As Spring ramps up, we're working on extending the season

Keep on sowing
Don't tell anyone, but growing flowers is really pretty easy! Twenty years ago, I watched a now long-forgotten TV program called ' How to be a Gardener' presented by Alan Titchmarsh. It was a step-by-step guide through the very basics of gardening. When it came to plants, Alan started with hardy annual flower seeds, the gardening equivalent of how to boil an egg.
He made it look so easy, that I gave it a go. I scraped a few lines in a bare patch of soil, sprinkled on some seeds and gave them some water. To my genuine astonishment, a few short weeks later I gazed out of my window, not at a patch of mud but a swathe of beautiful flowers smothered in bees and butterflies. I was instantly hooked. Alan's sage advice from back then still rings in my ears whenever I'm sowing seeds; 'Seeds and plants want to grow and it’s up to us not to get in the way'.
The tricky bit for a flower farmer is timing seed sowing to ensure a steady supply of flowers throughout the season. Sow everything in March and you'll have an amazing display of flowers in June and nothing for the rest of the year. Instead, we sow little and often to ensure waves of flowers arrive one after the other. In theory, it's simple but can easily get forgotten when the flowers start to come and things get busy so I mark sowing dates in my diary and make sure I prioritise them.
Seasonal stars begin to arrive
The warm weather at the end of March really brought the flowers on and we're picking the first glorious spring flowers. We even managed to make our first little bouquet of the year which was a fantastic moment.
In the next few weeks, the Ranunculus and Iceland Poppies should be plentiful enough for us to start selling our first bunches. To minimise our environmental impact, we only use our own flowers and don't supplement any bought from wholesalers, whether UK-grown or otherwise. It means we require a bit of patience, but soon our Cornflowers, Nigella, Sweet Rocket and Ammi will join the party and allow us to begin offering mixed bouquets. Then the season will have begun in earnest!
Keep up with our flowery adventures on Instagram
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