How we cut and create with our farm grown flowers when the summer is relentlessly rainy

right Tuesday afternoon and I'm going to cut a wedding what Tuesday you say surely the weddings are the weekend right but we have had appalling wet weather the forecast is more appalling weather this is the only dry afternoon forecast for the week so I'm gonna cut very early for this wedding so come along and I'll tell you why how and what I'm doing about it and if you're new to the channel you're very welcome please subscribe press the Bell icon I'm gonna tell you when we've got more Clips coming up and if any of the tips and tricks I give you along the way are useful you can always buy me a coffee or better still join my club and the link to Coffee buying and Club joining are in the blurb to all my Clips come on now it's really really important whenever you're cutting flowers to be cutting into clean buckets because before any other kind of uh issue like age or over ripeness the thing that will color Killer cut flower quickly is bacteria and we've had this very very wet weather and so the flowers I'm cutting will have been damp for a long time and there may be a little bit of mold about uh mildews so one of the ways I can make sure there's very little mildew is by washing my buckets and making sure that the material I put into the buckets is going into clean water in a clean bucket that way I can encourage less bacteria these flowers have got to be I'm cutting on Tuesday and they're going to be great on Saturday this is their wow factor moment it's on Saturday so Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday we've got some time to make sure they stay Peak perfect and clean buckets is really going to help [Music] now I'm usually telling people to do as much as they can in as shorter time as possible in order to maximize productivity however this wedding is six makes buckets and about two extras for the brides bouquet buttonholes and so on so eight would normally do it but I'm going to be cutting very carefully so that the bruised petals and any very wet material has plenty of space to dry out I'm going to be cutting extra tall so that nothing is squashed together in its bucket I'm going to be making it as spacious as I can so it's going to take me twice as long to cut as it normally would as well as cutting it three days earlier than I normally would but this is the weather I'm having this weather the flowers have had all morning slowly drying out there was a little bit of rain but um not the heavy rain that we've had and this is it this is the dry afternoon so I'm gonna do it now off we go now the colors for these ready this wedding is bright bright the colors are bright bright I will learn English so I'm going to go for bright bright but I am also going to bear in mind that the forecast is miserably gray and dark and so I'm going to also mix in a little bit of white because what that'll do is lift the mix and make it Glow if it's a gray day um I'll show you what I cut as I go so first to be cut the glads there's color however I've had to be quite careful because obviously this wedding is in Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday four days so most of the gloves I've cut are still in relatively tight bud because the ones that are quite out have been very bashed by the weather so these are going to come out for the wedding I hope and I'm leaving the weather bashed behind and here we have fat-faced Coupe purple and nicotiana sensation both stood up well to the weather fantastic and quite exotic looking at this time of year this is red orac or red orac New Zealand dock a Triplex rubra to you madam if you're cutting Cosmos ahead of time cut some with buds and some out you can pinch out anything that looks as though it's going over in the meantime but you'll have plenty to come and be added interest Amazon has loved this cool wet summer and is looking great there is a Mexican not a theme But A vibe perhaps to this wedding and so amaranthus is obviously a good idea being a South American extraction look at those Tails coming love it so here's the trolley half as full as it would normally be 25 stems a bucket instead of 50. but I don't want to build up of damp they're looking okay but I will be keeping a close eye on them all in case of botrytis and again with the flocks there's plenty very open but this is Tuesday and this is for a wedding on Saturday so I've cut all of them have buds to open a little bit open but not too much hot colors and dahlias mmm I think we've got a few if you're cutting dahlias and you want them to last several days don't crowd them in the buckets and when you're looking at them just check that the back petals aren't completely feeling their age you can always pull them off if they are and make sure that in the middle you can't yet see the center and they should do quite nicely so this one's perfect but this one I'd say is blown you can see the back petals are feeling it a bit and while it's very beautiful and I'd have it on my kitchen table there's not much left in the middle so if it's going to give me another four days I'd say that's unlikely I'm not cutting any sweet peas they've been properly hammered by the weather and I expect if I brought them in they'd cut be very quickly covered in brown spots which is botrytus which is just mold um so what I may do is let them go actually because it's August and they're sort of no longer the seasonal thing that they were I could if I really wanted them to keep them cut all of the affected stems and give them a really good feed and they'd probably come back absolutely fine we've got some clear weather next week fresh Sunshine which would really you know they'd be fine but for the moment no these are not good enough for wedding flowers I think I would have thought that the echinacea would have preferred hotter drier weather but they have loved this rain let's have 25 of these so it's Wednesday morning and here is this lovely wedding cut and I have cut half per bucket that I would normally cut because I don't want a buildup of damp I want the flowers to look as good on Saturday as they do today it is cool so they're not going to go over because of the Heat um some of these uh echinacea so I've cut them at various levels of being open so they've still got a little green around the edge here some of them a bit more open but I've been quite careful to cut them not too open um lovely late flush of this GM because I've been cutting it so hard it's doing really well but here is the wedding carefully cut so that there is plenty of air and I've got all