Harvesting and Selling Strawflowers

Growing cut flowers is super exciting. Seeing all those seedlings grow into lavish plants covered in blooms, and then harvesting the flowers for bouquets and arrangements is really fun. When people then buy those flowers; it’s an exhilarating feeling!

This year I’ve completely fallen in love with strawflowers, formerly known as Helichrysum and then re-classified as Xerochrysum in 1990. Vivid, colourful and structurally interesting, what’s not to love? But even better, they open and close with the weather. They last ages in the vase. And they can be dried too and, unlike many other flowers, retain their colour, making them a perfect cut bloom.

HARVESTING

When it comes to the first flowers of the season, I almost can’t bear to cut them! But be brave. Make those first snips above a leaf node, leaving the stem nice and long. This will not only give you a good cut flower but also encourage the plant to branch out and make new buds. These first blooms will arrive at the start of the season before you have a sea of stems to choose from, so I find it’s best to dry these for use later on in the year. This is really simple; just hang them upside down in a dry, warm room and let them be.

I’ve learned that strawflowers continue to open once they’re harvested. When they’re on the plant or placed in water they will also respond to the weather; in the sun they’ll open and in the rain/dark, they’ll close. You can cut strawflowers once they’re entirely open, but I think they’re prettier when only the outer petals have unfurled, leaving the central bud crisp and closed.

SELLING

Strawflowers can be really prolific once they get going. The season is also long; they flower from June until September, or even further if the frosts hold off. They make great additions to bouquets, but I’ve also been selling them as a straight bunches.

In bouquets, they will long outlive the rest of the blooms, so it’s worth telling your customers to keep and dry them when they throw the rest of the arrangement away. In bunches, they can simply hang the bunch to dry.

The other benefit is whilst you may need freshly made bouquets to sell from your stand/ farm gate stall within a few days so they don’t wither, strawflowers can be left out for a long period. As long as you maintain water changes and re-cut the stems every few days to keep them fresh, you can harvest strawflowers several days in advance of other blooms.

If you’re growing flowers, I highly recommend these beautiful plants. They pretty much sell themselves, you can dry them for out-of-season sales and also add them to your own home!