#412: How To Stop Overplanting

How to Stop Overplanting Your Cut Flower Garden

It is easy to grow too many flowers. You start extra seeds in case germination is poor, worry that deer or other problems may take a few plants, and before long you have more seedlings than you have space, time, or need for.

Having backup plants is smart. Planting more flowers than you can realistically tend is different. Overplanting a cut flower garden can lead to more weeds, missed harvests, disrupted succession plans, tired plants, and a garden that feels more stressful than enjoyable.

In this episode, Lisa shares lessons from her own tendency to overplant and explains why growing fewer flowers — and caring for them well — can often give you a more productive, manageable, and enjoyable cutting garden.

In This Episode

Lisa shares:

• Why cut flower gardeners and flower farmers tend to overplant

• How to decide how large your cutting garden should actually be

• Why your garden's purpose should determine how much you grow

• How growing fewer plants can improve harvesting and garden maintenance

• Why overplanting can make weed control more difficult

• How extra seedlings can disrupt a succession planting plan

• Why backup seedlings do not all need to be planted

• How a manageable garden leaves more time to actually enjoy what you are growing

Why Is Overplanting a Cut Flower Garden a Problem?

Overplanting often starts with good intentions. Gardeners want insurance against poor germination, pests, weather, or crop failure. But planting every successful seedling can quickly create more garden than one person has time to maintain.

The problem often becomes obvious in July and August. Flowers need harvesting, weeds are growing, beds need watering, and the next succession needs to be planted. A garden that felt exciting in spring can suddenly feel like one enormous unfinished chore.

That is when gardening burnout can begin.

The goal is not to plant every available foot of ground. The goal is to grow an amount you can realistically weed, water, harvest, maintain, and replant throughout the season.

How Big Should a Cut Flower Garden Be?

Before ordering seeds, bulbs, shrubs, or perennials, ask one important question:

What is the purpose of this garden?

The answer determines how much you really need to grow.

A home cutting garden may exist simply to provide fresh bouquets, beauty, and a peaceful place to spend time. A flower farm needs enough production to serve customers and generate income. A teaching garden may need only enough plants to demonstrate how a variety grows.

For someone balancing gardening with a job and family, a small cutting garden may be much more satisfying than a large one.

Even a simple 3-by-10-foot bed can provide flowers to cut while remaining manageable enough to weed, water, and harvest in short sessions during the week.

A small garden cared for well can be far more rewarding than a large garden that constantly feels behind.

How Much Time Do You Really Have for Your Garden?

Be realistic about the time and energy you can give your flowers.

At The Gardener's Workshop, we have steadily reduced the number of plants we grow. Years ago, we might have started hundreds of seedlings of each flower. Over time that dropped to 240, then 100, and now approximately 60 plants for many varieties.

For some demonstration plantings, even that can be more than necessary.

The goal of our current gardens is different from when we were producing thousands of stems commercially. Today, we need enough plants to show how flowers grow, create useful photos and videos, and keep the garden healthy and attractive.

Growing flowers that do not serve that purpose simply creates unnecessary work.

Your garden should match your purpose, too.

Can Growing Fewer Flowers Actually Produce Better Results?

Growing fewer flowers can make it easier to care for each planting properly.

A manageable garden gives you more time to:

• Harvest flowers regularly

• Remove old blooms

• Control weeds while they are small

• Water when needed

• Maintain healthy beds

• Keep succession plantings on schedule

• Get more production from the space you already have

We once planted about 10 feet of each seed variety or mix we offered. Then we reduced those plantings to 5 feet. For many crops, we are now reducing them again to about 3 feet.

A small planting can still produce an impressive number of flowers when it is well cared for and harvested regularly.

Many cut-and-come-again flowers respond to regular cutting by continuing to produce. When there are too many flowers to harvest properly, blooms get old, beds become messy, and production can suffer.

Quality over quantity applies to the cutting garden, too.

How Does Overplanting Make Weed Control Harder?

Every additional bed or row you plant creates another area that must be maintained.

When the garden becomes too large, weed prevention is often one of the first tasks to slip. Meanwhile, weeds continue competing with flowers for water, nutrients, light, and space.

Allowing weeds to mature and produce seed can also create problems for future seasons.

