Enjoy your flowers doubly - in the garden as they grow throughout summer, and in the home in dried bouquets all winter long.
Although most varieties can be dried in powdery mediums like corn meal, fine sand or silica gel, this method is too complicated and time-consuming for the average gardener. It's easier and faster to dry flowers by hanging them in a cool, dark, dry place.
All flowers are not suitable for hang-drying, yet the choices are wide enough for a good assortment of colors, sizes, and shapes. Also, there's lots of good material growing wild in fields and along roadsides - yours for the picking.
Flowers suitable for hang-drying include strawflowers, statice, celosia, Salvia farinacia, globe amaranth, ornamental peppers and xeranthemum, which are all annuals. Then there's honesty, a biennial; and german statice, baby's breath, globe thistle, artemesia silverking, yarrow, tansy, pearly everlasting, and lavender, all perennials. Field plants include teasel, giant mullein, grasses and grains, dock, boneset and goldenrod. Finally, there are the seed heads and pods that add dramatic interest to dried arrangements: ferns, poppies, milkweed, rose hips, Queen Anne's lace and staghorn sumac.
Planting, Fertilizing, and Watering
Flowers for drying grow best in a loose, easy-draining soil, fortified with nutrients. Compost, leafmold, or aged manure plus an all-purpose fertilizer worked into the soil prior to planting will keep the plants growing
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