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Join new cut flower grower Lydia for a behind-the-scenes look at how she's starting to grow and sell cut flowers in the south of England. Over the course of 2025 she'll be sharing everything she's doing to get her cut flower business up and running, from the planning stages all the way through to harvesting flowers, by way of highs and lows, hints and tips, lessons she's learning along the way (often the hard way) to the production and selling of beautiful cut flowers. If you're thinking of ...
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode: it's Tuesday 2 September 2025. Lots to tell you in this episode and I've divided it into two parts with a tiny bit of music in between so please don't switch off when you hear the music and think the episode has ended! I've been cutting flower stems and foliage for two florist collections tomorrow. These are…
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Hello and welcome! It's a wet Friday 29 August 2025. Good news: my electrics are fixed, yippee! We've had a lot of rain this week which has caused some issues on the plot by flattening things and adversely affecting the quality of some of my cut flower stems. I was up on the plot super early on Thursday to cut for the local Flower Festival in a nea…
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Hello and welcome! It's a warm evening on Tuesday 26 August 2025. Tonight I share with you all the latest news from my plot and also talk through the seeds I've just received for 2026 including stunning Orlaya and some (hopefully) pastel Zinnias. Selling stems has restarted after a short break and it feels great, the batch cooking has restarted and…
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Hello and welcome to today's episode: it's Saturday 23 August 2025 (not the 22nd like I say on the podcast). Join me on on the plot this morning as we let the chickens and ducks out together. It's been another busy week although somewhat quiet on the flower selling front. Still lots of watering to be done as we remain in drought conditions and lots…
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Hello and welcome to today's episode: it's Tuesday 19 August 2025. Lots of successes over the weekend: the fat hose worked brilliantly to transfer water from the back of the van to IBC1; the fence panels are up around the newly-cleared area and they're secure; there is now a skirt of chicken wire around the fence panels to keep unwanted creatures o…
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Hello and welcome to tonight's episode on Friday 15 August 2025. Lots to tell you! No more navel gazing about how badly I feel I'm doing! This week I was sent a message by a very kind listener from the USA with a book recommendation: Flower Farming for Profit by Lennie Larkin. I ordered the book, it arrived today and it looks brilliant and just wha…
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Hello and welcome. It's Tuesday 11 August 2025 and it's really hot (yet again). We're in the midst of heatwave no. 4 right now and so I've been busy watering and mulching with bark to keep the moisture locked into the soil and try to slow the weeds down. In many places on the plot I have the healthiest and best-looking nettles in the world right no…
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Hello, it's Friday 8 August 2025. You're joining me for this episode on the plot: it's a truly beautiful evening and at one point a bat actually flies right over my head. This week has been good in terms of the cut flowers and my lovely event florist collected an order from me this morning. I have also got my car back from the mechanic and my cold …
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Hello and welcome to a warm and sunny Tuesday 5 August 2025. I'm back to cheerful business this week. However, apologies for my voice on this episode: I have got a cold at the moment. I've topped up one of the IBCs with a new water pump, which has been great and saved a lot of effort with no spillage, although it took the same amount of time as doi…
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Hello and a warm welcome to Friday 1 August 2025. Bit of a meh week! After praying for rain for months, it massively disrupted all my plans yesterday so today was a bit of a rush to fit everything in - and then my car broke down! On a roundabout! Not good. I've been feeling a bit flat this week because my marketing plan is clearly failing and I'm n…
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Hello and welcome. It's Tuesday 29 July 2025 and I hope you had a good weekend. It's a warm and sunny evening tonight and I'm recording on the plot. I've been busy clearing thistles and watching fence posts being installed to support the fence panels that will be going up around the newly-cleared area. There's also been lots of cutting, weeding, de…
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Hello and welcome. It's Friday 25 July 2025. How is it Friday already?!? Today's episode is a little different: the first part is me talking frankly and honestly to you about the challenges of establishing a cut flower business with peri-menopause. It has not been easy! I discuss how my debilitating symptoms impacted on me at a time when I needed e…
