We raise a lot of spring and summer annual cut flowers on our farm. We sell the flowers from April - October at a small farm stand on our farm - the flowers are sold in both small and large paper wrapped bouquets and also already arranged in glass vases. The majority of our flowers are grown from seed in the early spring and then moved to the prepared gardens when the temperatures have warmed. We do not use herbicides or pesticides on our flowers - this policy actually came to be early on when we found that our kids wanted to spend so much time touching the plants and helping us. We had to find a better way to keep the plants healthy while keeping our kids safe, so we started searching for healthier ways to grow the flowers. We now space our flowers very close together (some as close as 6” apart!) which encourages the plants to grow in a very tall, upright fashion, diminishes weeds, and promotes strong, dense hedge-like beds. We also select for bug and disease resistant flowers, we water daily using drip irrigation to reduce mold, and we use a weed barrier. We also amend our soil with good compost and regularly test our soil.