Come Again?

Once we get into the summer and fall seasons, many ( not all) of the flowers we grow are what are called "cut and come again". This means that you can cut a flower an it grows more.

This blessing of abundance has limits. From the plant's perspective, the purpose of a flower is to make seeds. Once that mission is successful, it will slow down or stop making flowers. If we want the plant to provide us with ongoing flowers through the season, we have to keep cutting-- or at least dead head-- that is, remove flower heads past their prime.

Take this calendula, for example. Calendula flowers are short-lived when the pollinators are active, and they produce seeds quickly. To keep an abundance of flowers, they need to be deadheaded frequently. Because of this, my main patches of calendula are along my walk to the greenhouse. In regular times, I walk to and from the greenhouse at least twice a day. This year, because of my hip replacement, I was weeks without being able to get there. I did have some help in deadheading, but they will get out in front of you very quickly. You can see the spent flowers and even some that have generated seeds in this patch.

Luckily, they are responsive to cutting back and deadheading and only take a week to 10 days to be covered in flowers again.

Other flowers, like some vegetables (cucumbers, anyone), throw an internal switch, and if they reach this seed-making stage, they are done for the season.

For flowers like bachelor's buttons, poppies, and snapdragons, you have to be diligent to prevent seeds, or else treat them as a one-crop flower. With snapdragons, I try very hard not to let them seed, because we want to get as many harvests as possible. Bachelor Buttons usually get trimmed back, but with the thought that after a round or two , or three, they will be done, pulled, and replaced with something else. This is why we planted a second succession of transplants last week. Because Poppies have such an interesting seed head, they are always a one-and-done, with the bonus of a seed head interest piece for the fall.

The calendulas? They got cut back HARD, but they will live to bloom again and again. And they are now back in my daily deadheading routine.

Deadheading and cutting blossoms for bonus bouquets between events is hours and hours of labor, but it is worth it to have quality flowers that will ultimately end up at the events. For now, we have a core team, but I can envision a future (perhaps next year ?) where we also have volunteer days where you can come and help with deadheading the flowers.