Spiked M Ranch

This year, we’re starting a new venture-cut flowers! When we were in the hospital after having Anne, we received a vase of fresh flowers as a congratulations. I’ve never really been into growing flowers, but seeing how much it brightened up the hospital room and later our house, I thought about how nice it would be to be able to bring that light and joy to others.

I’ve never been much into growing flowers–I’d much rather grow things we can eat–but I think it will grow on me. I’m going to share the process here, so you’ll get to see all the mistakes and triumphs along the way!

Ryan rototilled a new garden bed for me. He had to go over it twice before the dirt was loose enough to plant in. Weeds are going to be ridiculous this year, but I did the best I could getting the big clumps out. You can see them along the edges of the bed and the paths.

The garden is 9’x30′, and I broke that into three 30″ beds with two 18″ walkways in between them. I did some reading on how to do intensive planting (Floret Flowers is a great resource) and modified their bed size to fit what we do with our garden beds.

Spacing:

9×9 (left)                                                             12×12 (middle)                              18×18 (right)

Zinnia                                                                 Calendula                                       Sunflower

Snapdragons                                                     Amaranth

Ageratum                                                           Cosmos

Strawflower

Poppy

Dahlias

I don’t actually know what some of the flowers look like. Which is weird. I looked them up when I decided what to plant, but I can’t remember what everything was, and a lot I haven’t seen in real life. So this year is extra exciting because lots of these will be a surprise when they pop up!