Annuals or Perennials for the cutting patch?
Annuals or Perennials for the cut patch?

I regularly am asked which are better in the cut flower patch, perennials or annuals? A couple of years ago I would take said annuals, hands down…no competition. I believed this for the following reasons:

*Annuals are far more productive than perennials. They concentrate their free energy on flower product rather than root production. They need to 'get noticed' to become pollinated in order to be able to set seed earlier they wither and die.

*Annuals are often 'cut and come again'. Pregnant that if you cut them above a leaf node you will get more flowers shooting forth in a couple of weeks. You can go buckets and buckets of flowers from just a few square metres.

*Sowing annuals means y'all tin completely change the varieties y'all grow every year. Experiment…detect out what you like and what y'all don't.

*Seeds are scritch and super easy to grow.

annuals in the cutting garden
Annuals flouncing about...

Nevertheless… And so came the season of 2012…oh the horror! Showtime we had a drought, just subsequently we had sown our seeds and so came seemingly months of monsoon and tape low sunlight levels. Of a sudden my blind and lightheaded love for annuals was being dulled…I saw that other growers were fairing much better considering they had a good supply of the tougher, more weather resistant, perennials.

I lost LOTS of seedlings and many others flowered 'short' or indeed never made information technology to flower. But on the upside I learned loads. So from now on I shall grow a mixture of perennials and annuals…though annuals will even so have the panthera leo's share of the patch.

Some advantages of perennials:

*Equally I mentioned above…they are more weather condition resistant than annuals…tougher all circular actually.

*One time they are established they need little looking later on…year on twelvemonth.

*Although they are rarely 'cutting and come up once again' you often go a 2d flush from a first cutting. (More than on this in a hereafter post)

In 2013 I shall exist growing the following perennials in the Higgledy Garden…they all brand crawly cut flowers and take been chosen to compliment the existing range of annuals.

*Achillea 'Cherry-red Queen'

*Alchemilla Mollis 'Irish Silk'

*Astrantia 'Primadonna'

*Aquiegia 'Nora Barlow'

*Echinacea 'Primadonna' 'White' & 'Deep Rose Pinkish'

*Echinops 'Ritro'

*Gomphrena 'Strawberry Fields'

*Knautia 'Melton Pastels'

Earthwalker sunflowers
Earthwalker Sunflowers

You tin view these and all the annual seeds in the Higgledy Garden Shop and I also take 'How To Abound Guides'.

Kindest regards

Benjamin Higgeldy