Becoming a Cut Flower Grower

Hello and welcome. It's Friday 25 July 2025. How is it Friday already?!? Today's episode is a little different: the first part is me talking frankly and honestly to you about the challenges of establishing a cut flower business with peri-menopause. It has not been easy! I discuss how my debilitating symptoms impacted on me at a time when I needed every bit of brain power to get going, an...

Hello and welcome. It's Tuesday 22 July 2025 and I've had to put a jumper on this evening for the first time in months.  So much to tell you about this evening: I've been batch cooking dinners, collecting lots of rainwater, staking dahlias (properly this time), removing dahlia leaves to discourage earwigs, and deadheading cornflowers like mad (again). I've also had to deal with...

Hello and welcome to warm evening on Friday 18 July 2025. Tonight I'm sharing all my news about cutting and selling my flowers: this week I've been cutting and conditioning for a Thursday morning collection to my wedding florist, as well as securing a (very) last-minute order for a client that I delivered to a marina this morning. I'll also be talking about preparing my availability...

Hello and welcome to a windy and cloudy Tuesday 15 July 2025. Today's episode includes a chat about the challenges of prepping for supplying the weddings that I have coming up and the problems I'm having with pricing: it's really hard. I'm not sure I'm getting it right yet, which bothers me. It's also challenging for me to ensure that all the cut flowers that I'm...

Hello and welcome! It's the evening of Friday 11 July 2025 and I'm recording from the plot so the audio quality is a little bit up and down. I hope it doesn't bother you too much. It's so much nicer talking amongst the flowers than at home.  Today's episode is a gentle evening walk-round of the plot and a chat about what's going on with everything I have, starting fro...

Hello and welcome to this episode. It's a hot Tuesday 8 July 2025.  I've been very busy on the field with dahlia staking (thanks to my birthday present of road pins), deadheading, staking and weeding. I really must sort the staking out earlier next year as it's a nightmare trying to do it when the plants are big and flowering. No dahlia flowers yet but any day now... I've also...

Hello and welcome! It's Friday 4 July 2025 and it's my birthday! And Happy American Independence Day if you're celebrating that today! I'm on a massive high after selling 100 stems of cut flowers to my lovely event florist, Jo, so I chat about this and how I managed to get everything delivered without breaking anything or spilling any water (a miracle). There's a photo on...

Hello. It's Tuesday 1 July 2025 and I'm sweltering, even at 8am. Lots to tell you: we made some new gates to enter the plot over the weekend so that I don't have to go into Roland's enclosure every time. It's an improvement but then I managed to step on a bit of metal and injured my foot. Highs and lows! The sweetpeas are incredible and smell so good: they are a real succe...

Hello. It's Friday 27 June 2025 and the mercury is rising once again. In this episode I talk about how the first six months of 2025 have been for me as a new cut flower grower and I hope you find it interesting. If you've been listening from the start then you'll recognise some of the issues raised, like the time I left a tap running and emptied out my own water storage tanks overni...

Hello and welcome to the latest episode: it's Tuesday 24 June 2025. The heatwave is over (thankfully) and now it's just annoyingly windy. First off, a clarification of my position on cut flower farm tours that give you lunch.  I'm not knocking them - they're brilliant. I talk about the farm tour that I went on before I started growing and it was so inspiring. Here's the de...

Heatwave! Good evening, it's Friday 20 June 2025 and it's very hot!  Good news: I've just sold my first stems! I was beginning to wonder if this would ever happen and now it has. All the news about this including how I priced it and the stresses of physically delivering them (it's harder than it looks).  It's a long episode because I have so much to tell you including usef...

I'm back from my break and delighted to welcome you to the latest episode. It's Tuesday 17 June 2025 and it's been a super hot day. I was in Cornwall last week but I still have so much to share with you today including why it's not a good idea to take a break during the flowering season, what happened in my absence and what's happening now that I'm back.  I talk about...

Hello and a very warm welcome to this episode. It's Friday 6 June 2025 and I'm talking to you from the plot.  I don't know where this week has gone: it's been busy. We had a whole day of rain which has been an enormous help for the plants. This happened after I manually topped up the IBCs with water from home, which was a whole big drama.  Everything on the plot is doing fine a...

