This bouquet is all buggy (how to make a bouquet and centerpiece using imperfect flowers!)

Hey guys, it's Brie here at Blossom Inn Branch. And today I thought we'd do something a little different and we're going to go around the field and it's mid to late July. We are starting to get attacked by lots of different nibbling insects. So we're going to go around and we're going to pick some of the things that maybe don't necessarily look great, but we're still going to make a beautiful bouquet with them. So what I want to show you is that it's okay if your flowers don't look perfect, they can still look beautiful, especially when they're all together. So we're going to start here at our Echinacea. Now a lot of this Echinacea still looks fine, but there's a couple that are getting some spots on them and Echinacea is really unique because actually even if it's starting to get some spotting like this, even if we pull off the petals, we'll get a really neat, interesting architectural seed pod here. So let's go ahead and cut this one. So even though those puddles maybe didn't look so great and then I always strip my leaves out here in the field just so that they can break down and decompose right into the soil. I'm going to grab a couple of those. I'll grab these ones that are also looking a little worse for wear. Pull some of these off. This is some chamomile that has reseeded itself here into this spot where we actually didn't want it. So I'm going to go ahead and cut some of it because that way we'll keep it from reseeding. But chamomile, even when it's starting to be spent, makes this really interesting little cute yellow dancy shape, which I really like to have in a bouquet, especially sitting up high, it gives us some movement. And so I'm going to go ahead and cut these back. So even though this chamomile is really past and the white puddles are starting to droop, we're going to go ahead and use it. You could save these leaves that I'm stripping off. You can use chamomile leaves for teas if you wanted to. I have no plan for what this is going to look like. So we'll just have to find out together. But we do want to strip off as many of the leaves as we can on the lower part of the stem so that it doesn't make the water dirty. Let's move on. We'll go grab something else. Here you have some dahlias that are just getting close to bloom, but not quite there yet. The yarrow is actually looking pretty good. So I think I'll cut a little bit of yarrow. Yarrow is really impervious to pests. If you're looking for one, if you have a lot of pests that do damage in the garden, you might want to try some yarrow because it's really seems to hold up well to pests and nibbling of insects. And it attracts a lot of beneficials. Down here we have rudbeckia. This is another pollinator favorite. You can see how they're just swarming all over this. And rudbeckia is one that we like to wait until it's a little bit more mature to harvest. So there's a fine line between wanting it to be sturdy enough so that it passes what we call the wiggle test, that we can do this and it doesn't flop around. Look at this little guy. He is covered in pollen. So sometimes what happens is because we're waiting for it to get old enough to harvest and for it to hold in a vase, it gets a little bit too far. So that's happened here with some of these and then the leaves start to get nibbled on, but we're going to go ahead and pick some of them anyway. Really we're so obsessed with perfect looking produce and flowers, but really at the end of the day, they don't have to be perfect to be beautiful. And I'm taking off any side shoots that are a little more immature cause those will probably wilt. Let's go find some dahlias cause I know those have been getting nibbled. So down here are our dahlias. Now I've been out of town for a week. They've been blooming a little bit longer than I normally would like them to. But what we do is when we have a lot of pests like we do with the dahlias especially are very prone to things like grasshoppers and earwigs is we bag them. So we just use these organza bags over the top. So these ones, some of these are protected, but you can see that they are starting to Brown toward the back. And this just happens as the dahlias get a little bit older. I'm going to deadhead those, but I am going to cut some that aren't looking so hot that are maybe looking a little bit on the older side and some that have pest damage. Let's go down to the end and see how those ones are looking. For some reason that end of the field tends to get worse nibbling. We can see that this one, Oh, that's what they do. This one is starting to be nibbled here on the edges. So we have two choices with this dahlia. We could either deadhead this one and let these two buds bloom or we could pick this. I'm going to go ahead and deadhead this cause it's in the middle down here. You can see we have some earwigs nesting in here. They've been doing a little bit of nibbling on these leaves. It's okay. So I'm going to cut some. I'm telling you you're really not going to notice when we're done making the bouquet. I always cut my dahlias fairly long. So I like to cut them at least as long as my elbow to my fingertip, just because that helps keep them producing longer stems. And that's especially true of this variety, which is called one I Jill. It tends to get really tall. So we really cut them down nice and deep so that they don't get too lanky. So a little bit of nibbling, but still overall pretty. All right. And last but not least, we're going to head down to the roses. Roses are one of our biggest pest issues, especially this time of year, because usually what we have is a lot of Japanese beetles. This may be true for you too. So what we do is we just regularly deadhead them. So if we're starting to get a lot of Japanese beetles, I will just come in and deadhead them regularly so that we're not attracting more of them. But for now, let's look and see if we can find some. Yep. These ones have a little bit of damage, but it's not too bad. It's not so bad that it would keep me from using the rose. You can see