How do you get premium fresh-cut flowers in your greenhouse? It starts with the right seeds, soil, and potting mix. Then it is all about proper watering, temperature control, light management, and fertilizer.
If you are thinking of growing fresh cut flowers for sale or personal enjoyment, here you will walk through everything that goes into successfully planting a cutting garden in your greenhouse.
Why Grow Fresh Cut Flowers in a Greenhouse
Growing fresh-cut flowers in a greenhouse is the perfect way to develop and maintain beautiful flowers year-round. It’s easy to make your flower arrangements when you have an unlimited supply of beautiful, freshly cut flowers.
You can also sell them at your local farmers’ market and make a killing or even create a floral arrangement business with your friends.
How to Grow Premium Fresh Cut Flowers in a Greenhouse
Select the Flower Plants Carefully
For cut flower markets, you can grow dozens of perennials professionally. You should consider the target market, customer needs, and sales potential for each possible crop/cultivar.
Production, harvesting, and handling ease are all critical considerations. Consider the crop’s disease and insect resistance, storage and vase life, and blossoming season as well.
Producing new products as well as existing favorites broadens the appeal of the market. Consider the crop’s production costs, particularly labor costs, and compare them to the flower’s market value and predicted revenue.
When Should You Water?
It’s crucial to understand when to water. The color of the soil solution as it dries out is a useful measure of when to water. The surface of vegetation growing soil changes to light brown to tan as it dries up, signaling that it’s time to irrigate.
Take some of the rooting media and press it in your hand as a test. If only a few drops or none of the water goes out, and the surface falls apart as you open your hand, it’s time to water it.
Please remember that the type of flower, time of day, period, and the weather all play essential roles in deciding when to water.
Controlling Pests
The same greenhouse conditions that encourage plant development also promote the rapid accumulation and spread of insects and illnesses. Damping-off, root rots, powdery mildew, and fungal leaf spots are all potential disease issues.
The easiest way to control these issues is to grow resistant cultivars and implement proper cultural techniques. Thrips, aphids, mites, and whiteflies are the most prevalent greenhouse insect pests.
During cut flower cultivation, other pests that you may come across are Caterpillars and Japanese beetles, whether under shelter or outdoors. Insect and disease control relies on prevention and careful monitoring.
Weather Conditions
It may become too hot for human comfort inside a greenhouse in the summer, but some flower species can withstand and even thrive in the heat. Ensure that the greenhouse has as much air as possible, such as by removing end walls, so that it cools down at night.
Also, pay close attention to the plants’ water requirements; they may demand more regular irrigation within the greenhouse than in the field.
Planting the types susceptible to foliar diseases is not a good idea because the reasonably still air inside the greenhouse could aggravate the situation. Zinnias, for example, are more vulnerable to issues indoors than they are outdoors.
Soil Analysis
Perform a PH and nutrient level test on the soil during fall or spring. Because nitrogen, potassium, magnesium, and calcium are very stable in soil, a fall test accurately shows their status for the following spring.
Apply limestone or rock phosphate in the fall if necessary, giving these elements time to prepare with the soil by spring. Because nitrogen levels fluctuate so much, it’s essential to test in the spring or shortly before a fertilizer application or sowing.
Take the soil from a 6-8 inches depth in around ten randomly selected areas in the cut flower field. Combine the ten subsamples into one sample before sending it to a lab.
Applying Fertilizer
A single application of fertilizer at planting might sometimes result in a substantial harvest of annual cuttings. Split nitrogen fertilizer applications, on the other hand, are more efficient in fields with considerable irrigation or rainfall or fields with sandy, well-drained soil.
The split application ensures a more continuous supply of nutrients than a single extensive treatment at planting. It gets closer to fulfilling the actual demands of annuals as they grow.
Harvesting
Harvest early in the morning or late in the evening. Remove any foliage from stems that will be submerged. Slant cuts prevent branches from sitting flat on the container’s bottom, absorbing more water.
Never place flowers on an unclean surface or the ground. Disinfect cutting instruments regularly, at least twice a day. Grade and group the flowers as soon as possible after harvest.
Bring the flowers into the shelter and place them in clean buckets with acidified warm water and a fungicide. Filling pots with flowers to the brim isn’t a good idea.
Post Harvest Care
Flowers are brought to a fantastic location after harvesting, where stalks can be recut and put in solutions based on the flowers’ unique needs. Flowers continue to sweat after harvest and wilt quickly.
When recut and put in a warm, rehydration mixture, most flowers will recover fully from withering. Before placing items in their treatment, they are recut by removing roughly an inch of the end of the stalks underwater.
This keeps air bubbles from forming in the water-conducting tissue. Air bubbles the absorption of solutions slowly.
Conclusion
All year long, you would have fresh cut flowers In the heart of a chilly, dismal winter, not forgetting a warm place to go to. Capacity to plant things you wouldn’t be able to grow otherwise (exotic flowers).
Since the greenhouse protects your flowers, you would have no more fights with squirrels or insects. Do more of what you enjoy for a more extended period. Improve the visual attractiveness of a landscape. You also get to enjoy wonderful floral scents straight from your flower cuts.
EyouAgro is a leading greenhouse climate screen manufacturer in China. We produce a black shade screen, aluminate shade cloth, and diffusion shade screen for your greenhouse. We have been in the market for more than 23 years, therefore, making our quality guaranteed.
Send us an inquiry today at info@eyouagro.com, so we can get started on this rewarding journey of flower protection!
