There is a category of flowers in the flower gardening world that are powerhouses when it comes to enjoying flowers in the home and having a cutting garden.  They are descriptively categorized as Cut-and-Come-Again flowers. They are essential to your flower garden lineup for continuous blooms.  I’ve been growing cut flowers since 2007. If someone tries to tell you differently, let me be bold enough to say… they are dead wrong.

Understanding what a cut-and-come-again flower is.

Cut-and-come-again flowers are cut flowers that will keep producing blooms the more blooms you harvest from them. This means that when you cut a stem, the snipping of the stem will encourage the branching of the plant. It will grow multiple stems from the leaf nodes just below where you made the cut. This provides more new blooms in the days to come.

The annual flowers and plants that do this provide a longer harvest window. You’ll be picking on the same plant for several weeks. The plant will produce more cut flowers because you are cutting every blossom as it becomes ready. This is just what you want for the steady designing of floral arrangements.

Zinnias are a great cut-and-come-again flower.

Let’s take Zinnias, for example.  Zinnias are some of the most popular cut flowers. They blooms start from the mid summer season, and the bloom has the longest vase life. Another bonus is that zinnia seeds are readily available in spring. Once your zinnia seeds have grown and started blooming, and you pick that first bloom, more blooms will come.

Once zinnias are in full production, you can harvest them two or three times a week. Your zinnias will keep coming all summer, into late summer, and even into fall… until frost.  You get to “cut and then come again” and then “cut some more.”

That, my friend, is a cut-and-come-again flower. That’s what can make them more profitable than other flowers you might be growing in your cutting garden. Zinnias are rock stars in this department. Planting them will bring you tons of joy.

The Role Cut-and-Come-Again Flowers Play in a Cut Flower Garden and Business.

I would maximize the growing of these cut-and-come-again flowers as much as possible for several reasons.

1.  You don’t have to plant as many successions in a season because the plants will keep producing flowers week after week.

2.  You get more stems per square foot versus other types of cut flowers. For example, let’s compare the cut-and-come-again Zinnia to Bells of Ireland.  Bells of Ireland have several stems with a harvest window of 2-3 weeks. When that stem is harvested, it is gone. It would take way too long for this cut flower plant to regenerate new stems, and the second flush of flowers would likely not be a quality, cut flower.  You’re better off planning and planting successions of Bells of Ireland.

3.   Overall, cut and come again is less work for gardeners because you don’t have to seed, plant, weed, and care for three different crops to fill a harvest window of 3-4+ weeks to make up for the successions.  These plants are their own little succession crop.  They will eliminate the need for some of the succession plantings. Compare them to single-stemmed sunflowers.  Plant sunflowers regularly and successively because they are not cut and come again, and you need them week after week all summer long.

All this being said, cut-and-come-again flowers and plants of this kind for a cutting garden will, eventually, get tired, slow down, and be done. That is when your succession planting should be timed to come into full bloom next within your growing season, ready with a new flush of long stems and fresh blooms…. BUT NOT before you have visited that first planting for several weeks and exhausted all that it had to give.

What You Might be Doing Wrong if Your Cut and Come Again Flowers for a Cutting Garden aren’t working.

Earlier this year, I came across a post by a flower farmer who had been growing for three years. She was sharing her knowledge with others about how cut and come again flowers don’t always perform for everyone, and they didn’t for her. Her strategy and advice was to grow more succession crops. She discussed how her cut-and-come-again flowers do not perform well and that in her unique environment, they didn’t work. She made up for this by planting more succession crops.

This puzzled me.  Cut and come again flowers do what they are supposed to do.  Based on my experience and what I know to be true, they would only not perform and be unsellable if they got a blight or were overtaken by powdery mildew or some other disease or infestation, making them unusable and ugly. I thought about what might be happening here.

Reasons why you might be seeing “ugly flowers.”

Here are a couple of reasons why a new gardener or flower grower is seeing ugly, unusable flowers or not getting enough production.

• 1. Because you are just starting out, you may not have all your markets developed yet. YOu don’t have a place to sell all the flowers you have planted and are producing. You are likely not harvesting what you don’t need, so no new growth is happening on the plants in your garden. This new growth will produce better flowers for the weeks to come… you know, when you need them for that future bouquet that is going to get ordered.

