Maximize the harvest from your crop - our best tips

Growing flowers is one of the most rewarding things you can do. But it takes time and requires patience. Once you get into harvest time, you are therefore keen to really maximize your harvest so that you get a decent reward for all the work you have put in. In this article, we give our best tips on how to get the most out of your cut flower cultivation.

Tip 1: Pinch off over-blooming flowers. This is important if you want long flowering - if you let the flowers wither and dry out, they will start producing seeds, which takes energy from the plant, which will then produce fewer new flowers. Therefore, make it a habit to go out among your crops every day and pinch off the over-blooming ones.

Tip 2: Tie/support the flowers. When you plant flowers with different growth habits together, it is easy for everything to grow together and some varieties shade others. It is therefore important to keep a little order in the flower beds. Support flowers that grow on tall stems, tie up climbing flowers on sticks or plant towers, pinch off leaves from flowers that have a tendency to take over the flower bed and shade others. By creating a little better structure, you give all the flowers the opportunity to grow.

Tip 3: Clear out the slugs! What a fight I'm having against the killer slugs this summer - such marauders in the cut flower garden. New for this year is that I've created traps with beer and it's worked really well. I've cut off PET bottles that I've filled with beer and pressed down into the gardens. The slugs like the smell and are drawn there and drown in the beer. I've also thought about trying traps with flour, yeast, sugar and water - they seem to work well for many others. In addition to that, I go out every evening and snap all the slugs I see.

Tip 4: Fertilize weekly. Summer flowers are real nutrient guzzlers and need to be constantly fed to avoid losing growth vigor. Fertilizer water can be created in many different ways - by mixing manure with water and then diluting it so that it looks like weak tea. By buying liquid plant nutrients that you mix with water or making your own nettle or golden water. Fertilize in the evening - if you do it when the sun is shining, you risk burning the plant.

Tip 5: Harvest often . The great thing about summer flowers is that the more you pick, the more they bloom. I go out into the gardens every day and cut small and large bouquets to decorate the home. Luxury at the highest level