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Hello and welcome. It's Tuesday 22 July 2025 and I've had to put a jumper on this evening for the first time in months. So much to tell you about this evening: I've been batch cooking dinners, collecting lots of rainwater, staking dahlias (properly this time), removing dahlia leaves to discourage earwigs, and deadheading cornflowers like mad (again…
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Hello and welcome to warm evening on Friday 18 July 2025. Tonight I'm sharing all my news about cutting and selling my flowers: this week I've been cutting and conditioning for a Thursday morning collection to my wedding florist, as well as securing a (very) last-minute order for a client that I delivered to a marina this morning. I'll also be talk…
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Hello and welcome to a windy and cloudy Tuesday 15 July 2025. Today's episode includes a chat about the challenges of prepping for supplying the weddings that I have coming up and the problems I'm having with pricing: it's really hard. I'm not sure I'm getting it right yet, which bothers me. It's also challenging for me to ensure that all the cut f…
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Hello and welcome! It's the evening of Friday 11 July 2025 and I'm recording from the plot so the audio quality is a little bit up and down. I hope it doesn't bother you too much. It's so much nicer talking amongst the flowers than at home. Today's episode is a gentle evening walk-round of the plot and a chat about what's going on with everything I…
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Hello and welcome to this episode. It's a hot Tuesday 8 July 2025. I've been very busy on the field with dahlia staking (thanks to my birthday present of road pins), deadheading, staking and weeding. I really must sort the staking out earlier next year as it's a nightmare trying to do it when the plants are big and flowering. No dahlia flowers yet …
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Hello and welcome! It's Friday 4 July 2025 and it's my birthday! And Happy American Independence Day if you're celebrating that today! I'm on a massive high after selling 100 stems of cut flowers to my lovely event florist, Jo, so I chat about this and how I managed to get everything delivered without breaking anything or spilling any water (a mira…
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Hello. It's Tuesday 1 July 2025 and I'm sweltering, even at 8am. Lots to tell you: we made some new gates to enter the plot over the weekend so that I don't have to go into Roland's enclosure every time. It's an improvement but then I managed to step on a bit of metal and injured my foot. Highs and lows! The sweetpeas are incredible and smell so go…
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Hello. It's Friday 27 June 2025 and the mercury is rising once again. In this episode I talk about how the first six months of 2025 have been for me as a new cut flower grower and I hope you find it interesting. If you've been listening from the start then you'll recognise some of the issues raised, like the time I left a tap running and emptied ou…
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode: it's Tuesday 24 June 2025. The heatwave is over (thankfully) and now it's just annoyingly windy. First off, a clarification of my position on cut flower farm tours that give you lunch. I'm not knocking them - they're brilliant. I talk about the farm tour that I went on before I started growing and it was so …
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Heatwave! Good evening, it's Friday 20 June 2025 and it's very hot! Good news: I've just sold my first stems! I was beginning to wonder if this would ever happen and now it has. All the news about this including how I priced it and the stresses of physically delivering them (it's harder than it looks). It's a long episode because I have so much to …
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I'm back from my break and delighted to welcome you to the latest episode. It's Tuesday 17 June 2025 and it's been a super hot day. I was in Cornwall last week but I still have so much to share with you today including why it's not a good idea to take a break during the flowering season, what happened in my absence and what's happening now that I'm…
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Hello and a very warm welcome to this episode. It's Friday 6 June 2025 and I'm talking to you from the plot. I don't know where this week has gone: it's been busy. We had a whole day of rain which has been an enormous help for the plants. This happened after I manually topped up the IBCs with water from home, which was a whole big drama. Everything…
