10+ Cut Flowers--No Seed Starting Required

So when you first start looking into possibly growing cut flowers, you quickly realize that there is a lot of seed starting. And if you're a new gardener, or maybe you've been gardening mostly vegetables for years and aren't used to a giant amount of seed starting, you are not willing to commit so much time and effort into seed starting. Well, the good news is there's actually quite a few cut flowers that don't require seed starting at all. If you're new to the channel, my name is Kristen. I'm with Shifting Roots, and I help new gardeners learn to grow vegetables and flowers with ease, especially if you are in a cold climate with a short growing season. You might have heard the term direct seed thrown around in gardening literature. And all this means is that you don't have to seed start. As soon as your last frost date is over, or in some cases, even earlier than your last frost date, you can put these seeds in the ground. And as long as you water them and care for them, you don't have to do anything else. So enough preamble, let's get started with the list. First up is sweet peas. Sweet peas can be started basically as soon as the soil can be worked. And they actually do better if they have some cold soil. Now, in most of the other flower farmers that I follow that are in warmer climates, it seems like sweet peas bloom a lot earlier. But I don't know, for me in my zone three climate, my sweet peas always seem to be blooming in August, and even well into September. So any of you who've grown sweet peas in zone three, you tell me in the comments, is this normal for you? Or am I doing something wrong? But sweet peas have such a heavenly scent. And if you can get them out early enough, they're so easy to grow. So definitely give them a try. Next is cosmos. Cosmos are one of those flowers where you could start seed start them or you can just direct sow them. Now I've got to say if you're going to direct sow cosmos, you probably want to stick with the Sonata variety. I have not had as much success with the more fancier varieties like, say, the double click. Those I think you should really start. But another cool thing about cosmos is you can actually grow them with winter sowing. So this just means that before it's time to plant, you can put them in a little milk jug and leave them there and basically do nothing except water them once the snow melts and you'll get really tough seedlings. You can find out more about the winter sowing process in this video, and I'll also link it in the description. Bachelor buttons are such a classic flower in the garden. And did you know they're even edible? So definitely plant these ones. They're also really easy to seed save. So if you plant them once, you probably won't have to plant them again as long as you let a few of your flowers go to seed. Next is calendula. Calendula is a fantastic flower to grow. It's great for beneficial insects. If you follow companion planting, lots of people say calendula is one of those companion plants. You can put it in tinctures or things for like bath products, stuff like that. And the best thing is, for me anyway, is that it just self seeds next year. So again, really easy to collect seeds from. Great for self seedings. You basically plant it once and it almost feels like a perennial. Zinnias are one of absolute favorites in the garden. You can definitely direct sow them. Although if you direct sow, they won't bloom until later in the season. And they're also not frost tolerant in the slightest. So they will be one of the first things to die. I personally prefer to start my zinnias at the two to four week point before my last frost, but you can direct seed them. And especially if you live somewhere warmer, I think you definitely should direct seed them. Bells of Ireland are a flower that definitely prefers to be direct seeded. However, for some of us in a cold growing season, sometimes we have to start our Bells of Ireland indoors, just because if you do direct seeded, it blooms so late. This is actually a really good candidate for winter sowing and Bells of Ireland would really like that cold stratification. And just the flower is so beautiful and unusual that I think the payoff with the extra effort or having to wait for a long time if you just straight up direct sowed it is totally worth it. Next is Queen Anne's Lace. Depending where you live, this might be a perennial. It can also go by the name Dara, something just slightly different but related. Just as a beautiful filler flower, you can get in the classic white, which is the Queen Anne's Lace or the Dara you can get in more of purples and chocolatey brown tones. So a wonderful addition to your direct sow garden. Amaranth is probably one of my favorites that you can direct sow. However, if you're in a spot where amaranth really loves your soil, it will self seed like crazy and you might start to hate amaranth. But until that happens to me, I love amaranth. And I think it's a great one, especially if you can save your own seeds, those seeds become very affordable, and they're very easy to direct sow. Forget me not, and a lot of flowers that sort of bloom a little bit earlier in the season that like the cold, you can also direct sow. In fact, I have a whole bunch of forget me nots already sown into my garden in the dead of winter, and I'm hoping that once the snow melts, it'll water the soil, get that process going, and I will have some lovely winter sown, direct sown forget me nots in my garden. Sunflowers are such a classic and they actually tend to do better if you direct sow them versus if you start them. However, where I live, I must have like some very active mice or something that thankfully they're not inside. But my sunflowers always seem to get eaten. So I will seed them out and later on the season, I'll find I have one sunflower that somehow they missed. So for me, I have to start all mine. But if you don't have that problem, I highly recommend it. Sunflowers also have a short date to maturity. So you can also start them and then do another succession in another two weeks and keep that going for a couple of successions. You can have sunflowers all summer long or as close as possible. Now, I know I said 10, but there's also a few extras I want to tell you about. So like baby's breath is a great one. Nigella. The thing I like about nigella is that it looks beautiful in the flower form and also dry as a pod. Larkspur can also be direct sown or it's another good candidate for winter sowing. Now, one thing that's absent from this list and that I really love in my cut flower garden is snapdragons. Unfortunately here, we just don't have a long enough season to direct sow them. But what you can do is go to your local garden center. And a lot of times you can find the rocket variety or the Madam Butterfly variety of snapdragons, and those are the cutting varieties. So it's a little more expensive because of course we're not direct sowing seeds, but you can still have some snapdragons, even if you're not willing to do a whole bunch of seeds starting this year. I also have a pre done for you plan that involves only direct sowing or things you could easily find at a gardening center. In my ebook, cut flowers made simple. So if you need a little bit of help taking the confusion out of cut flowers, you definitely want to check that out. I'll put a link in the description for you. So I hope that has been a helpful video and it'll inspire you to grow more flowers in your garden. If you like more easy, actionable gardening tips, especially for cold climates and short growing seasons, you can always check me out on Instagram and Facebook. I show up there every day with helpful tips and I'll see you in the next one. Bye-bye.