Continual Imagine Dragons

[Rafa Ostermann]

Duringthe brief floral extravaganza, I had quickly built up a nice little customer base. Fancy city ladies who joined my weekly bouquet subscription, grocery buyers who were thrilled to get organic blooms, and a few local wholesalers who seemed intrigued with my unusual heirloom offerings. It was pretty humiliating to have to go back to them and say my flower season was over so quickly.

Rather than sowing all of your seeds in one shot, you instead sow small batches, successively, every few weeks. This spreads out the flowering window and the workload, into much more manageable waves.

In late spring and early summer, cool weather lovers like Iceland Poppies, Sweet Peas, Larkspur, Bells of Ireland, and Honeywort steal the show. High summer brings heat lovers like Globe Amaranth, Zinnias, Celosia, Basil, Cosmos, and Chocolate Lace Flower. During the early fall months Amaranth, Grasses, Asters, Rudbeckia, and Sunflowers shine.

Because the days get shorter and colder as autumn approaches, plant growth will slow down as the season progresses. To account for this, count back an additional 2 to 3 weeks on the very last sowing to ensure the plants have enough time to ripen before frost arrives.

After a patch of flowers has bloomed and begins to fade, it is pulled out and the beds are replanted within a matter of days. Pictured above, an early summer wave of Campanula and Feverfew (in bloom from mid to late June) once done flowering is pulled out, the beds are prepped, and a quick Sunflower is put in by mid-July for a fall harvest.

My goal is to get two crops from each bed within a given year. While it is still a work in progress, this intensive approach allows us to produce a HUGE amount of volume out of a very limited space. Early bloomers like Sweet Peas and Iceland Poppies can be followed with a fast flowering variety such as Pro Cut Sunflowers or Cress.

Cockscomb: (Celosia): These fuzzy textural bloomers add interest and color to bouquets. The Pampas Plume mix flowers abundantly for many, many weeks. I aim for three plantings a season, every month until mid-summer.

Cosmos: Of all the annual plants you can grow in your cutting garden, few are more productive per square foot than cosmos. The more you cut, the more they bloom. These cheery blooms look great in bouquets. New plants are started every 3 to 4 weeks until mid-summer.

Dusty Miller: One of the most versatile things you can add to a cutting garden, this silvery accent cranks out buckets and buckets of foliage all summer. I plant one batch in the fall, into the hoop house for late spring picking and then a second patch outside in late spring.

Fiber Optic Grass: The first year I grew this gem, a 4 by 60-ft bed (with 9 by 9 in spacing) produced $1,950 in revenue in one short month-long harvest. While the initial customer obsession with it has faded, we still use a generous amount for bouquets and straight bunches all summer long. Each planting produces robustly for about 3 weeks and then peters out quite rapidly. I aim for five plantings, 3 weeks apart.

Foxglove: While this cottage garden favorite typically falls into the biennial category, modern breeding has blessed us with some very exciting annual flowering varieties. Both the Dalmatian and Camelot series flower the first year from seed. I sow the first batch of plants in the fall and tuck them into the hoop house for early flowers, followed by a late winter and mid-spring sowing. This approach provides an uninterrupted harvest of up to 4 months.

Iceland Poppies (Papaver nudicale): One of the most productive focal flowers we grow, Iceland Poppies have fast become a favorite around here. For extra early spring blooms, I start seed in the fall and transplant them to an unheated hoop house before cold weather really sets in. Plants overwinter and come into flower by mid-March. I do two more successive sowings, one in late winter that gets transplanted into a hoop in the spring and another a month later that gets planted directly into the field. This approach gives us an abundant crop for nearly 5 months.

Sweet Peas: Few plants rival the production of a healthy patch of sweet peas. In areas with cooler summers like the Pacific Northwest and the UK, sowing seeds from the three flowering groups (winter, spring, and summer) can increase the production window. In areas where spring is short, sow two batches of Spencer Sweet Peas (these are what we carry) 3 weeks apart.

Amaranthus: Most varieties are 80 to 100 days to bloom, so three to four plantings 2 to 3 weeks apart will provide a summer of cutting material. Our Chocolate/Cherry Mix includes Opopeo, a brilliant maroon variety with dark foliage that blooms in just 60 short days and can be planted every 2 weeks through mid-summer.