there's some pieces taken out of the pedals. This actually might be from leaf cutter bees. The other thing you can do if you are getting a lot of past damage on your roses and you want to harvest them is cut them early. So you can see this one I'm cutting when it's still quite tight before it has started to open. That way we're kind of just getting to it before the bugs do, which is another way to kind of ward off damage. And I just nip off all these thorns with my clippers. Surprised actually how few Japanese beetles we have this year. Usually we have a lot. They don't seem to be that many this year. So you can see if you let the roses go, they really get quite, quite eaten. So cutting them sooner than later will help with that. Maybe let's just grab some snap dragons. Now we have some snap dragons that we let go a little bit longer than ideal for harvesting because this is a bouquet for me. I'm not so worried about it and they'll still have a good base life. They'll still last probably about six days to a week in a base, even if they're a little bit on the older side. Here are the snaps. We actually usually like to harvest them before they're fully open. So these ones have almost opened all the way up the stem. So we have them fully open up here at the top. So again, I would not harvest these to sell, but for myself, they're still absolutely fine and I do cut them pretty far down the stem as well so that we can get a rebloom hopefully and that rebloom won't be short. If we cut too high up on the stem, oftentimes the second flush of snap dragons can just be too short. This variety is Madam Butterfly. So you can see it has kind of these roughly layers of petals and this is Madam Butterfly Cherry Bronze, which some years looks more orange. Some years looks more pinky. I think it just depends. It comes down oftentimes to the temperatures that we're getting and you can see the variations in them kind of are almost a sunset color and it's getting hot. So we'll go make our bouquet. Let's head to the barn. So you can see, even though again, these flowers are not all at their peak, they're going to come together and still be beautiful. So I'm going to start by crisscrossing my stem. I always start my bouquets this way and that's especially true when I'm going to be putting them in a wide mouth vase like this one because I don't want them to be flopping out all over the place. So I will start here with my snaps and I'm going to go into an X shape this way. And now this is just kind of a take on a spiral bouquet. So there's another way of building bouquets in which you use a spiral technique. You insert a stem and then you rotate your hand. This is just a way that is a little bit more simple for people to understand. I have found as we've been teaching classes, I have just found that people connect to this X shape idea a little bit better. I have a nice loosely cupped hand. You can see how I'm holding these stems. I kind of am spreading out my fingers and I'm holding them in there. So I'm just going to continue adding all my stems and I'm just going to keep doing that same shape. And then I just kind of add in as I go. So I'm just continuing to add in. You can see I'm going at an angle with these stems this way, then that way, then this way, then this way. And as you build and you get more and more stems in here, it just gets a little bit denser. So you do have to be mindful that you're not ripping your hand, nice loosely cupped hand. And also this is where it can get difficult. If you have a lot of flowers as it can start to get difficult to hold. Dancy chamomiles there, some roses. Make sure I don't stab myself here. Sometimes you have to hold it out a little bit and see how things are looking. All right. So I'm building a 360 degree bouquet. So that means it looks good from the front and from the back because depending on where we're going to put this bouquet, if we put it, if we make it just one sided, it's going to be better for something like a hall table. If we build it all the way around, then we can put it in the middle of a dining table or on a kitchen table. If you have a hole in the bouquet, you can always thread something in through the top. So at this point, as I'm just adding things in on the sides, I'm going to have a little bit of a hole. So I'll take these flowers and I'm going to kind of pop them in here. And then as they come out the bottom, I just grab the stem and pull it in. And then that way, if I have a hole, I can fill it in without ruining the rest of the structure. So here we have our peachy bouquet. Now, at this point, I would be cutting down the stems. So I'm going to go ahead and grab my clippers and then I'm just going to use rubber bands. I use two rubber bands so that they don't break. Now, I have very simply wrapped my stems with a kraft paper wire. You could also do a ribbon if you choose to. I just like to use this kraft paper wire because it holds really well and it doesn't get water stained when it's in the vase. So now you could use this as a hand-tied bridal bouquet or you can put it into a vase. So you may need to cut it down just a little bit to fit into a vase, which is what I've actually already gone ahead and done. It's just trimmed these stems just a little bit more, and now it'll pop right into my vase. And because we've built it wide, like you mentioned at the beginning, so that X shape and it's going nice and kind of almost flat here at this level, it's going to sit and nest into this vase quite nicely. And now we have a centerpiece or a hand-tied bouquet. All right, guys, I hope you've enjoyed this little tutorial today, and I hope that you've maybe taken the lesson that the flowers don't have to look perfect. It is OK if they've had a little bit of pest damage, if they've been nibbled on a little bit, we can always tweak flowers. And the more we put together, the less your eye is drawn to the damage. You really can't see any on this bouquet at all. So I hope that you enjoyed this video and remember to like and subscribe. It really does help us out a lot here at the farm. Thanks, guys. We'll see you next time.