Local Spotlight: Wheat + Thistle

Five Easy Easy To Grow Cut Flowers

This week we are thrilled to welcome one of our favorite local businesses, Wheat + Thistle to the blog! Local husband duo Matthew & Pierre decided to quit their 9-5 jobs, take charge and start growing for themselves. This labour of love has turned into an incredible floral movement, with a focus on the greener things in life such as houseplants, florals and carefully curated home décor pieces. They’ve inspired our team and the community, to look at florals in a new way!

If you want to catch them in person, you can find them at the Downtown Windsor Farmer's Market every Saturday this summer from 8:00AM-1:00PM, or on June 24th at The Walkerville Brewery Night Market. Additionally, you can browse and buy directly from the Wheat + Thistle Website! Be sure to check out their Instagram & Facebook page for inspiring photos, great tips and some of our favourite reels.

Without further ado - Wheat & Thistle on the Five Easy To Grow Cut Flowers!

The world of cut flowers is filled with unique shapes, textures and colours. In order to use garden flowers in your home you want to grow the right variety for your gardening zone. In Windsor-Essex we have a microclimate that provides long warm days with high humidity. It’s important to know when to plant certain flowers to get the most out of them all season long. However, there are 5 easy to care for cut flower annuals that can be planted out directly in your gardens, which will give you an abundance of blooms, with minimal care.

Sunflowers: With over 70 varieties of plants in the sunflower family you are sure to find one that you’ll love and will work in your garden space. We love using the ProCut series line for our bouquets because of their short maturity time from seed to bloom, ranging around 55 days. Ranging from bright yellows to deep maroon, you are bound to find a favourite among them. In our field we succession plant them every 10-14 days so we can have blooms throughout the entire growing season. At home, plant these out directly in full sun and water daily until established. They will grow quickly, but need to be protected at their seedling stage from hungry squirrels and bunnies. An easy solution is adding bird netting or a plastic cloche until they reach 10-12” in height.

Celosia: Another cut flower that will keep producing in your garden is celosia. There are many varieties of this flower from fan shaped to flames and many others in between. Part of the amaranth family, this edible cut flower can be used in the background of your beds or used as a stand-alone plant in your fields. There is no easier way to sow these seeds other than broadcasting a seed packet into some rich soil and watering in well. In about 10 days you can expect germination and in 60 days you should be enjoying a bountiful harvest on a daily basis. They will self seed readily so to avoid that, remove spent bloom heads regularly

Image from Wheat and Thistle

Calendula: Our garden is full of calendula and I wouldn’t have it any other way. This cut flower is not only gorgeous and lush, but is used to make homemade beauty products too! Add a pack to your soil and enjoy blooms all season long. Our favourite pick is Ivory Princess for its buttery hues on tall green foliage.

Pincushions: A compact plant with a bloom that packs a punch! We always add pincushions and scabiosa to our garden because of their easy to care for demeanor. These flowers look fantastic at every stage of their maturity, whether as cut flowers or garden accents among your other herbaceous growth. The bees love them and make for a perfect addition into any garden space.

Thanks for reading!

Matthew Dumouchel
Wheat + Thistle