Wedding Flowers: Planning and Seeding

It's time to get into the really nitty gritty! I'm about to seriously brain dump on you, so please fasten your seat belt. 

The first step in planning your wedding flowers starts months before in advance. Most plants need to be started sometime before the last frost date if you want to get timely blooms. If you want them to flower before their normal time, you'll need a greenhouse or cold frame to start them, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. 

Let's backpedal to step 1:You need to choose what you want, how many you'll need, order seeds, and figure out exactly when you need to start seeds. 

This is a great project for those rainy winter months. You get to dream of the big day, the colors you want to work with, and just get everything planned out (because you're not going to have ANY time once things really get rolling - January is the time to do this). 

You will want to choose flowers that are specific to cut flowers. These tend to be taller, sturdier, and longer lasting than their garden counterparts. 

Some seed sources include, but are definitely not limited to:

Johnny's

Floret Farm

Territorial

Renee's

Botanical Interests 

*Note* Do not go to the nursery or the store and just buy whatever annuals they have in six-packs. These will not be satisfactory for arranging at all. 

When choosing what to grow make sure that you include the following:

- feature flowers (this would be your roses, peonies, dahlias, etc.)

- 2nd fiddle or background support (bachelor buttons, zinnias, calendula, carnations, cosmos)

- spires or spikes (lavender, stock, celosia, butterfly bush)  

- spillers (amaranth, dusty miller, etc.)

- fillers (baby's breath, corn cockle, saponaria, ammi majus)

- whispies (grasses and seed heads)

- greens (bupleurum, bells of ireland, basil, scented geranium, oregano, lemon balm, grape vines, you name it!)

Now, understand that these are generalizations. You most definitely can have something that usually plays a supporting role be the main feature of your arrangement if you want. Also keep in mind that some things can play multiple roles in your arrangement. It just depends on how you use it and what it looks like. 

It can be EXTREMELY tempting to buy ALL the seeds because this is a very exciting part of the process. Keep in mind, though, how much space you have. If you only have a small plot, maybe you only grow one kind of flower for your wedding. Because I live on 6 acres, I was able to go all out. Remember, the larger the scale, the more work you sign yourself up for. 

Knowing exactly how many you need is kind of a guessing game because you don't really know what will cooperate with you and what won't. My advice would be to grow more than you think you need. Just to give you an idea of how many flowers I used for 25 table centerpieces, 6 bridesmaid bouquets, 1 bridal bouquet, 9 boutonnieres, 4-6 arrangements for buffet and drink tables, and using flowers wherever else I felt like (this doesn't include what's still in the field):

- 4 buckets of 80-100 stems that I grew or cut from shrubs around the house

- 5 buckets of 80-100 stems from a local flower farm

- 2 buckets of daisies, lavender, and hydrangea from my grandma's garden

This gave me a lot of creative space and allowed me to use nice blooms without settling on sad-looking ones. 

Now we get to the brain-wracking part. Figuring out when to start seeding all this craziness. Look at the date you've selected (I'm going to use July 7 as an example since that is what I was working with). Make yourself an excel spreadsheet because things are going to get messy here and my excel skills are embarrassing, so please bear with me. Because I'm a plant nerd, I have scientific names in there as well. :P 

Disregard the sowing and germination columns (those are for my own personal curiosity); the important part here is the plant name, days to maturity, and when to plant. You need to know when you want the flowers, count back 1 week, then add on the days to maturity (DtM). The DtM lets you know approximately how long it takes for that particular plant to come into its own. To give yourself wiggle room, add the extra week. Because I have to have flowers on July 7, I planned on having blooms a week before, then started counting backwards to find when I needed to seed. The times that I have on here are the latest possible points that I would want to get those seeds going. Even with all this counting, weather is going to be a huge influence on the growth rate of your plants. My stock were ready 2 weeks before the wedding, but that was just in time for the bridal shower. The carnations were just in the early stages of bud break the day before the wedding, so we couldn't use any of them for their intended purpose. C'est la vie. It's how things go. That is exactly why I planted so many different kinds of flowers. 

Also, because the wedding was in early July, I had to start everything from seed in the greenhouse to make sure that things were blooming when I wanted to. You don't want to seed directly into the ground unless the soil temps are around 80 which doesn't happen until May-ish in the Willamette Valley. You get to have some wiggle room when you have access to a greenhouse. Granted, a greenhouse is not without its problems. I had to deal with extreme temperature swings that either roasted tender starts or brought on damping off, and we had fungus gnats that liked to raise their root chomping brood in the potting soil. 

So, I printed out my spreadsheets and whipped out the highlighter because I'm extremely visual. I color coded the different times that I needed to start things (red = February, orange = March, pink = April, etc) so that I could quickly glance and know what needed seeding and when. Filled up flats with potting soil, made labels, and started seeding. I just make tiny trenches with a stick and seed inside that line. Mist the potting media, protect with a plastic cover and some shade, and then wait. Note: some things germinate much faster than others. Be patient. 

Your seedlings have multiple stages; the ones we want to focus on are the first obvious to the naked eye: cotyledon and first true leaves. The cotyledons are the leaves that were developing inside the seed to be the food source until the plant gets enough energy to create the first true leaves. These basically look like tiny versions of the mature size. You want to prick out the seedlings at this stage; if they get bigger than that, the transplanting process will be too stressful on the plant. I simply use a chopstick to gently dig around the babies to get them loosened from their media, and then, using the chopstick, poke a hole in a filled 6-pack to gently put the baby root into.

And you just keep doing that until you've pricked out all the baby plants. This gives them room to grow and develop without stunting them, over crowding them, or making them compete for nutrients. Eventually, you look like you have an addiction.

As the plants grow, you need to check to make sure that they aren't getting root bound. This WILL stunt your plants and stress them causing them to be much shorter than desired. What you're looking for is how much root to potting soil there is, you don't want the segment to be solid roots, poor plant. Before letting them get to that stage, you need to up-pot them into 4" pots. Guess how I spent my afternoons and evenings in April. ;)

Give your babies a chance to acclimate to their roomier pots, and then start to transition them outside; this is called hardening off. You don't want to shock the babies with the harshness of the outdoors since they're used to the comfortable greenhouse space. Start them off in the shade, then I just leave them there until I put them in the ground. Not the most ideal, but they survive. 

Next up will be all about the flower field!

Until next time! 

SG