the windows open in here so that there's there's airflow I don't want any kind of buildup of mold because I might end up with botrytis and I'll show you what I mean so this is another mix I cut yesterday for another another project and I have slightly shoved everything into the bucket and you can see what's happening here this lovely uh this is a woolerton old Hall but this is really badly rain damaged and because they're quite tightly packed flowers with many many petals this is never going to come out to look any good so I'm going to snip this out and this is why this is where we have to be careful when we've had wet weather and well I'm delighted that we have had you know we're not burning like southern Europe um it does have an effect on the flowers but it is more important my hair is doing very well it is more important that we have water in the ground than that I have perfect flowers for my projects um so I have to work around the weather the weather is and what's good about being a flower Farmer for one's mental health is that one is forced to step aside from being able to control everything and being able to Simply say it is it will be I will work with what there is I cannot control the what is happening around is bigger than I am is very very very good for one's mental health because it puts one in perspective I am not even a speck in the history of the planet barely an atom good news for that so what do we say farewell so it's Friday morning and I'm very glad I cut these flowers on Tuesday because it has rained and rained and rained which means two things one I managed to cut my flowers so that this lovely wedding is going to happen uh but two it's been very cool so actually they look amazing I was worried there might be a signs of botrytis which is when you get little tiny um little tiny flecks of brown on the petals happens a lot with annuals uh especially when the weather's been very wet so that's why I didn't overcrowd the buckets I've kept them nice and Airy in here I have not overcrowded them on the table it's it's made a little bit more work but we're all good so I've got to make a bride a bridesmaid ten buttonholes 12 wide hair stems it's ten to seven in the morning and the bride is picking up at 9 30 and then the rest of the flowers she's going to make the arrangements herself for a lovely venue have a look it's called um pennard house if you like getting married the idea of being married in Somerset penniled house has a really lovely venue it's got a lovely old church which you can be married in or you can be married in the garden they've got pergolas and beautiful things or a beautiful room in the house where you can get married and then the reception happens in the Coach House which is really really pretty uh really pretty beautifully arranged room for 100 plus people and it has this gorgeous sort of sweeping staircase and people always have a table at the bottom with the cake on it looks real it's just it's a lovely Gardens anyway have a look at penult house there's a there's an option for you I better get on so I'm going to do lots of those Speedy uppy Clips to show you what I'm doing and then when I'm finished I'll show you everything at the end so let's make start with the bride's bouquet so I have gone around the table and I've taken about 40 stems uh which of the contents for the brides for k I may not use them all but it's giving me some nice material it's a bit dark in here which so normally I would just walk around the table and choose as I go but it's very dark so I've sort of pre-chosen uh and I'm just gonna make it up I may not use the 40 stems it may be too much but we'll see well there she is I think the idea is it's hot hot beautiful colors very rich and uh there's a Mexican Vibe so with Cosmos and dahlias that's a Mexican Vibe and amaranthus and actually there isn't any amaranth in the end in there um anyway that I think whichever way she chooses to carry it will be just right so I'll tie that up and put it to one side I sometimes sometimes make a Brides bouquet and I think well I'll Pudge that later and which means I sort of made the base and um and I can go back to it and see if it if it settles what happens is you put your you put your you make a bouquet and you put it to one side and um and the flowers the flowers kind of settle it's like planting a garden you plant your garden and water it in and then go back a couple of days later to see how it's settling and you'll find that there you know things have moved around they don't sit where where you thought you'd put them that'll do right on with the bridesmaid very nice but I said myself if I put you back here then you can imagine that being carried she'll learn new spikes to hurt the poor girl um yeah very pleased with that love the colors love a bright colored wedding look at this I've got a sherbet dib dab colored wedding coming up in a couple of weeks but not such hot colors more um not sure Italian ice cream shop colors coming up in a week or so but this one is hotter than that very happy put it put it in its put it in its bars before it dries out so little bridesmaid um she's only eight so nothing too enormous um but basically it's kind of one each of the same material that went into the rice bouquet just to keep interest she's a little girl and it's not just the small you don't want to give her too much to carry and a bit lopsided um but you don't want to overwhelm her I mean I'm five foot two there have been comments about my height when I made that thing about I made a short about the hydrangeas and people were like yes well it's all very well you've tried to make it look so the hydrangeas are enormous but we know you're tiny well I'm not that tiny anyway she will be tiny tiny so a it needs to be small enough for her not too heavy for her to carry uh are not too fat for her little hands um it's very boring if you're a little child she won't want this will be tied with a pretty ribbon um and she's only got little tiny hands there look please with that that'll do nicely right coming along Retreat so ten button holes and 12 word stems I will do a speedy up a slow-mo-y thing for one of the buttonholes one of the word stems and then I'll show you when I finished so um my lovely bride is going to put single stems in her hair and she said she's going large because of this Mexican flourish to the whole event this is how I wear a daily I'm only wearing very simply the hairdresser is going to do the work but I'm giving them some structure so that the stems won't break so with Adelia I stick the wires through the neck of the Dahlia