Becoming a Cut Flower Grower

Hello and welcome to Tuesday 21 October 2025.  Lots has happened and there is so much to tell you. I went to a fantastic peony sale held by a local cut flower grower on Saturday and picked up three new beautiful varieties which I'm excited about. I also finished prepping bed 4 and supervised the installation of a sink in Kylie's Room (aka the new studio/workshop), and cleaned out gutters...

Hello, it's Friday 17 October 2025. Welcome to today's episode! The hens are causing havoc in the flower area: I hope the vast amounts of poo they are depositing everywhere compensates for the destructive behaviour and that my echinacea recover from being trampled and used as a dust bathing area.  I've been shopping for woody shrubs this week and the main part of this episode is me...

Hello and welcome to Tuesday 14 October 2025. The temperature has noticeably dropped, especially at night. I haven't had a frost yet but it's definitely feeling autumnal. I've been messing around with the stems I have on the plot at the moment and trying out arrangements in a variety of vases and containers. It feels very indulgent to be able to do this because I didn't dare to...

Hello and welcome to Friday 10 October 2025.  Today's episode starts bright and early on the plot this morning as you're joining me letting the hens out and serving breakfasts. Great news - my poorly hen Mo has made an incredible recovery and has now rejoined the plot. In this episode I talk about my thoughts on confidence (or lack of) and how I really would benefit from having a life co...

Hello and welcome to Tuesday 7 October 2025.  Good news: my dog now has super sparkly white teeth and my very poorly hen, Mo, has made a miraculous recovery after surgery. What a relief. Lots of activity on the plot including spreading some of my black-gold compost onto the newly prepared beds (compost is one thing I am actually really good at making) and this homemade compost will really help imp...

Hello. It's a rainy and windy Friday 3 October 2025.  You're joining me from a car park outside my vet where I'm waiting for my dog's teeth to be cleaned and for my little hen, Mo, to have some surgery.  This week the podcast is celebrating 10k downloads which is amazing and very surprising. Thank you if you have contributed to this number - you're very welcome at every ep...

Hello. It's Tuesday 30 September 2025. Welcome to the episode! Lots of activity on the plot to share with you: weeding beds 3 & 4, adding bark to bed 1, more cutting back and weeding, and mulching some of the perennials. Many of the zinnias have been cleared away because they've gone really mouldy, even though some of the flowers are ok. With some invaluable help I've finally fi...

Hello and welcome to tonight's episode on Friday 26 September 2025.  It's spreadsheet time! I simply couldn't wait to do a reconciliation with all the data I've been collecting in 2025 so I've done an interim report this week and I'm excited to share my findings with you in this episode. I'm afraid I'm quite geeky so I took great pleasure in creating lots of...

Hello and welcome. It's Tuesday 23 September 2025.  Lots of news to share with you in this episode including my astrantia finally being ready, hub sales, connecting with a new florist, and making a website for the cut flowers. Also real progress is being made on the new beds on the plot, which is excellent. I've been adding lots of lovely chicken manure compost as a top dressing (I have...

Hello, it's Saturday 20 September 2025. Welcome to today's episode. In this first part of today's episode I'll fill you in on all the activity on the plot including rediscovering my cephalaria, harvesting seed, removing stakes and support string, planning new paths, and mapping out the new beds using my road pins. I chat about what's still flowering well and what's no...

Hello and welcome. It's Tuesday 16 September 2025. It's been a glorious autumn day today - just beautiful. This week I have been "testing" the local flower hub that I've joined. I say testing, because it turned out that it was actually live and I was actually selling to areal florists - scary stuff! The majority of this episode is me chatting about the testing process and...

Hello and welcome to Friday 12 September 2025. It's feeling quite autumnal tonight: the nights are drawing in quickly and there's a little bit of a chill to the air. My two wedding orders have gone out and I hope the brides enjoy seeing them. I managed to cut the flowers in the dry (one order by torchlight which is not ideal) but the foliage ended up getting cut in the rain, which was a...

