With the end of a busy and flower-filled summer, comes the need for rest for my garden. Summer flowers extended through Halloween this year, but now the zinnias and sunflowers are gone and it's time for the cool flowers to shine! What are cool flowers you might ask? Up until a few years ago, I'd never heard of cool flowers. A cool flower is a flower that is planted in the fall (or very early spring), grows all winter long, and then flowers in the spring.
Because our spring is so short here in North Texas, spring flowers like Poppies, Ranunculus, Anemone, Snapdragons, Bells of Ireland etc. need the long months of winter to grow. If we were to plant them in the spring like our neighbors up North, they wouldn't have enough time to grow before the heat of summer would kill them. With careful timing, we can grow these beauties here in North Texas!
I start the majority of my flowers in my very fancy greenhouse (aka the window sill of my bathroom under lights). The benefit of starting plants inside is that I have more control over the growing factors and know how many plants germinated. This is especially important for me because I have such a small growing space and need every square inch to be productive. I have four (4ft x 12ft) raised beds or about 200 square feet of growing space, and I cram as much into them as possible! By starting seeds indoors and transplanting them out into my beds, I know how many plants I have growing.
While the heat of summer was in full blast, I started planting my spring flowers inside. I started Snapdragons, Poppies, Scabiosa, Ammi, and Foxglove indoors and transplanted them outside as soon as I pulled out my summer flowers at the end of October. The hardest thing about cool flowers is the long months of anticipation until they burst to life in March and April! While they may look delicate in the vase, cool flowers have to be tough to survive winter and our extreme fluctuations in temperature. All the waiting is worth it when I cut the first bouquet! Be sure to sign up for a Spring subscription so you get the very best of these beauties! 