up through its face this is American Dawn here's the wire coming up through the middle of the Dahlia fold it back and all I'm doing is I'm giving it strength so that it won't break there's the wire going back you might have to watch this on a bigger screen if you want to see the detail if you're watching it on your phone it might not show up much but um the can you see the The Wire is folded back on itself push it back through be gentle and you can pull it back down so you can't see the wire anymore you've got both wires it's very hard to show you both wires here one on my thumb to here and there it's easier if I do it against my apron and then I just wire take the wire around the stem and I'm leaving it quite long um and there's spare wire here for the hairdresser can then do what they like snip the stem off and pop it in water and I keep the spare wire sticking out so the hairdresser can see what's going on it's not very sophisticated the the the the bride will the headers will likely cut it off a lot more but it will have been sitting in water and I get tucked in the hair and the hair do will support the flower the only thing I'm concerned about is the bride said she wanted to go big this is quite heavy so unless the hair do is very strong this might feel as though it's going to fit pull out all the time but when the hairdresser puts the flowers into the bride's hair they can then have a discussion and see how it feels it's incredibly hard to pre-do this if I were you and you were planning to have wired stems in your hair for your wedding I would take go to your florist and say I wanted to practice run and I would go and get 10 word stems do a practice run and walk around wearing Flowers in Your Hair for five or six hours and see how it feels see if it scratches save it I know it would drive me insane but uh you may think actually but would it'll just make help you decide what you'd really like to have and what suits you and really what works with the updo but anyway this will I think this bride may have done this with um silk flowers to just see how it feels that's another way of doing it but there is the American Dawn for her hair right nine more to do now before I make the buttonholes I'm just gonna go through the buckets the bride is having six mix buckets and I cut these on Tuesday it's now Friday morning so I'm going to cut all the stems refresh the drinking cells and I'm giving them fresh water in fresh buckets because they're looking good but I want them to look brilliant for her wedding tomorrow and fresh water clean water clean vessels and snipped stems really really helps so on we go foreign so there are all her lovely DIY flowers I have given her really quite a lot extra on account of the weather I don't want her to find that anything is bruised and battered and I'd missed it so it's really really important that you check when there's been bad weather you go through the work and make sure that it's looking really five star for the client right buttonholes the reason there's never any b-roll of my work and something people always saying to me you should have b-roll make b-roll b-roll is when you um you sort of film you have the bees and the butterflies fluttering around and you might have some fancy music um or me in the distance kind of swanning about pulling my trolley the reason I never have any of that stuff is because I'm actually filming my actual work as I'm actually doing it and there is very little time so I have there one word uh Rosebud I will show you how I did it or you can look back through any number of my other clips for rent for riring rosebuds you want to instead of going through the neck and up through the face of the daily as I did uh you want to go through the side of the rows like this through the neck and out the other side I'm sure there are other clips of mine which show this better but I have one hour to make 10 bottles and then I've got to get everything ready so I've gone through the neck wind your wire a little bit around there we are and then make the rest of the buttonhole which in this case is going to be a little bit of bracket glasses a little bit of verbena benariensis the braking Lotus is the back I make a little Posey Posey a little bit of bronze funnel hot hot color and one of these gorgeous brightly colored helicrozen I could also have wired the hell of Chrysler but I'm not going to because the rose is doing the whirring work so I'm going to take it apart and actually put it together properly I don't need quite so much of that bracket glasses so the red gloss is two leaves one rose bud one little tiny piece of benefiensis one little piece of and it feels counterintuitive and I'm just pushing them all together and one helicross one two three four five there we are five pieces I've then got the wire hanging down from before so I'm going to run it up my thumb and just and then we have sweet buttonhole with a green fly on it so we'll flick the green fly off then you have some [Music] raffia and I'm just gonna bind it for real detail I have online flower wedding flower demos um but this is just to give you an idea I think the thing about this week's wedding is has been the rain and I'm very grateful that a I'm very grateful for the rain thank you very much because we some parts of the world are drying up at speed if not burning but B I'm quite glad apparently it's sort of coming to an end because we've hung on in there without too much I mean the sweet peas are no good and we've not got too much damage to the flowers so far if we have some sun that will really help for the end of the season Oh wrong pins and there we are nice little buttonhole right I'll make the rest sweet they go in their own little they go in their own little test tube each one right I'll make the rest and then I'll show you when I finished so there we have 12 wired stems for the bride's hair a little Posey for the bridesmaid turn button holes I love them oh love that yellow bronze fan art very good and the bride's bouquet and now I've got to pack it all up and get it ready for her to collect in oh 12 minutes right the bride has been and the it's all gone and now we have a lovely empty space time to sweep up and get on with the next job right I hope you've enjoyed the clip and uh I'm sure we've got lots coming up I could Friday morning at 10 o'clock gotta go and think about what's next for coming bye

Channel: Common Farm Flowers

Views: 15,203

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Id: 1EdrAYT1x7Q

Length: 29min 39sec (1779 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 05 2023