Brighten your winter days with cut flowers from your yard | Sally Scalera
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Winter is coming with the longest nights and coldest temperatures of the year. To lift your spirits, grow cut flowers in your yard to brighten your indoor spaces.
Yellow blooms are cheery because they are often associated with happiness, energy and sunlight, but I bet any colorful flowers you like will work.
Beautiful perennials to consider are blue salvia (Salvia farinacea) and Gerbera daisy (Gerbera jamesonii).
As an experiment, I cut two blue salvia flowers and one gerbera daisy. I put each flower in its own container of water with a little ginger ale mixed in. I cut the flowers in the afternoon (which isn’t ideal) and left them on the counter. I did many things wrong with my first test of cut flowers, but amazingly enough, the Gerbera daisy looked good for a week, and one blue salvia was attractive for 10 days.
Gerbera daisies may not flower through the winter but blue salvia flowers throughout the year.
Here are some other cut flowers that will grow through the winter:
Dianthus (Dianthus spp.) are beautiful and produce a lovely fragrance. In the Dianthus genus, there are annual and perennial species that go by the common names of Carnations, Sweet Williams and Pinks. The name Sweet Williams is derived from the French word that means “little eye” and they produce bicolor flowers on low-growing plants. The flowers come in bright colors, with many plants producing multi-colored blooms.
Pansies (Viola tricolor var. hortensis) come in a variety of colors that produce flowers ranging in size from small to large. The larger the flower, the more color to brighten your room and the flowers come in single or multiple colors.
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The following winter annuals will produce seeds that can be saved to germinate next year:
Snapdragons (Antirrhinum majus) are one of our colorful cool season annuals that you should be able to find in garden centers now. They come in a variety of colors, so they can add a lot of cheer to the landscape and indoors. Snapdragons come in either short or tall varieties. The tall-growing ones will provide the best cut flowers. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you couldn’t use the smaller ones too, especially since they may be easier to find in our local garden centers.
Stock (Matthiola incana) would be a great flower to grow outside and bring indoors as a cut flower if you enjoy fragrant flowers. I haven’t seen stock transplants in garden centers for years, so they may need to be started from seed. A search for heirloom stock seeds, that produce taller plants for cut flowers, will provide you with numerous color choices of Katz, Quartet and Iron Stock seeds.
Calendula (Calendula officinalis) also called pot marigold, produces colorful daisy-like blooms. The plants will produce single or double flowers, typically in shades of yellow or orange. We can only grow these annuals through the winter, and they are great to plant among your vegetable plants to attract pollinators, so you may want to grow a lot of them throughout your yard.
When gathering cut flowers, it is important to prepare and care for them properly, so they survive for as long as possible. Here are the basic steps to take to ensure success:
Before you go outside to collect the flowers, fill the vases or containers that you will be using with room-temperature water.
Gather your cut flowers in the early morning.
Before placing each flower in its container, cut the stem again at an angle so that it doesn’t rest flat on the bottom. This will allow for better uptake of the water.
Remove any leaves or other plant material so that only clean stems are placed in the water.
Add some soda to the water to supply the flowers with some sugar. If you are using clear containers, use a clear soda like ginger ale or Sprite.
Place your cut flowers in locations that are not in direct sunlight, drafts or near fruit. This includes ceiling fans, vents for heating or cooling and open windows. The cooler the temperatures, the longer the flowers will last. Locations near fruit aren’t good because they can give off ethylene gas, which will harm the flowers.
Here are pointers for maintaining cut flowers:
Re-trim the stems, at an angle, every few days.
Check the flowers daily for dead leaves or petals that may have fallen into the water and remove them as needed.
Change out the water every few days and do not forget to add some soda each time.
If the idea of growing a cut flower garden sounds good, many of them can be grown from seed, which is an economic way to increase the variety of flowers you grow. Choosing heirloom seeds will also allow you to produce your own seed for future use.
If growing flowers from seed isn't your idea of fun, no problem. Our garden centers are here to help you.
No matter how you want to obtain them, bringing cut flowers inside to enjoy during our short winter days is an easy way to lift your spirits.
Sally Scalera is an urban horticulture agent and master gardener coordinator for the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agriculture Sciences. Email her at sasc@ufl.edu.
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This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Colorful flowers to grow in your Brevard yard this winter
