Cut Flower Perennials - Spring Moving, Dividing & Taking Cuttings

Perennials are without a doubt one of the most valuable crops that I grow here on the farm. Newbie flower farmers are often advised to invest as early as possible into perennials because they take a little while to establish but once they have established they'll provide a reliable low maintenance crop for you year after year. In today's video I'm going to be taking some perennial cuttings, digging and dividing perennials, potting on perennials that I've sown from seed as well as planting some out in the field and checking on my overwintering dahlias that are out in the field. Join me to find out which perennials I'm going to be dealing with this spring. Pick up some useful tips and tricks along the way on how to care for your perennials. If you're not aware already, today is day 2 of my 7 daily vlogs where I'm going to be taking you through everything that I'm doing at the moment to prepare for the 2025 season ahead. I'm going to be doing everything from seed sowing, dealing with perennials, planting out, sowing cover crops and I'm going to be leaving my 7th episode open ended. So if you want me to cover a specific topic then let me know in the comments and I will shape my 7th episode around what you want to hear from me. So let's get into it! Right now I am busy starting off my hardy annual seeds for the season ahead and these are very high maintenance in comparison to perennials. I've got to prepare the compost in the trays, I've got to sow the seeds, I've got to take care of them until they germinate and become small plants. Then I've got to pot them on, plant them out, harvest them and then at the end of the season I need to clear them all out again before I start the next round of seeds. And that is a lot of work to produce one season's worth of growth. However perennials are much more low maintenance than this. We just need to plant them out one time and take care of them a little bit and then year after year they will produce harvestable cut flower stems for us. We can even take cuttings and dig and divide them to create more free plants for us. Starting off here in the polytunnel where it's a little bit warmer than the freezing temperatures that it feels like it is outside, I'm going to be taking some delphinium cuttings from these delphiniums that I started from seed last year and they flowered very nicely for me in the polytunnel last year. So I actually took some seeds off of these last year and I sowed those and they have germinated so I've got those to plant as well but I also want to take some cuttings so that I can have even more of these lovely spike shaped flowers. And the cuttings that I'm going to take from these plants today will be direct clones of the mother plants. They are nice white, blue and pink and lilac colours. So what I'm going to do is take cuttings from any of these that have shoots that are long enough to take cuttings from. So any of these shoots that are about three inches long, I'm just going to go below the surface and take a cutting of one of these shoots. And then these can be potted up into a well draining growing medium and hopefully they will grow on and produce more plants for me. I've removed the leaves from the bottom halves of the cuttings and I'm potting them up into a mixture of homemade compost and vermiculite for added drainage. I'm then watering them in this shallow tray using a mixture of rainwater and some willow water that you'll have seen me make on a previous video. I'll link that down in the description so you can check it out. So that is the delphinium cuttings taken care of and as the plants grow I will probably take more cuttings as they produce stems that are long enough to take cuttings from. And now we're going to be moving on to some perennials that I started from seed last season that need potting on so that they can grow big enough to be planted out into the field. Do you remember in yesterday's video I was talking about soil aggregation and the sign of a healthy relationship between the soil microbes and the plant can be indicated by the amount of soil that is stuck to the roots which is known as aggregation and you can see it here in these perennial seedlings which I'm really happy about. Next I moved on to digging up some geums. This is geum maitai and when I moved fields from my old flower field to my new flower field I didn't get round to moving the geums so they spent all last year in my old flower field. So it's time now to dig these big old plants up and divide them and move them into my new perennial flower field. Lucky for me the plants dug up really easily. I'm dividing these plants by chopping them up with a spade. I could make really small plants out of these if I wanted to and I could make many many many of them but I've decided to cut them into decent sized chunks so that they have a better chance of flowering sooner. I dug holes for each of the new geum plants and I added a little bit of homemade compost into the bottom of the hole before covering them back over. I also added a little bit of compost on the surface but I will be putting a thicker layer of mulch on top to prevent weed seed germination. Right, that is most of my perennial jobs done for the day and before I end the video I really want to just have a look at the plastic dahlias that are sitting underneath this plastic sheeting here. I'm pretty nervous about doing this because it will tell me whether my overwintering experiment has worked or not. I'm not going to go through loads of the tubers just to have a look but I'm just going to have a look at one or two of them just to see whether they have survived the winter and haven't rotted away. If they have rotted away then I'll have lost a lot of money and I'll probably have left it too late to order some of the nice varieties that I like to grow here on the farm too. So fingers crossed that everything is ok and I'm going to go and have a look now. Well here's the first one I've dug up, this is Megan Dean and this is a healthy looking tuber which I'm very relieved about. It feels firm and it looks a good colour. The only thing that I'm a bit concerned about is there's quite a lot of slug eggs on it. I'm just looking to see whether there are any eyes, anything looking like it's starting to warm up and sprout because obviously at that point I'm going to have to take the sheets off and let them do their own thing. But I'm going to re-bury this and have another dig around the field and see how everything else is doing. Midway down I have another good looking tuber however it has been getting nibbled by something. I'm not sure what that is but I think it looks like a rodent problem. However another firm feeling tuber that is doing ok. So yeah, looking good. I'm just going to have another look at another one right at the bottom end of the field and then call it a day. But looking alright so far. So thanks so much for joining me on today's video. Just a reminder this is day two of seven daily vlogs. Tomorrow I will be planting out some hardy annuals into my other flower field. So join me tomorrow if you want to learn some tips and tricks on planting hardy annuals and how I am going about doing that. Don't forget that this seventh episode is going to be shaped by you so write me down in the comments what you would like to hear from me on the seventh episode and I will shape it based on the feedback that you guys provide. So don't forget to do that and don't forget to subscribe if you're not already. Thanks so much for watching guys and I'll see you tomorrow.