• 2. You are using a “pull” system of harvesting and filling orders as they come in; You’re a gardener who only harvests what you need when you need it. This is fine for most vegetable growers and even some cut flowers, but not the annual cut-and-come-again flower plants.

Here’s the thing: These types of flowers have to be cut if you are using them to cut flowers. You may have to walk down the row cut and throw them on the ground. You have to get them cut so that more will come and your plant won’t shut down. 

Unraveling the secret of what makes cut-and-come-again flowers work.

The secret to these plants and blooms is simple: you must keep them picked. You have to cut everything that is ready to go when it’s ready to go so that the plant will keep producing beautiful, sellable stems with perfect, unmarked petals.

If you don’t cut the flowers regularly, they will get pollinated, and the plant will go into seed production (aka get ugly… and provide florist-grade cut flowers anymore). The plant itself will cease to be cut-and-come-again plants with that coveted long bloom time; it will stop pumping out stems.    

Unfortunately, (this is a good and bad thing), all of these attracts pollinators to their bloom. So, if you love the idea of pollinators and butterflies, leave a bloom here and there, and take the rest for designing into your clean vase water and styling in your home.

Dead-heading doesn’t work; you must take a regular long cut.

Don’t just dead-head the bloom (just clipping off the blossoms); that will ruin your future harvest, and they won’t have proper long stems.  Take your normal, deep cut, just like you were harvesting the flower for sale.  This keeps the plant producing beautiful flowers and pushes you to harvest and sell them.

Yikes, right? Why would you do this? …just cut and throw down the flowers! Because in 2 weeks or one week or whenever, you may have a wedding or order that needs that white zinnia, and if you don’t keep the crop going, it won’t be there for you to harvest and sell.

Use the abundance of your flower garden to grow demand for your flowers.

This will grow your market and demand for your flowers. People will take notice of you and get used to your abundance; you will stand out among the competition. Once you have your markets developed, you will be grateful for these graceful and abundant beauties.

The remedy to your cut-and-come-again flower abundance.

When you work cut-and-come-again annual flowers into your flower garden, I highly suggest having a farm stand or farmer’s market (pop-up) to get those blooms sold so that you don’t have to waste them.

My farmstand is my favorite place to sell these low-maintenance, popular flowers as a single-species bouquet (straight bunches). They are extremely easy to design and my favorite way to style flowers in the home. I’m pretty sure your local florist would buy them, too. Because these types of flowers don’t ship well, they are in high demand.

What annual cut flowers are easiest to grow for simple, elegant floral arrangements?

Below is a list of the best and easiest annual flowers to grow from seed. They want to be planted in full sun, and the seeds are cheap and can likely be found at the grocery store, Walmart, or garden center.

These proven winners will bloom and supply flowers from mid-July, summer (mid-summer roughly), early fall, and up to your last frost (frost will kill them all).

Pro Tip: Look for the taller varieties when shopping these annuals!!

Calendula (Yellow to Orange flowers)

Cerinthe (More of a foliage)

Cosmos

Dahlias (perfect for fall)

Nicotiana

Helichrysum (Strawflower)

Limonium (Statice)

Marigolds (deer resistant)

Pansy

Phlox drummondii (Annual)

Rudbeckia and other varieties (perennials but is First Year Flowering; seed in early spring)

Scabiosa

Sweet peas

Sweet William (First year Flowering)

Sunflowers (Choose branching varieties)

Zinnias (all zinnia elegans cut work well)

Snapdragons

Salvia farinacea Blue Bedder

It’s a myth that these plants don’t produce abundantly for you in your growing season.

The beauty of these plants is that you don’t have to do as many succession plantings, saving you money and time. You are actually wasting space and effort to believe something else. Maximizing your production of what you have and increasing your profitability with the #of stems per square foot you produce is the smart way to grow your garden and floral business.

May your gardens flourish, your bouquets enchant, and your passion for these remarkable annuals and plants abundantly and continuously grow. Happy flower gardening!

Checkout my simple seeding process: https://beehavenfarm.com/growing-cut-flowers/our-seeding-process/