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Good evening. It's Tuesday 3 June 2025 and I'm talking to you from the plot. We've had rain! Not enough by far but it's very welcome and the seedlings have really enjoyed it. The water levels in the IBCs are critically low but I'm hopeful that the rain still to come later this week will help. Lots of updates from the plot: all of the dahlias are in…
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Hi! It's Friday 30 May 2025: welcome to today's episode! It's the end of another busy week and (finally!) the end of May, which I'm quite pleased about. Roll on, June! News from the plot includes the hiccups getting the dahlias in the ground, a couple of zinnias damping off, cornflower staking experiments and another lack-of-water issue. I also man…
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Hello. It's Wednesday 28 May 2025 and I'm very happy to welcome you to this episode. There's so much to share with you today including an update on my dahlias, what happened to the cornflowers and the leucanthemum in the wind, and how I've been dealing with a blackfly invasion. I've also taken a headcount of the seedlings which still need to be pla…
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Hello and welcome to this episode, recorded on Friday 23 May 2025. It's been a really busy few days since my last episode: I've been planting out my dahlia tubers plus some seedlings, weeding around my perennials, and tidying up my living paths. Sometimes I'm in two minds about living paths: are they a good idea or not? They need maintaining, which…
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Hello. It's Tuesday 20 May 2025, it's 10pm and I'm recording this while boiling spaghetti and microwaving some bolognese sauce. Batch cooking (and reheating) is the only way I get to eat properly right now. I have lots to share with you as I've been really busy on the plot since the last episode. Seedlings have been going out, including zinnias, or…
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Hello. It's Thursday 15 May 2025 and I'm talking to you from the plot. Exciting news that the Digger Man, Nigel, came yesterday to lift the turf on my plot and it' amazing to have more growing space. Quite a lot more, in fact: an additional 171 square metres. He did an excellent job and was a very nice man. I had an emergency with one of my chicken…
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It's Tuesday 13 May 2025: welcome to today's episode. Beautiful sunshine but still no rain. I'm running low on water so it's a bit of a tense time. Tonight I'm on the plot talking about how I'm managing my seedlings in the hot and dry conditions. Some plants are doing fine but I really wish I had more water right now. The digger man is booked for t…
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It's Friday 9 May 2025 and another gorgeous evening. I've recorded this episode at home tonight, out of the wind, so the audio quality is much better than the last episode (sorry about that one). Executive decision: the dahlias are finally moving outside this weekend! They have had enough of being inside (and I want my living room back) so they're …
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It's 8:30pm on Tuesday 6 May 2025 and a really beautiful evening. You join me for this episode on the plot as I'm planting out some of my hardy annual seedlings (calendula, orlaya and scabious). It's been a busy bank holiday weekend for me and I haven't had as much time on the plot as I would like so I'm up here this evening getting things done and…
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It's 8:30am on Friday 2 May 2025 and it's another beautiful sunny day. What a busy week! I've been juggling a lot of things this week and it got me thinking about what I've learned about starting to grow cut flowers and what no-one tells you! So I have created quite a long list of things I'm learning the hard way and I'd like to share them with you…
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The chickens are back on the podcast! It's Tuesday 29 April 2025 and it's very hot. Join me for this episode on a really beautiful spring day, which started off well then turned out to be a bit too busy and fraught for my liking. I am in charge of the diary so that's entirely my fault. While I'm letting the hens out this morning I talk about water …
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Great excitement: I've just been speaking to a landscaper about using a mini-digger to lift some turf for me to really expand my growing space. I can't wait! I recorded this episode on Thursday 24 April 2025 in the afternoon and it's cool and breezy today. I did a reconciliation of how many seedlings I have and it's ALOT! It made me realise that I …
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It's a sunny lunchtime on Tuesday 22 April 2025 and I'm basking in the warmth of the greenhouse. I'm busy sowing more seeds and today I'm discussing the pros and cons of two different sowing styles: scattergun approach or straight lines. Which one do you use? I prefer the straight lines method as I can count how many plants I have and each plant ca…