Good evening. It's Tuesday 3 June 2025 and I'm talking to you from the plot.  We've had rain! Not enough by far but it's very welcome and the seedlings have really enjoyed it. The water levels in the IBCs are critically low but I'm hopeful that the rain still to come later this week will help.  Lots of updates from the plot: all of the dahlias are in and I've been mak...

Hi! It's Friday 30 May 2025: welcome to today's episode! It's the end of another busy week and (finally!) the end of May, which I'm quite pleased about. Roll on, June! News from the plot includes the hiccups getting the dahlias in the ground, a couple of zinnias damping off, cornflower staking experiments and another lack-of-water issue. I also managed to spill lots of Roundup...

Hello. It's Wednesday 28 May 2025 and I'm very happy to welcome you to this episode. There's so much to share with you today including an update on my dahlias, what happened to the cornflowers and the leucanthemum in the wind, and how I've been dealing with a blackfly invasion. I've also taken a headcount of the seedlings which still need to be planted out and it's qu...

Hello and welcome to this episode, recorded on Friday 23 May 2025.  It's been a really busy few days since my last episode: I've been planting out my dahlia tubers plus some seedlings, weeding around my perennials, and tidying up my living paths. Sometimes I'm in two minds about living paths: are they a good idea or not? They need maintaining, which takes time, but I do like them. I...

Hello. It's Tuesday 20 May 2025, it's 10pm and I'm recording this while boiling spaghetti and microwaving some bolognese sauce. Batch cooking (and reheating) is the only way I get to eat properly right now. I have lots to share with you as I've been really busy on the plot since the last episode. Seedlings have been going out, including zinnias, orlaya, nigella and snaps (plus...

Hello. It's Thursday 15 May 2025 and I'm talking to you from the plot.  Exciting news that the Digger Man, Nigel, came yesterday to lift the turf on my plot and it' amazing to have more growing space. Quite a lot more, in fact: an additional 171 square metres. He did an excellent job and was a very nice man.  I had an emergency with one of my chickens just before he arrived so this...

It's Tuesday 13 May 2025: welcome to today's episode.  Beautiful sunshine but still no rain. I'm running low on water so it's a bit of a tense time. Tonight I'm on the plot talking about how I'm managing my seedlings in the hot and dry conditions. Some plants are doing fine but I really wish I had more water right now. The digger man is booked for tomorrow and I'...

It's Friday 9 May 2025 and another gorgeous evening. I've recorded this episode at home tonight, out of the wind, so the audio quality is much better than the last episode (sorry about that one).  Executive decision: the dahlias are finally moving outside this weekend! They have had enough of being inside (and I want my living room back) so they're going out to be hardened off befor...

It's 8:30pm on Tuesday 6 May 2025 and a really beautiful evening. You join me for this episode on the plot as I'm planting out some of my hardy annual seedlings (calendula, orlaya and scabious). It's been a busy bank holiday weekend for me and I haven't had as much time on the plot as I would like so I'm up here this evening getting things done and sharing this with you. I...

It's 8:30am on Friday 2 May 2025 and it's another beautiful sunny day. What a busy week! I've been juggling a lot of things this week and it got me thinking about what I've learned about starting to grow cut flowers and what no-one tells you! So I have created quite a long list of things I'm learning the hard way and I'd like to share them with you.  From not having e...

The chickens are back on the podcast! It's Tuesday 29 April 2025 and it's very hot. Join me for this episode on a really beautiful spring day, which started off well then turned out to be a bit too busy and fraught for my liking. I am in charge of the diary so that's entirely my fault. While I'm letting the hens out this morning I talk about water (again), the planting out of m...

Great excitement: I've just been speaking to a landscaper about using a mini-digger to lift some turf for me to really expand my growing space. I can't wait! I recorded this episode on Thursday 24 April 2025 in the afternoon and it's cool and breezy today. I did a reconciliation of how many seedlings I have and it's ALOT! It made me realise that I need more growing space urgent...