Having a manageable amount of growing space makes it easier to use simple weed-prevention practices consistently.

For example, when part of a mixed bed finishes before neighboring flowers, spent plants can be cut down at ground level and the small empty area covered with a short silage tarp secured with weight bags. This prevents weeds and grass from taking over the open space while the remaining flowers continue growing.

Small maintenance jobs like this are much easier to stay ahead of when the entire garden is not demanding your attention.

Should You Plant All of Your Extra Flower Seedlings?

No.

Extra seedlings are useful insurance against germination problems, pests, weather, transplant loss, and other unexpected problems. But having extra seedlings does not mean every one of them needs to go into the garden.

This is especially important when succession planting.

A cutting garden might be divided into blocks for:

1. Cool-season hardy annuals

2. The first warm-season tender annual planting

3. The second warm-season planting

4. Later successions that move into space as earlier crops finish

Problems begin when extra seedlings spill into space reserved for the next planting.

Plant a few extra cool flowers here, borrow another bed there, and eventually the next succession has nowhere to go. Then another crop gets moved, and before long the whole planting plan is disrupted.

Our rule is simple:

If the seedlings do not fit into their designated planting block, they do not get planted.

Backup seedlings are insurance — not a reason to overfill the garden.

How Can You Avoid Buying and Planting Too Much?

Impulse buying is another easy path to an overplanted garden.

Seed catalogs, garden centers, bulb sales, perennial sales, and online shopping can make it very tempting to add just one more crop.

One simple solution is to make the plan before you shop.

Know:

• How much growing space you have

• What that space is reserved for

• How many plants you actually need

• Which crops serve the purpose of your garden

• Where future succession plantings will go

Then shop from that plan.

This is especially important with more expensive crops such as tulips and ranunculus. Buying more plants does not automatically mean you will have a better garden or flower business.

Why a Manageable Garden Is More Enjoyable

Gardening will always involve work. Flowers need harvesting, weeds appear, beds need planting, and living things require care.

But there is a difference between normal garden chores and feeling as though the garden is completely out of control.

Reducing the size of the garden can create room for something equally important: enjoying it.

Lisa noticed that as she began growing less, walks around the farm changed. Instead of constantly making mental lists of jobs that needed to be done, there was more time to notice the birds, wildlife, flowers, and landscape.

One tool that has made that especially enjoyable is the free Merlin Bird ID app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which can listen to bird calls and help identify the birds nearby.

A garden can provide flowers, food, income, beauty, wildlife habitat, and connection. It should also leave room to appreciate those things.

Grow the Garden You Can Care for Well

You do not need to grow every flower.

You do not need to plant every seedling.

You do not need to fill every available bed.

And you do not need to grow the same amount as another gardener or flower farmer.

Start with the purpose of your garden. Make a plan. Set reasonable limits. Grow the number of flowers that fit your space, time, energy, family, business, and community.

Leave enough room for succession planting, weed prevention, soil care, and life outside the garden.

Then give yourself permission to appreciate what you have grown.

Quick Answers About Overplanting a Cut Flower Garden

What does it mean to overplant a cut flower garden?
Overplanting means growing more flowers than you have the space, time, or resources to care for properly. It can happen when gardeners start too many seedlings, plant every backup plant, or fill space that was intended for later succession crops.

Is it smart to start extra flower seedlings?
Yes. Extra seedlings can provide insurance against poor germination, pests, weather, or transplant losses. However, you do not need to plant every successful seedling.

Can a small cutting garden produce plenty of flowers?
Yes. A smaller garden that is harvested regularly and cared for well can produce an impressive amount of flowers while requiring less maintenance than a much larger planting.

How does overplanting affect succession planting?
Planting extras in space reserved for future crops can throw off your succession plan. When the next planting date arrives, there may no longer be room for the crop that was supposed to go there.

How can I avoid overplanting my flower garden?
Decide on the purpose of your garden, determine how much time and space you realistically have, create a planting plan before buying seeds or plants, and only plant seedlings that fit within their designated growing space.

Is growing more flowers always better for a flower farm?
No. More plants also mean more harvesting, weeding, watering, and maintenance. The better goal is to grow enough high-quality flowers to meet your business needs while keeping the garden manageable.