Best for Cut Flowers?

[jal_ut]

What would you say are the best annuals for cut flowers?

[rainbowgardener]

You've mentioned bachelor buttons a couple times lately, James. Those are good cut flowers. Also sunflowers, which come in a huge variety of sizes, shapes/textures (double, fluffy etc), and colors these days. Tall marigolds, sweet pea (fragrant), annual salvias (the perennial culinary salvia/sage also has beautiful flowers if you let it flower, that bees love), cleome, and I love the cheerful perkiness of globe amaranth.

[lorax]

Queen Anne's Lace is another good one; so are Dahlias (especially the larger types).

Pretty much everything else I can think of are perennials or bulbs.

[rainbowgardener]

Queen Anne's lace and dahlias are also perennials or bulbs!

[lorax]

Hmm. I've always grown both from seeds (Dahlias are native here), and I didn't think about what they do in Northern climes. QAL only survives one season here, and then the summer sun kills it.

[cynthia_h]

Snapdragons? Gerbera daisies?

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

[superschwein22]

I love Snapdragons. I'm planting those this year, too. I heard they are relatively easy to grow, too.

[rainbowgardener]

Hmm. I've always grown both from seeds (Dahlias are native here), and I didn't think about what they do in Northern climes. QAL only survives one season here, and then the summer sun kills it.

That's very interesting. There are tons of things that are perennials where you are that we grow as annuals, starting over each year, because they are winter killed. It never occurred to me that it might work the other way around too.

Here QAL is perennial and dahlia is a tuber that is lifted in fall, stored, and replanted in spring. I don't grow them, but I believe they are somewhat short lived, like a few years.

[lorax]

Dahlias? Properly cared for here, they last about 10 years without dying, but in the North I always regarded them as an annual (probably because my cold storage was too cold for the tubers).

And yeah, I was about to say "but Gerberia is a perennial" and then I thought about where I live. Any of the group of flowers called African Daisies (Gerberia, Osteospermium, Arctotis, Dimorphotheca, Gazania) will be lovely cut flowers and annuals in the north, even though I regard them as perennials and noxious weeds.

Back on topic, Alstromeria are an annual in the north and a gorgeous cut flower wherever they grow.

[lily51]

All good ideas. I like to add everlasting annuals like statice and gomphrena. If you've never grown statice, the plant itself looks like a dandelion. But about mid- July thru fall they send up tall stems which are very sturdy. The color selection has grown from the purples and blues to rose, apricot, yellow, and pastels. Gomphrena makes a nice thick row and flowers on pinks, purples, rose, white, orange. Both types are easily preserved by air drying.

[rainbowgardener]

Yeah, the gomphrena globosa is the globe amaranth I mentioned ("cheerful perkiness"). It comes in seed packets of mixed colors--- the flowers are little round balls in shades of red, pink, purple, white, standing up on sturdy stems.

[lily51]

Thanks rainbow, no offense Guess I didn't read the very end of your post.. Sometimes when on my iPhone I get lazy and don't like to keep scrolling back and forth.

[Susan W]

Sunflowers! Are you growing for yourself or selling cut flowers at the market? I have noticed sunflowers are the hot item at the market. These aren't the super giant ones, but large, 5 -6" blooms.

[jal_ut]

Thanks for all the ideas. I was thinking of taking some to the market for a table decoration, and if someone wanted to buy them, that's great too.