Gardening School
Articles with tips, advice, and lots of inspiration in gardening
Here we share tips, advice, and inspiration about cultivation from all the experience we have at Florea and our ambassadors. When it comes to cultivation, you never really stop learning, it’s always a fantastic journey for new experiences. One year, spring comes early, the next it arrives late, the third year there are extra many killer slugs, and the fourth year we get no rain. What we’re saying is that no year is the same as the other, and growing zones don’t have to be set in stone.
Our motto is that a seed always wants to sprout and it’s okay if you fail. Even the most experienced do not always succeed with their cultivation, and that’s how it will always be. Sometimes, it’s not the result that’s most important, but the journey there. Welcome to read our articles to get tips, advice, and also be inspired about what new things you should try this year?
Potting Compost, Seed Compost and Houseplant Compost
Seed compost, multi-purpose compost and houseplant compost look the same in the bag but do different jobs. We compare the types in a table, explain peat and peat-free, and work out how many litres a pot or a pallet collar needs.
Composting in the garden
Cold compost, hot compost and bokashi compared in one table. Learn to mix green and brown material at the right ratio, test with cress whether the compost is mature and use it correctly in borders, raised beds and seed compost.
Annual Flowers
Snapdragon and petunia are sown indoors as early as February, while cornflower, poppy and nasturtium are sown straight outdoors. See sowing dates, planting out and first flowering for twelve annual flowers, and the mistakes that most often hold sowing back.
Growing Flax
Flax is sown direct in April or May and flowers sky blue in July, but each flower drops its petals the same day. Read about spacing, the timeline to ripe seed capsules and how flax was once pulled and retted for fibre.
Growing foxgloves
Foxgloves form a leaf rosette in their first year and flower in the second. Follow the timeline from surface sowing to flowering, choose a variety by when you want flowers and learn how to handle a plant that is poisonous in all its parts.
Powdery mildew
White powder on the cucumber, the phlox or the rose in high summer is usually powdery mildew. Here is how to tell it from downy mildew, which plants infect each other and how to get rid of it.
Slugs and Spanish slugs
The Spanish slug lives for one year and lays around 400 eggs. We go through how to tell it from slugs that do good, when an evening's picking gives the most, and what ferric phosphate, nematodes and a slug edge can do.
How to Dry Flowers
Dried flowers from your own sowing keep their colour for 1-2 years if you harvest at the right stage. Here you get varieties, harvest times and drying times in a table, plus the mistakes that ruin a bouquet.
Autumn Flowers
Autumn flowers that bloom from September to November, with a table of flowering time and frost tolerance per species and a year plan for what to sow and plant when to have flowers in autumn.
Grow Red Cabbage
Red cabbage takes around six months from sowing to harvest, but it tolerates frost and keeps for months in the cellar. Here is how to start it indoors, plant it and protect it, month by month until storage.
Grow Daffodils
Plant daffodils in September or October, about 15 cm deep, and they will flower year after year. Compare our 13 varieties by division, flowering time, height and scent, and find out why bulbs sometimes go blind.
Grow lisianthus
Lisianthus, also called prairie gentian, is a cut flower that lasts 2-3 weeks in a vase. It takes around 24 weeks from seed to flower, so sowing starts in January. Here is how to sow the light-germinating seeds, avoid rosetting and harvest at the right stage.
Growing mullein
Mullein wants sun and lean, dry soil. We compare the species in a table, go through sowing month by month and show you how to manage self-seeding and keep an eye on the caterpillars that eat the leaves.
Grow Petunias
Petunias are sown on the surface of the compost in late February or March and flower 10-14 weeks later. Read about the month-by-month timeline, our five varieties, weekly feeding and why new leaves turn yellow.
Autumn planting in pots
Tulips, daffodils and crocus layered in the same pot flower one after another from February to June. The article gives the depth for each layer, the size of pot you need and how to protect it from frost and wet over winter.
Pruning Plum Trees
Plums must not be pruned in winter the way apples are. Here is the right timing month by month, why September is the weak link, how to build the framework of a young tree and how to thin the fruit so the branches hold.