Hello. It's Tuesday 9 September 2025. Well it's been a weekend of bad stuff: an attempted fraud on my bank card, a cancelled bank card, failed card payments which meant no phone contract renewal (which meant no working phone), together with hormone dramas, plus poorly chickens and sadly one of them, Florence, passed away unexpectedly yesterday. So it's been a lot.  I'm still bu...

Hello and welcome to Friday 5 September 2025. Where has the week gone?!? I have no idea. Time is just flying by. I've been busy on the plot deadheading, cutting things back and collecting seeds, in between the heavy rain showers. I can't wait to do a big tidy up and let the chickens enjoy rummaging around and fertilise the soil. I've had two new florists visit the plot and buy cut f...

Hello and welcome to the latest episode: it's Tuesday 2 September 2025. Lots to tell you in this episode and I've divided it into two parts with a tiny bit of music in between so please don't switch off when you hear the music and think the episode has ended! I've been cutting flower stems and foliage for two florist collections tomorrow. These are new florists for me so I&apos...

Hello and welcome! It's a wet Friday 29 August 2025. Good news: my electrics are fixed, yippee! We've had a lot of rain this week which has caused some issues on the plot by flattening things and adversely affecting the quality of some of my cut flower stems. I was up on the plot super early on Thursday to cut for the local Flower Festival in a nearby town. I attended the Festival tonigh...

Hello and welcome! It's a warm evening on Tuesday 26 August 2025. Tonight I share with you all the latest news from my plot and also talk through the seeds I've just received for 2026 including stunning Orlaya and some (hopefully) pastel Zinnias. Selling stems has restarted after a short break and it feels great, the batch cooking has restarted and there's an update on Dolores. We n...

Hello and welcome to today's episode: it's Saturday 23 August 2025 (not the 22nd like I say on the podcast). Join me on on the plot this morning as we let the chickens and ducks out together. It's been another busy week although somewhat quiet on the flower selling front. Still lots of watering to be done as we remain in drought conditions and lots of deadheading (although admittedl...

Hello and welcome to today's episode: it's Tuesday 19 August 2025. Lots of successes over the weekend: the fat hose worked brilliantly to transfer water from the back of the van to IBC1; the fence panels are up around the newly-cleared area and they're secure; there is now a skirt of chicken wire around the fence panels to keep unwanted creatures out; and the dahlias are looking inc...

Hello and welcome to tonight's episode on Friday 15 August 2025. Lots to tell you! No more navel gazing about how badly I feel I'm doing! This week I was sent a message by a very kind listener from the USA with a book recommendation: Flower Farming for Profit by Lennie Larkin. I ordered the book, it arrived today and it looks brilliant and just what I need. I then did some more research...

Hello and welcome. It's Tuesday 11 August 2025 and it's really hot (yet again). We're in the midst of heatwave no. 4 right now and so I've been busy watering and mulching with bark to keep the moisture locked into the soil and try to slow the weeds down. In many places on the plot I have the healthiest and best-looking nettles in the world right now.  I seriously considered qui...

Hello, it's Friday 8 August 2025. You're joining me for this episode on the plot: it's a truly beautiful evening and at one point a bat actually flies right over my head. This week has been good in terms of the cut flowers and my lovely event florist collected an order from me this morning. I have also got my car back from the mechanic and my cold has gone, so all round, it's a...

Hello and welcome to a warm and sunny Tuesday 5 August 2025. I'm back to cheerful business this week. However, apologies for my voice on this episode: I have got a cold at the moment.  I've topped up one of the IBCs with a new water pump, which has been great and saved a lot of effort with no spillage, although it took the same amount of time as doing it by hand. I've also been plan...

Hello and a warm welcome to Friday 1 August 2025. Bit of a meh week! After praying for rain for months, it massively disrupted all my plans yesterday so today was a bit of a rush to fit everything in - and then my car broke down! On a roundabout! Not good.  I've been feeling a bit flat this week because my marketing plan is clearly failing and I'm not connecting with enough florists so I...

Hello and welcome. It's Tuesday 29 July 2025 and I hope you had a good weekend. It's a warm and sunny evening tonight and I'm recording on the plot. I've been busy clearing thistles and watching fence posts being installed to support the fence panels that will be going up around the newly-cleared area. There's also been lots of cutting, weeding, deadheading and watering go...