Hello, I'm Roz Chandler from Field Gate Flowers. You are listening to The Cut Flower Podcast. This is for you if you want to learn more about growing your own cut flowers. We'll cover loads of subjects things like setting a patch, your soil, manure and compost, seeds and germination, perennials and biannuals, foliage and so much more. We'll have some exciting guests along the way. Thank you very much for listening. 

And happy Sunday to you all. I'm sorry if I feel a little bit tired this evening. I've just spent the afternoon on the European Flower Growers Association Conference. It's been on for the last three days: Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And today I was presenting in the afternoon on marketing your flower farm, which I'm hopefully going to share in our business Facebook page, marketing your flower farm. And what I'll do is I'll record something and put it in there so that the PowerPoint makes sense. 

Anyway, back to herbs. Now I'm an addict of herbs. An absolute addict. When I started writing this for tonight, I found myself ordering some more, which isn't great, because I've got thousands of seats of herbs already. Yeah, do tell me if you're a herb addict as well. The reason is for me, is that it's a great foliage. We add it into all our bouquets. Darren Posey arrangements. It's great in buttonholes, you know, historically rosemary was used in all bridal reefs is thought of as a symbol of love and remembrance. So we're using it quite a lot in natural funeral arrangements at the moment. So I'm going to run through my top ten and I'd love it if you share some of yours. 

Lavender is a herb. Yep, lavender is definitely a herb. The thing is that most people don't think it is and don't think of it as being a herb. We grow it in purples and whites, and also unbelievably they're forty seven species of lavender. It can be hard to grow in the wrong type of soil and also what we find after a few years is it gets a bit straggly, so we have to take some of it out and replace it. Doesn't like a wet clay soil. It really doesn't like that. It loves a sort of drier soil. Thrives better there. So number one is lavender. 

Number two Lemon Balm, and this is a lovely fragrance used in jam jar arrangements. Also our horticulturalist Emma, if she's listening to this, pinches it and puts it in her tea. So we love Lemon Balm. 

Rosemary is number three. This has got to be one of my favourites and I'd be really interested to see what your favourite is. It's a herb that we use on all our arrangements and all our buttonholes. It provides scent texture and is a great background for all those little delicate flowers for instance, in buttonholes. We grow Miss Jessops upright. It likes a fairly sheltered spot away from the winds but it grows really well. I mean, rosemary honestly, we're really lucky, it grows almost anywhere. So we've got about five different areas. We're growing rose me and I think that makes me a rosemary addict. 

The next one number four is Marjoram. Again, looks okay in flowers. It also can have quite long stems, which is really useful. So Marjoram is number four. 

Number five is dill. This has a lightness to an arrangement and some people you know obviously when it's grown to that level, you don't realise it’s a herb. It’s a good filler, comes late in the season and we love it to put it with our dailies and our Rudy Becker's. 

Number six, Bronze Fennel. It's that feathery soft foliage, which again, can be used in lots of arrangements. Like all herbs, and I should mention this now really, is that when you first cut them, well with the exception of rosemary, perhaps that's why I love it. But when you cut them, they do look fairly sad and they wilt. You need to put them in water and leave them for 12 to 24 hours, and you'll be amazed. They'll really come back to life. But that's always an issue with herbs and just to be aware of that. 

So number seven. Okay, this is another one of my favourites and really because it just grows like wildfire, so it's great for us, is Borage. It has bright blue flowers, which turn into pink flowers when they're going towards the end of its life. I love it because actually for two reasons. We can cut it in use it in DIY buckets. And we've used it in bouquets. We've used it in funeral arrangements, but also if you cut off the look of blue flowers  and put them in ice cubes looks great on a summer's day in drinks. Yyou know gin and tonics you had your borage ice cube. We also tried White Borage this year, which we love and we had amazing results with that. So I recommend that too. 

Gong on. An absolute favourite is mint. Now obviously we grow loads of variety of mint here. Again, it has a real tendency to wilt really badly, but give it time, it will come back to life. So here on the farm, we're growing chocolate mint, peppermint, penny royal Mint, spearmint, and moroccan mint. And we'd love to know what other mints you grow so we can add them to our collection. Again, I think I must be a mint addict. But there we go. I also love it actually in tea. So I really recommend you grow that. And it's easy. It is the easiest to grow. 

On number nine is sage. We love this, but it's got a dark green colour, but it's very short-stemmed. So we're actually using it at the moment in funeral arrangements, but you can use it in jam jars. Maybe some of you have been luckier to get a longer stem than we have. But here it's quite short-stemmed. 

And our last one on the list, which actually came as an addition in 2020, is Myrtle and I didn't know this was a herb either. It’s a fragrant evergreen shrub and it's great for cutting. I purchased our first one when I started to see it in royal weddings and realised that the trend would be that brides would ask for Myrtle. Actually looking at it and researching it., it's been in bridal bouquets for centuries. Apparently, it represents Venus and Love. So I recommend those of you who evolved in wedding floristry that you actually grow Myrtle. 

So that's your top ten for this evening. I hope you're going to add some for me and then I can go on another shopping spree. But I wanted to wish you all a great week. This snow seems to be going, which is a good thing. And yeah, happy Sunday and thanks for listening.

Thank you for listening. This has been the Cut Flower podcast. Please do join us on our Facebook group, the Cut Flower Collective for lots more hints and tips. Thank you.