Chinese Forget-Me-Not (Cynogolssum amiable): This delicate blue treasure is a must-grow. Unlike regular Forget-Me-Nots that are a biennial, these darlings flower the first year from seed. I sow three batches, 3 weeks apart for a steady spring harvest.

Globe Amaranth (Gomphrena haggena): This summer darling is hard working in both the garden and in the vase. The more you cut, the more they bloom. Adorable button-like blooms resemble colored clover blossoms and look great in bouquets. They thrive in the heat and are good both fresh and dried. I plant three successions, 3 weeks apart.

Honeywort (Cerinthe major): This is one of my favorite early-season fillers. It is super easy to grow and each plant produces so many stems it can be a real struggle to keep it harvested. I opt for smaller plantings, more often to stagger the abundance. I aim for five sowings, beginning in late February, every 3 weeks.

Larkspur: A great colorful spiky bloom for late spring and early summer bouquets. Flowers come in a wide range of colors and are easy to grow and harvest. If sown two to three times in the fall/winter and again in early spring, up to four or five good crops can be had per season. Larkspur resents transplanting, so be sure to direct-seed it into the garden.

Cockscomb (Celosia): These fuzzy textural bloomers add interest and color to bouquets. The Bombay series comes in an incredible range of colors, producing just one bloom per plant. We aim for plantings every 7-10 days, through early summer.

Love in a Mist (Nigella hispanica): This simple little beauty is as wonderful in flower as it is in pod. I direct seed six plantings each season, starting with one in the fall and then every 2 to 3 weeks from mid-March on.

Sunflowers: One planting of single-stemmed sunflowers like those from the Procut or Sunrich series generally blooms for about 10 days to 2 weeks. For a nice steady harvest, I sow batches every 10 days beginning right after the last spring frost and continuing until mid-summer.

I realize that this is a ton of information, but my hope is that it can provide you with a framework to develop your own succession seeding plan that reflects your climate, your space (and time!), and your goals (be sure to read my post, Six Important Questions to Answer Before You Get Started Growing Flowers for more on that).

I also left wondering how to organize the plants in my very small garden (four 410 ft beds) for succession planting. Do I plant the font half and leave the back half bare for the next succession or alternate rows or work in a checkerboard pattern? And are the later successions still transplanted seedlings or are they sown directly into the ground because the weather has warmed up?

Preparing for my 2024 first garden ever and I keep coming back to you. Thank you for your indirect investment into me. The information has been so educational and encouraging. Looking forward to reporting on the results!

Hi! THANK YOU for all of your generous info! When you do succession planting, are you planting in the same two inch hole as the first plant? Might be a dumb question haha. Just trying to figure out how to maximize my space!

Just started planning my first beds with the intent to sell in the next 2 years this info has been invaluable and your first 2 books were so helpful. My gramma inspired my green thumb and watching her enjoy reading your first book has been a great bonding experience. Thank you for your passion!

Wow Erin this info is priceless . In our first year of farming we have just learned that we should have spread out the planting . Wish we had found you earlier ! Am now reading everything you have written , so so inspiring thank you . Onward and upwards .

Great information and so much of it! How wonderful of you to take the time to share this. I truly appreciate this and plan to use your article as a source, as I begin my business #floralsatthefarm this Spring. Thank you!

I have been gardening for food and personal fun while I raised my kids. Now it is time for me and my next step as a gardener. This is timely and extremely helpful advice. So thankful always for gardeners willing to share their failures and successes to help others!

Thank you so much for putting the time and effort into this. Succession planting was something I was absolutely dreading having to figure out! Now maybe I can dredge up the courage to build a little flower stand to put by the road, and book a stall at our farmers market for the season.

Hi Erin. Thank you for all the great information you share on this site. I am going to try succession planting this spring/summer. I marked all my seed packets with succession planting dates. Your organizational techniques are having a positive influence on a rather haphazard gardener. ?

Thank you.

When you sow the seeds every couple of weeks do you start them in a greenhouse and transplant them or just put them right in the ground?

This is such incredible information. I am so grateful you shared it. I have been very confused about the process but the way you explained it makes it so much clearer. Thanks so much!

Thank you for this! I would love to see more info on this topic. Does the field stay fallow while waiting for the next succession to be planted? It would be nice to have succession info listed in the shop with each seed variety. Also, I wonder why you secession plant zinnias and cosmos? Mine bloomed straight through to the frost in October with a May 1st sowing (also in WA).

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