Growing Garden Pansies for the Garden and Cut Flowers

Welcome back to Crowley House Flower Farm and Nursery. Today we are going to be talking about the beautiful pansy, one of my all-time winter favorites. So I thought I would go through just a little bit about the things I love about them, how we use them on the farm, and just some of the fun little facts about them. But I think they are just so sweet, they're super easy to grow from seed, edible, and just a fun little color spot. One of the things on my list was to make a little arrangement for a friend and I thought I would use some pansies and show you how I use that in arrangements. But first let's head out to the greenhouse and check out the pansies we have So pansies are one of those easy things to grow from seed. The only thing you have to consider is that they actually like darkness to germinate, so they can be a little bit tricky. Also they like it to be a little bit cooler on the cooler side to germinate as well. Even like your garage or something like that, if you have a basement, something that is you know around 60 degrees or so that kind of stays steady, you can seed in these usually like about an eighth to a quarter of an inch under the soil. And then sometimes I'll just put like a dark something over the top of it for a couple of days until it germinates. And you just check it every single day. And they're super super easy and fun to grow. So you can grow some really great varieties. A lot of times we go to Johnny's Seed where they have several varieties that are really good for cut flower production. So the kind that you get in the stores for your containers and things like that generally will be a little bit shorter in stature when they're growing, a little more mounded, where some of these varieties that we got from Johnny's is going to grow taller so you can use them in your house for arrangements and things like that. The one thing that you do have to do if you're going to be using them for a cut variety, you want to come through and deadhead them and get them ready for them to kind of stretch and do their thing. And it just produces more blooms. We call them basically a cut and come again. And that is why they like to be cut over and over and over. So these blooms are edible as well as long as you're not using anything on them that is like a pesticide or anything like that. If you keep them, because I find in our area, they don't really have that many pests or have issues. Sometimes we'll have a little bit of aphid and then we also deal with powdery mildew when it starts getting a little bit warmer out because these are a cool loving flower. They're great for the winter time. They can tolerate a lot, a lot of temperatures down low and that kind of thing. So they're really fun to use, especially on your front porch or in a porch pot. I love just tucking them into a little vase and putting them next to the sink or in the bathroom or something like that. They're just so happy and cheery. I think they're probably one of the happiest flowers of winter and they do have a really long base life. So they're kind of fun to use. If you let the bloom kind of stay on there, you'll see little seed heads kind of start to form. I don't know if you can see that or not, but once that seed head forms fully, it will pop open and then seeds will scatter and then you'll get a ton of new little baby plants. So this is, I'm trying to see, yeah this one has a seed head on it for sure. So if you harvest this just right before it does that where it breaks and has all the little thousands of little seeds come out, you can actually collect them and grow your own from your own seed the next year. So, which is kind of cool. Pansies are one of those that we grow early in the season. So we'll start these in fall and then we'll harvest them in early spring, early winter. It's February now, so we'll be harvesting on those some now. I got some arrangements that I'm going to be putting together and so I'm going to use some of the longer cut variety ones for that. Other times we're starting them for the nursery that we have going and those will just be ready for people to take home and put in their garden or pot. If you're going to start some to place in your garden that will then just make this massive show, which is beautiful. The least expensive way to do that is to start them from seed and you can get some lovely varieties. Just search around. Johnny's has some great ones even though those are a lot of time spread for longer stem length and that kind of thing. They do look amazing in the garden. I've used them years and years and they just look fantastic. It's easy to get them going. Usually you want to do eight to ten weeks before your last frost date and seed them in, you know, darkness. You know, they need dark to germinate, a little bit cooler. So those are all things you need to know and then just be patient and then you're going to have some, it's actually really easy to start them. Saves you a lot of money as well. If you're going to use them for cut production then you can actually plant them into containers, bulb crates, things like that that you can move in and out of a tunnel and get a kind of a season extension, get them going a lot earlier. And then the other time we like to seed these up is generally in August and we do that for a fall production. So if you have a place that's a little bit cooler to get them started, sometimes we'll even use our cooler or something that is darker and out of the sun and not so hot and to get them going. They like it a little bit cold like I said. And then we'll have just a beautiful show and a lot of times the colors are more like the copper, the brass, the peach, things like that for the fall time. They're just fun to mix into containers. A few pests that like these beautiful edibles, including ourselves, are slugs and then also aphids. We tend to sometimes get aphids on them, not very often, but slugs generally in the spring and then when it starts raining in the fall we tend to have to put down some sort of sluggo or some sort of slug bait for them. But I just love how they look intertwined in the garden and they just are just a fun, fun, easy plant. Very inexpensive to grow. So I hope you try at least trying your hand at growing some and trying some in an arrangement. I think you will find that you will fall in love with these beautiful little gems of the garden and grow them from year to year. Buy seed or buy in a few color spots from your local hardware store or nursery. They are probably one of the least expensive, most rewarding, longest lasting flower you can grow in spring and late fall. All right, so I cut a few pansies. I'm going to grab just a few things that are blooming here in the greenhouse. We've got some beautiful anemones ranunculus, some paper whites, some butterfly ranunculus going. We'll see what else we can find just to kind of complement this in my little arrangement that I need to make. So I ended up finding a little bit of stock and some beautiful nasturtium that had kind of self-seeded from last year. Just tucked in at the end of the row in the greenhouse and just some beautiful things. So I'm excited to get back to the studio and get this put together. Just show you kind of how pansies can be used in an arrangement. So for my arrangement I ended up finding this little vessel here just