Transitioning Your Cut Flower Garden from Summer to Fall
Autumn always has a funny way of sneaking up on me. It has this way of being at the height of summer, and then suddenly, we face shorter days. The sun has a different tone. The plants stop putting on lush green and turn a golden brown, yellow, or orange.
It’s time to face the music. Every year, I am asked, “What do I need to do to prepare my cut-flower garden for fall?”
Honestly, we have been so busy with the pumpkin patch the last few years that I can barely touch the cut flower garden in September and October.
Not so for this year…. I am sharing my list of tasks I plan on doing for September and October. Feel free to use it as inspiration and a tool to get your cut flower garden growing.
This list helps us end summer strong, move into fall, and prepare for an amazing spring of the lush-cut flowers we crave after a long winter.
September
September is an amazing month for the cut flower gardener. Everything is oversized, blooming, and alive! The weather starts to cool down, and the mornings and evenings are brisk. It’s one of my favorite times to be in the cut flower garden. It’s the high point of all the work we have been doing.
Keep Harvesting:
Annuals: Many of your cut flower varieties will bloom until your first frost. Adding grasses and seed pods from the fields around you adds a charming fall feel to your bouquets.
Zinnias, Snapdragons, Celosia, Dahlias, Cosmos, Gomphrena, Amaranth, Sunflowers, Grasses, and Seed Pods.
Perennials: Sedum, Japanese Anemone, Asters, and Mums. Bushes - you’d be surprised how many bushes in your landscape make excellent foliage for cut flower arrangements—Baptisia, ninebark, spirea…. especially as they change colors from green to orange.
Sowing Seeds, adding Fall Flowers/Hardy Annuals:
Plant hardy annual seeds in the ground. It sounds strange to plant seeds in the fall, but this group of cut flowers love the cool fall weather. They love to sit all winter and explode into bloom come spring.
These include Larkspur, Nigella, Feverfew, Orlaya, Bachelor Buttons, sweetwilliam, and Poppies. I direct sow these cut flowers at the beginning of September. I plant them fairly thick and thin them once spring comes. I keep them weeded all through the fall and again in early spring. You might surprise yourself and have a beautiful spring cut flower garden.
Dividing and Planting Perennials for the Fall:
Did you know that fall is a great time to plant perennials?
They love cooler weather and rain. Their root systems find their home in the ground and settle. Once spring comes, they are ready to go.
I am planting cut flower varieties such as peonies, foxglove, delphinium, yarrow, phlox, sedum, clematis, and whatever else I can handle. I will try to do this early in September to give them a chance to get settled.
October
By October, I’m tired, and my cut flower plants are tired. We are (gasp) slightly anticipating frost. But seriously, I should know better than that because October brings its hectic time and mud, cold, and wind. October is the month of preparation. So, while it’s busy and we are ready to hunker down and chill, October is the month that we plant for spring and wait for that glorious day to come.
Prepare Beds for Next Season:
Collect fallen leaves:
Do not mix whole leaves into your cut flower garden, okay? Pile them up and let them break down. If you put them in your cut flower garden, cover it with them—do not mix them in. When you plant your cut flower garden in the spring, push them off the bed and into your pathway.
Broken down and shredded leaves make an excellent mulch for soil and fall-planted cut flowers. But fall is the time to collect them.
Lay Compost:
Some people do this in the spring. I tend to do both. We have a big pile always brewing, but you can bring in some fresh compost and top your beds off with an inch or so. It makes a great weed suppresser, but I love how it keeps my soil soft, and the worms love it.
Clean out beds:
Remove stakes and netting from your old plants and pack up inside for winter.
It's time to start ripping out plants from your cut flower garden. Sometimes, I mow them over, weed-wack them down, or rip them out. (gasp) I have also left them up all winter, although that wasn’t that nice in the wet, cold spring. I don’t recommend that if you have clay soil like me.
Dig Trenches:
Fall and spring rain cause significant drainage issues in my cut flower garden. My soil is heavy, not light and sandy, so it will bog down with rain. I learned quickly to dig a few drainage ditches at the ends of my beds to help the water flow out of my garden. They seem to work fairly well for me.
Pot up Amaryllises for Holiday Blooms
If you dug up your amaryllis bulb in August—8 to 10 weeks ago—now is the time to pull it out of storage if you want it to bloom by the holidays. Pot it up, put it in a warm, sunny spot, and wait. There is so much excitement in one little bulb.
You can also succession-plant to prolong your bloom times. I’m starting now, and I’ll keep planting bulbs until December. Amaryllis fills my tables from December until March or April.
If you don’t have your own bulbs, I will have a great selection of fun bulbs in November.
Plant Spring Flowering Bulbs:
Tulips, daffodils, hyacinth, and allium.
This is my least favorite job of the fall, but also one of the most rewarding. I ordered my tulip bulbs in May and June and have been patiently waiting for these special bulbs to arrive. Following through with planting these takes some discipline, but I am always glad I did. October is the perfect month to plant these bulbs into your cut flower garden.
Planning Next Year’s Cut Flower Garden:
When I have a second, I start dreaming up next year’s cut flower garden. It’s a great time to order bare roots, like roses, for spring planting. I started making my list of seeds and cut flower plants I want for next year. I usually dream really, really big and pair it down as time goes on. I am always planning, but coming off the growing season is a good time because we can vividly remember the past season. I’m not delusional from winter yet.
To keep you from wanting to burn everything down - I encourage you to pick one or two items off this list and do them this fall. You will feel so much better come spring, cut flowers are so worth the extra effort.
I know the temptation is to walk away from the garden and not think about it again until spring, and you could do that. But it's better to be proactive. Spring will be easier, and you will be less frazzled. To help with your cut flower garden planning, I wrote a free ebook/guide.
Grab my free ebook/guide: