My first year growing cut flowers for my home, I did not have high quality landscape fabric. For my small 3’ x 10’ beds of zinnias, marigolds, and gladioli, I applied mulch between the closely planted flowers. 2021 was just a crazy, busy summer to where I fell behind on applying mulch to suppress weeds. With my medium-sized zinnias, I ended up having to weed and weed more and more intrusive plants before applying the mulch. By the following year, besides seeds, my number one purchase was landscape fabric for my cut flowers.
Landscape Fabric
Landscape fabric comes in a variety of forms. My first experience with landscape fabric was with the Preen black cloth. We would cut holes into it to place the plants down through. It degrades quickly. Some even cheap versions will deteriorate halfway throughout the season.
The landscape fabric I use for my cut flowers is from Johnny’s Select Seeds. It is the Sunbelt 6’ x 300’ amount. Johnny’s has a wide variety of landscape fabrics to choose from. They have paper mulches, biodegradables ground covers, red and white landscape fabrics, as well as a variety of widths and lengths.
The best thing about using Sunbelt landscape fabric is the fact that it can be reused year after year. It may be expensive, but it will easily last.
If you don’t need 300 feet of it, local garden centers have it in stock that you can just buy a few feet for your needs. I’ve seen it before at our local Hanzely’s Garden Center in DuBois, PA as well Scenic Hill Greenhouse, an Amish-owned greenhouse in Troutville, PA.
Black or White Landscape Fabric
For cut flowers, I’ve noticed that black Sunbelt landscape fabric can roast young cut flowers. Now, I do not have this struggle when I plant my cut flowers on overcast days with rain coming soon. If the soil is moist, the cut flowers will transplant well, even with a small root system.
With no weeks of rain or overcast weather, the black landscape fabric, which essentially is plastic rather than cotton or polyester fabric, can heat up and roast those cut flowers to a crisp.
Although I do not have experience with white landscape fabric, if I were to buy landscape fabric again for my cut flowers, I would choose the white. Black absorbs heat and keeps the heat from the sun there at the plants. Warm season flowers, such as zinnias, marigolds, cosmos, sunflowers, and celosia will all do okay when transplanted into black landscape fabric. If those warm season flowers would wilt, it may be the hot weather or small root systems, but for the most part, they do awesome in the black landscape fabric.
Some flowers like slightly cooler temperatures. Not where they like cold temperatures, but where they prefer temperatures more in the middle, such as salvia, phlox, snapdragons, and lace-flower. For those flowers, either mulch or white landscape fabric would work better for them.
Laying Down the Landscape Fabric
For most people who use landscape fabric, they also buy some landscape staples. These are long and wide pieces of metal shaped like a standard staple, plus a few inches for depth, to secure fabric into the ground below.
I don’t use landscape staples. I do have some, but I use cement cap blocks from a foundation instead. Now, if you had to choose whether to buy cap blocks or landscape staples, landscape staples would be cheaper. I have the cap blocks for free, in a way.
I lay down one corner of the landscape fabric, lining it up to the walkway or the bed next to it. Then, I place a cap block on this corner. I then spread out, unfold, and even out more of the landscape fabric, placing more cap blocks as I go. We live up on a ridge, so the wind can randomly move the landscape fabric. It is best for us to secure it as we go.
Tip: Piling small or medium garden rocks on the landscape fabric will not hold it down. The rocks do not add enough weight. Now, if you have one rock the size of a cap block, that’ll work.
Do NOT Cut the Landscape Fabric
If you are using a new roll, it will need to be cut from the roll. Mine measure about 24’, but I didn’t measure with a tape measure. Rather, I just eye-balled it in the bed I first used it in, which is about 24’ long. To cut the piece from the roll, DO NOT use scissors. Instead, use a propane torch to burn the two pieces apart.
Leave 1’ on both end sides of the fabric for walkways. I prefer 2’ walkways, 1’ from landscape fabric #1 and 1’ from landscape fabric #2. It will also keeps all the flowers and all the burnt holes in the center of the landscape fabric, reducing the risk of a rip starting on the edge.
Once the holes are burnt, they will be burnt that way forever. It is a one-time thing. I used a landscape tape measure to line up where to burn the holes. Some pieces of landscape fabric, I used 8-inch spacing. This works well for flowers such as snapdragons, lisianthus, and Sweet William dianthus. For warm season cut flowers, 9-inch spacing is best to use. This would be for zinnias, marigolds, statice, short single-stemmed sunflowers, cosmos, and celosia. It would even be okay to use 12-inch spacing for many of these cut flower stems.
The holes can be burned in straight columns and rows, but they can also be burned going in diagonals. For my landscape fabric with 5-rows burnt across in 9-inch spacing, I burnt 3 holes in a row, followed by 2 holes in the second row.
Warm Season Cut Flowers
Cool flowers, or cut flowers that do not like extremely hot heat are best not to plant in black landscape fabric. Warm season flowers absolutely love it.
Zinnias can be started from seeds directly in the landscape fabric. Some gardeners and farmers start zinnias indoors and then transplant. I have done this before, but when there’s a full greenhouse, it is just easier to start them from seed outdoors.
Cosmos are another great warm-season cut flower. This year, I am trying the Double Click Mix variety pack from Johnny’s Select Seeds, as well as Xanthos and Sea Shells from Baker Creek Heirloom Seed. These latter two are both heirlooms, meaning the seeds from the plants can be harvested to reuse again next year and it will produce the same plant with the same flowers. From saved seeds last year, I planted some Double Dutch Rose Cosmos, the original seed from Baker Creek. These did best in the landscape fabric over the hot late spring days when they had strong and larger root systems. Some did not make it.
African marigold varieties work well as cut flowers in landscape fabric. During the hot, no-rain weather, the performed the best in the landscape fabric. They were planted on an overcast day, watered, and then it rained the next day. This was the same with the cosmos, but the main difference was the container they were living in upon transplanting. The marigolds had very healthy root systems, being in a container about 1.5” wide by 4” long.
Other flowers include single-stem sunflowers, celosia, baby’s breath, and ornamental basil.
Healthy Roots
This seems to be key for healthy cut flowers in landscape fabric: Pot up the seeds to a decent size cell tray where there is plenty of room to grow. On hot days, the cut flowers will have roots that can reach towards the water in lower levels of the soil.
I don’t plan to start all my cut flowers in such large containers, but it is important for plants to have enough room for healthy roots. For summer cut flowers, I would recommend anything above a 72-cell standard tray. It seems that the root systems in these summer flower plants need more space. If 72-cell standard trays are all that are available to you, it will be okay. But I do not recommend 72-cell microgreen trays. These are shorter and provide barely enough space for smaller plants.
How to Plant a Cut Flower Transplant
After laying down the landscape fabric and securing it, add some organic fertilizer to the planting hole. Some sprinkle fertilizer onto the soil and mix it in before adding the landscape fabric, that will work as well, but it is not my habit. So, I add a full tablespoon to one planting hole, mix it into that soil, and remove any small rocks.
Next, I create a planting hole. I just use my hand. Touching the soil with my bare hands is a part of gardening. Floret suggests using a butter knife, a spare one, to create the hole. Gardener’s Supply sells a small garden trowel that would work for this as well.
Here, I am planting a marigold. Check out the root system on this plant. Notice how it forms the soil medium, but the roots haven’t taken over every square inch of the soil medium . . . That’s a healthy root system. The plant is also rather tall, but for those no-rain, sunny days, this plant held up wonderfully.
Place the cut flower into the planting hole, cover with loose, native soil from under the landscape fabric, and make sure the new cut flower is sturdy and standing up straight.
Why is Landscape Fabric the Best for Cut Flowers?
Two words. Few weeds. I love gardening. I love growing flowers. I love harvesting the blooms for arrangements. I ain’t spending my gardening time to weed. I hate pulling weeds out. I don’t have the knowledge in spraying carefully.
Granted, planting cut flowers in landscape fabric won’t keep 100% of the weeds away. They can still come up through the holes where the flowers are. However, it greatly reduces weeding time. The landscape fabric keeps the soil moister underneath, to where pulling the weeds is rather easy. Ever try pulling weeds out of dried, hard soil. Nope. Not fun.
Little to no weeds is the greatest perk with using landscape fabric for cut flowers, but there’s just a sense of entering the flower season when the landscape fabric with loads of burnt holes is laid down to start the planting process. From February to April is my seed starting season. As soon as this landscape fabric is placed down, it transitions to the planting and growing season of cut flowers. In a few weeks, these plants will be producing flowers to harvest for bouquets for my home and my local farmer’s market. Laying down landscape fabric transitions my gardening time from seed starting season to warm season planting time, making it one step closer to some beautiful blooms.
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