Cutting Garden!

(rows 1,2, 4)

This is the first year I've had a cutting garden, and I'm loving it! All of my cutting flowers were started from seed. In our yard, we have Sensation Mix cosmos (pinks and white) in Aaron's garden. They are beautiful, and very prolific! Some of the stems are taller than I am! In our garden next door (more on that later), I have five five-foot rows of flowers. Front, to back, they are: two rows of zinnias (mixed colors), Torch Tithonia (aka Mexican sunflowers, orange), and Bright Lights Mixed cosmos (orange, yellow, white), and more Sensation Mix cosmos. The zinnias are gorgeous! I'll definitely do more of those in the future, and I'd love to try other varieties, especially some with larger flowers. The Mexican sunflowers are beautiful, but they definitely need more than one foot between rows. They stems are huge and heavy and they've started to lean on the zinnias. They're also much taller than the 3' the seed package indicated...more like 6'! The stems are soft and fuzzy, which was fun and unexpected. When cut, they like to droop, so they're not my favorite cutting flower, but they are pretty. Row 4 (Bright Lights cosmos) is doing so-so. That, too, could use more space. There's lots of foliage but not very many flowers. I like them but don't necessarily need to do them in the future. Finally, the Sensation Mix cosmos in this garden are pathetic and nothing like those in Aaron's garden. Although they're all from the same seed package, most of the seedlings were nibbled on mercilessly by assorted small animals this spring. I have a feeling that the calla lillies in DS's garden were a deterrent to the hungry pests (nothing planted near calla lillies was touched -- it was wonderful!), but there were none in the garden next door to protect these cosmos.

(Aaron's Sensation Mix cosmos)