from our stash. I love this one, but this is just a nice short vase. I'm going to use a little bit of chicken wire. I have got my clips and I have some just floral tape that we're going to use and then my bucket of beautiful blooms. All right, so I have my vase already. I decided to plop it up here for you guys so you can see a little bit better as I'm arranging. I have my bucket right next to me of flowers, but I thought you would just like a moment of winter gardening and with the pansy being the focal of this arrangement. I don't know, just a little moment playing with flowers and I'm so excited all of these came from our farm and just cut in my garden which is really really cool. Okay, so let's get to it. I got my nasturtium in. I love how viney it is actually. I'm gonna have to grow more of this year. I grew a ton of it last year and this is where it all self-seeded which is kind of fun. Now it's time to play with flowers. I'm gonna leave it very flower forward with just a little bit of this nasturtium. I think it's gonna look really really pretty all together. So I have just a little bit of this is just some paper whites left over from the holiday. Paper whites are in the narcissus family and so you have to they don't always play nicely with other flowers. This arrangement just needs to last for a couple days and so I'm not super worried about it but you can just cut them and then let them drain a little bit overnight just to kind of get some of that sap off. Okay, for now is the star of the show, the little pansies. We're gonna pop these around. I like to add them actually around the edges a little bit. You can see down here you can see the water and some of the chicken wire and so I'm gonna cover that up with the pansies. Now when you're using pansies for a cut you want to just be really careful about pulling off any of the extra bits. So there's a lot of leaves and foliage and then new starts of you know pansies that are coming on and so you're just kind of want to use some scissors to get in there or snips to get in there and just kind of clean that up. I like to leave a little bit of foliage down below so depending on your vase size it depends on how much foliage you need to take off. This is plenty for this little vase so I'm just gonna tuck this down low and it will be perfect. I love adding these in. I feel like it just makes things look just a little bit more classy. A lot of times you know you would see pansies used in a lot of the Dutch masters paintings and things like that which are really really really fun. I don't know I just love that look anyways. So again I'm just peeling these off carefully. I'm just gonna pull this one off here because that one you can see that the stem is very very fragile and so you just want to be a little bit careful but you can use it just like that and that gives you varied height and depth which is really kind of fun. But oh I just love this so so much you guys you have no idea. I have been just with everything going on on the farm and stuff you know there's just a level of stress that goes into running a farm and we're kind of entering that phase where we're slowing down just a little bit from winter planting and just getting caught up from vacation and valentine's day and things like that so I'm feeling like I'm able to just slow it down a little bit and do some things that I absolutely love to do which is one hanging out with you guys. So leave me a comment below let me know as well like if you love growing pansies and if you've ever used them in an arrangement like this. Also I don't know if your you know winter blues are setting in a little bit right now for sure um you know stress levels are pretty high I think in general I don't know maybe it's just me but I'm thinking so uh and then you know the anticipation of the garden season ahead like what you're gonna plant and sometimes I feel like I'm behind a little bit I don't know I'm trying not to get that way this year I'm trying just to enjoy the season and let it come as it will and you know it'll be fine it always is and that's the thing about gardening and even growing like on a bigger um production level like I do well that one didn't fare too well you could just use something like this you see the little bud right there that would probably open I'm gonna see I'm gonna do a little test plot and put that one right there and I just love how dainty that looks I'll give you a closer look but it's just you know little elements like this in a winter arrangement that make it look so so pretty. Okay I cannot believe all of these flowers came from my farm my little garden. Since the pansy is the star of the show I'm gonna find a little spot for it here I think it just needs to kind of tuck in on this side another little spot I think not crowding your flowers especially when you're using dainty things like pansies and sometimes I think in the spring you do get a lot of dainty flowers like right now we've got some snow drops blooming and things like that that are just really really pretty and fragile so just being a little more I don't know allowing for a little more airiness to the arrangement will allow each flower to kind of show really really nicely I'm pretty proud of this you guys not gonna lie it has been a while since I've designed so yeah I'm loving it okay I'm gonna give you another quick look at this beautiful arrangement and I do hope that you try your hand at growing some pansies in the garden and then bringing them inside I don't know it's super super fun and very easy thing to do well the other day I was lucky enough to be able to head out to one of my favorite nurseries Wavre which is just outside of Salem a little ways and I invited my sister Mary to come along for a pansy class which was really kind of fun these are like door hangers that you can plant pretty much anything they were just like a little plastic hanger and you could plant impatiens you could plant like pansies that we were doing you could do ground covers and things like that but um Diane the lovely owner of Wavre walked us through how to put together these cute little door hangers and um it was just a really really simple fun way to celebrate the pansy this time of year anyways I thought it just turned out so so cute the pansies we were using were just starts of pansies so they're going to fill out and start blooming very very soon but the variety that she offered all of us was called Frizzle Sizzle which is kind of like a pack variety so it's going to be very colorful I just think it's going to make a lovely addition to my pansy design that I did the porch pots and things like that this time of year so um yeah it was just super super fun and it was just fun to go and be with other gardeners and be in a space that was just full of color and life and you know they have like a little winter market and things like that which is just super fun so it was just fun to be out and about in a space that is just so so beautiful all right guys well thank you so much for watching this week's video a little chit chat all about pansies um let me know down in the comments if you like pansies as much as I do I think this time of year they're just so refreshing and the little jewel of the winter garden okay guys until next time much success in all you do and grow and we'll be seeing you shortly back here at Crowley House very very soon bye