Unplanning My Growing

January 2025

The first weekend in January the field is looking very Narn

ia-like, outdoor jobs will be on hold for a while yet. Although all of this snow does bring an immediate maintenance task, wellies and waterproofs on and broom in hand I headed out into the snow.

The Soses and Spirea will cope under the weight of the snow but the vast expanse of plastic stretched over my polytunnels is more of a concern. The plastic is cold and brittle during winter and a few inches of snowfall weighs heavy. I choose to use a broom from the inside to knock the snow to slide down the side. If heavy snow is left for long periods it can twist the framework, split the plastic along gutters on double tunnels, and crack or break glass in greenhouses. I recommend you take action and then go home and sit with a hot drink planning what you are growing in 2025.

snow on poly tunnel roof, weight bearing down on the inside, knocking snow off from inside with a broom.

Looking Ahead

I always associate this time of year as my best moment to take stock of how the business and the field have been doing. If amendments need to be made then it's best I consider them now before I start planting up and repeating them this year. In the last couple of years, I have constantly been considering how I am growing the field and I’ve begun to realise just because its how everyone else does it, and how you thought it should be done sometimes it simply is not the right fit. As the business has evolved I have constantly been considering the future of growing flowers and if you have read my previous articles you will notice I’m not afraid to switch things up, sometimes quite dramatically! In the Autumn of 2023, I extended my shrub-planted area to 1/3rd of the field. I’ve now decided to turn over another third of the field to a pollen-rich throw and grow mix of flowers. This will be more for the benefit of bees and butterflies than necessarily for producing cut flowers.

My cut flower growing for the 2025 season will now focus on a much smaller area with the best soil conditions on the field, a 20x26mtr section. Unlike my last 8 years of growing flowers, this won’t be laid out in vast rows, as I move away from the need to focus on growing the quantity of stems I previously grew for wholesale. I hope this new planting style within the field will provide a more wholesome growing experience where everything intertwines together with winding paths through shrubs, perennials and annuals. Providing a space more relatable in scale to that of a home flower grower, which will enable us together to experience a season of starting from scratch on growing a plant-packed picking oasis.

There is no planting plan I am just going to free roll with the planting when I come to it. I don’t feel I particularly want to sit for hours with paper and pens planning the space before I plant if there is one thing I’ve learnt from working with plants and nature You can have the best plans in the world but nature will always throw you a curve ball. I am sure I will misjudge some things and some things will grow too well flooding pathways with flowers and some plants will have thier own ideas and refuse to grow in the way I have imagined, but thats all part of it. The only things I do want to achieve is interesting colour combinations and textural twists. I will rely on my artistic instincts and my planting knowledge and just see how it all turns out. Plants can always be moved around the following year if things don’t work, the joy of working with plants is they will evolve and change and so will this space.

Here is a little video it covers a very brief history of how I came to be standing on a field in North Yorkshire on a cold January Morning and hopefully explains where I am heading and how we are growing this season.

If you are spending January planning what you are growing in a new or existing cut flower patch this year, you will undoubtedly have all the seed catalogues spread over the kitchen table getting enthused by all the beautiful photos seducing you into buying more seeds than you have space for, it happens to us all!.. You may have realised I am not really into planning and rules but I do have a simple hack for you when it comes to planning what to sow and when.

Diary Hack for Flower Planning

I recommend getting a small diary or calendar (doesn’t need to be anything flashy) when you are scheduling your sowing you also schedule when you will be planting the seedings out and importantly when they will flower. You can use a little symbol or coloured stickers next to the plant name Eg green for sow, amber for plant out, and red for flowering.

1st note sowing date, then planting date, then estimated flowering date

The above photos show likely dates for sowing planting and flowering of a couple of Hardy annual varieties. I usually work on the assumption that annuals are ready to plant out around 6 weeks from sowing, although this can vary by variety and climate. The reason it is important to list likely flowering times working from sowing dates are so you can ensure you have enough of the mixed elements of Focal flowers, Spike flowers, Subsiduary flowers, Fillers and textual elements each few weeks within summer. It will fill your vases better and give you a varied pallet of flowers to arrange with than just a mass of cornflower in June, a lot of Lackspur in July and only Dahlias in August.

Hope that you are all snuggled up somewhere warm getting excited for the Season.

Thank you for subscribing, See you all soon for the first sowings of 2025.

Suzie