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Happy Easter! It's 8pm on Good Friday, 18 April 2025 and I'm on the plot. It has definitely not been my week! After the water debacle on Tuesday I managed to get a tummy bug which has been unpleasant and this afternoon I wasn't even able to leave the house because of it. And whilst I've had tummy trouble all week I've had to do some regular gardeni…
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It's Tuesday 15 April 2025 and this week has started really badly: I left a tap running last night and managed to drain my two full water bowsers. Overnight I've lost over a thousand litres of water. The timing is awful and I'm very disappointed in myself. I also managed to forget to close the greenhouse door last night, which is not like me. Lucki…
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It's Friday 11 April 2025 and another incredibly sunny day. Still no rain but hopefully it's coming next week. I'll be updating you on what I've been sowing this week and the new sowing chart that I've made to help me remember when to sow the next batch (it's all about successional sowing this year). I discuss my morning feeling routine and how I w…
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It's another glorious week of sunshine and dry weather and the shed doors are finally on! Today it's Tuesday 8 April 2025 and I'm pleased to update you on what's been going on since my last episode. I've been busy planting out foxgloves, peonies and raspberries, plus I made a new access path for the plot (and hung a new gate that I made myself, whi…
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It's Friday 4 April 2025 and if you're a dahlia-fan then this is the episode for you. Join me as I share everything I learnt this beautifully sunny morning from my dahlia mentor, Richard Bailey, including tips and tricks for success with these beautiful plants. Richard is a prize-winning dahlia exhibitor and a Vice President of the National Dahlia …
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There's a lot going on at the moment! Join me on the plot in the fabulous sunshine today, Tuesday 1 April (how is it April already???) as I update you on what I've been upto, including seed sowing, monitoring production costs, ordering more seeds, selecting new dahlias, making new beds, rearranging fence panels, moving the contents of the compost h…
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I've had an epiphany! I've been listening to a new podcast and it's made me think really hard about the "business" side of what I'm doing so I have paused with the seed sowing for a moment to give this some thought. I've been learning about production costs, overheads, profit margins, and calculating profitability per square metre. I'm a data nerd …
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It's a beautiful week and I've been busy. It's a bit overwhelming at times: I feel like I have so many things to do all at the same time and sometimes it's hard to work out what I should be doing first. Normally I'm pretty good at prioritising but at this time of year it's challenging... In this episode I take a breather from digging up nettles and…
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What a gorgeous week: it's been very warm and sunny in the last couple of days, which has made me feel very excited about spring. And also slightly overwhelmed. I look at my seed trays and simultaneously think "Oh there are SO MANY!" and also "Oh I don't have enough!". But it's all fine: it's just what happens at this time of year. Lots of updates …
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It's been a really busy few days: some of the new seeds that were sown last week have germinated, the new beds have been marked out with string, a whole new planting area has been created, I finally found my missing broad bean seeds (yipeeeeee!), more seeds have been sown, the sun has been shining and it's warming up nicely. I've been thinking a lo…
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I went to the garden centre just to buy a ball of string to finish marking out the new cut flower beds and came home with some lovely new flowers seeds! In this first part of this episode I'm back in the greenhouse on a warm and bright afternoon sowing more of my cut flower seeds as well as the new ones that I picked up in the garden centre. As I'm…
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It's Tuesday 10 March 2025 and I'm in the greenhouse this afternoon, sowing more cut flower seeds. Come and join me as I'm sowing Achillea, Cephalaria, Centaurea, Crespedia, Zinnia and Orlaya. It's much cooler this week: the weekend was positively balmy and it was wonderful to have so much sunshine. It really felt like Spring had arrived. And then …
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I was SO looking forward to getting started on my seed sowing this week! And then I was thwarted by a really nasty cold so I ended up sleeping a lot, watching Netflix and endlessly re-reading the latest David Austin rose catalogue. So the first half of this episode is me with a rather croaky voice and a bunged-up nose talking about that. Luckily th…
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