster in summer. It doesn’t take but a couple of days to lose control and sadly most don’t ever regain it.
  6. If you must work at dusk– prepare for biting insects like mosquitoes. Wear appropriate clothing or spray yourself before hitting the garden. Nothing ends a job quicker or with more frustration then swatting pests.
  7. I head to the garden to harvest or to do chores, I never mix the two. Finish one before starting another.
  8. Wear a hat and drink more water than you think you need. I drink water before I get hot and tired– it really helps to prevent that feeling. Eating a snack with protein can give you what you need to finish the job.
  9. The easiest weeds to remove are “little ones” –gardening words to live by.
  10. If I am working with someone in the garden, I generally don’t chat– slows you down and wastes needed energy. I chat in the shade once the job is done.
I am always looking at ways to make caring for our gardens easier. Mowing pathways is a good alternative, however it must be done weekly or we lose control.

Something else that summer starts to reveal about now; just how well the garden is setup for the lowest amount of care. Every year I have at least one major fail on my farm. Each day as I walk past it, I think to myself, “if I would have done fill in the blank, I wouldn’t have that problem now.” Did you have a fail? I love hearing how others miss the boat too! 

If you’d like to learn more about lower garden maintenance, checkout my book, Vegetables Love Flowers. The book is a big snapshot of how I maintain and prevent problems in my gardens as well as growing cut flowers to benefit the veggie patch! As always my signed books ship for free!

Summer is here—keep it cool!

Lisa

Lisa Mason Ziegler. Founder of The Gardener’s Workshop and Flower Farming School Online . Author of Vegetables Love Flowers, Cool Flowers, and The Easy Cut-Flower Garden  . Connect with Lisa on Facebook  and Instagram !

Grandma’s Garden: Beans and Squash All Season

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The cool-season veggie patch harvest keeps me busy until it’s time to plant the warm-season beans and squash.

Somehow each year, the official first warm-season planting season takes me by surprise. I attribute this to my totally involvement with growing cool-season plants. This cool-season group keeps me busy from late winter to spring and then BOOM– it’s time to plant the warm-season plants.

The warm-season plants would include squash, beans, tomatoes, and others plus a boatload of flowers. Managing to harvest the cool-season bounty while planting warm season has always been a challenge. Until this year that is…

The first succession of warm-season vegetables and flowers are planted and on their way. Transplants were planted in the biodegradable film and flower support netting is installed.

If you caught my Lisa Live! broadcast “Confessions of a Flower Farmer” you know that because of my own operator error, I lost a good portion of my cool-season crops this spring. Kind of a brutal experience, but good things are coming from it. This blunder is allowing me to embrace the warm season in a way I haven’t for a couple of decades.

This season I’m bringing more vegetables back into the life of my farm. It’s actually where the Ziegler family homestead got its start and I’m heading back to our roots you might say. As my flower farming career grew the past 21 years years, frankly vegetables were squeezed down to a meager existence on this little urban farm.

I’ve found myself in this early May with our first succession planting of warm-season flowers and vegetable planted and  I’m moving on. What’s next? The second succession of warm-season plants, just one of several to come. Beyond all the flowers and tomatoes in those succession plantings, there’s two staple crops I include: beans and squash.

Bush Beans

Bush bean seeds have just broken through the soil surface.

I plant the seeds of bush beans directly in the garden. Beans really like it warm and we are heading into their preferred weather. I planted a couple of beds just before the rain a few days ago and will plant two more beds in the next couple of weeks.

The beans planted later in the season will be covered with a floating row cover. This will protect the growing plants from beetle damage. The later in the season the plants are maturing the more likely to be attacked by beetles. The earlier planting typically escape the pest so I don’t cover.

The last plantings of beans will happen in late summer for what we call fall beans–thought to be the tastiest. Again the planting bed is covered to prevent beetle attacks.

The floating row cover is removed as harvest begins for convenience. Beans are self-pollinators that do not require pollination.

Squash

A two week old squash seedling in a 2″ soil block ready to be planted in the garden.

Squash seeds can be easily started indoors and or planted outdoors in the garden. I begin the season by starting seeds indoors and then to switch to planting seeds outdoors in the garden once the summer heats up.

A couple of weeks before the last expected spring frost date, I start squash seeds indoors in the 2” soil block. This gives a nice transplant to plant outdoors that will speed up the first harvest date.  

I plant squash seeds directly into the garden once we are into the heat of summer. Seeds quickly sprout and grow in the garden especially when planted into the black biodegradable film.

Squash successions can be planted monthly up until about 60 days before the first fall frost depending on the days to harvest.

Like beans, I do not cover the first spring squash plantings with a floating row cover. But those later planting that mature while pests like the squash bug are more active, I cover the plantings immediately.

Squash requires pollination to produce. I remove the row cover once the plants begin blooming. If the squash bug attacks at this point, the plant is mature enough to bear fruit before succumbing to the pest.

The Insurance Policy:

A bed of squash transplants growing in the black biodegradable film.

One of the sweetest benefits of succession plantings beyond spreading out the work and harvest: if a crop is lost to a pest there is another planting coming along. Another benefit: all those plantings allow trying and enjoying the many different varieties of beans and squash– both have many to choose from!

If you want to learn more ways to prevent pests, how flowers help with pests,  and about successions plantings, read my book Vegetables Love Flowers.

Read more about what Grandma’s Garden vegetable project is all about and who’s helping with it here. 

Need help starting seeds? My online course teaches how to start seeds outdoors in the garden and indoors using soil blocking. Seed Starting Made Easy, 90 minute course, $19.95. (Remember: when you purchase my courses you have unlimited access.)

Enjoy the bounty!

Lisa Z

Lisa Mason Ziegler is the founder of The Gardener’s Workshop and Flower Farming School Online . Author of Vegetables Love Flowers, Cool Flowers, and The Easy Cut-Flower Garden  . Connect with Lisa on Facebook  and Instagram !