Let's Talk Numbers, Are Annual Plugs A Thing? Road Pins Incoming, Plus Plant Profile: Bindweed (Yes, Bindweed!)

Hello, it's Friday 19 June 2026.

Thank goodness it's Friday! Phew! If you sent me a message about the annuals/perennials debate this week - thank you - and if you commented on Spotify, thank you too. Tonight I'm talking more about starting annuals in autumn: I'm psyching myself up to get back into sowing.

Please get in touch if you buy annual plug/starts: I'm really interested to know what you buy and why you choose plugs rather than seeds. How does it work out financially for you? Contact details below, do let me know.

I'm talking about the numbers of seedlings I've planted out so far this year - I planned quite a daunting number yet what I've planted on the field doesn't seem anywhere near enough (or reflect the number I sowed). 

Road pins! I'm obsessed. I've just ordered some and I chat about this. Finally, tonight's Plant Profile Series continues with Bindweed. I didn't know much about this frustrating - but beautiful - vigorous climber until I researched it and it's quite interesting. I wish my other plants would grow as quickly as bindweed. 

Please come back and join me for the next episode - you're always very welcome!

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If you like what you hear, please follow/subscribe to this podcast so that you're the first to hear new episodes when they become available every Tuesday and Friday. And if you enjoy this episode, please take a minute to leave a review because it really does help more cut flower-lovers just like you to find the podcast. 

Follow me on instagram @henhillcutflowers for a behind-the-scenes look at life on my cut flower plot. And you can find my website at www.henhillcutflowers.co.uk and my email is lydia@henhillcutflowers.co.uk.

Join me on my journey through a year of growing and selling cut flowers in England. I'm giving you the low-down on what it's really like, how I'm getting started, what you do and don't need, what I do when and why, the successes and failures, and just about everything in between. All in real time. With guest appearances from my chickens every now and then. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi, welcome to my podcast, Becoming a Cut Flower Grower. I'm your host, Lydia, and I'm here to share my year of growing and selling cut flowers. I'll be giving you the lowdown on everything I'm doing and sharing all the highs and lows, the good times and the inevitable disasters, all in real time. Join me on my cut flower journey starting right now. Hello and welcome to the latest episode. It's Friday, the 19th of June 2026. Congratulations to us again for making it through a week and what a week it has been. Thank goodness it is Friday. Now it is Royal Ascort. It has been Royal Ascot this week, which is horse racing, the very, very posh expensive one. And we've had non-stop helicopters overhead all week. It's driven me absolutely potty. I think they do like a little flyby to give the occupants a bit of a view as they're going to and from. And it's been non-stop, but thankfully it's all finished, so that's great. Now it has been quite a week. I found an open tin of dog food in my wine glass cupboard earlier rather than the fridge. That was a bit of a disaster, and I don't know what happened there. Speaking of the dog, she's had a short back insides today because we're going into this heat wave next week. And I I don't think I've put well there might be a photo of her on my Instagram actually. She's very white and completely fluffy, and um she's a bit like one of those flash uh mops that they advertise on the TV that you sort of shake it and it fluffs up. And if she was attached to a pole, you could literally use her for dusting. But she's the most dangerous, uh, vicious creature in the world, and when she has a trim, she has to have a muzzle and one of those uh lampshades that goes round her neck as well, just to stop her from biting me. So all I was capable of doing today was literally a short back and sides because there were too many objections to anything else. So we kind of need to build up to that one. I need to have a glass of wine first and then go for it. Uh, we buried Diana Ross this week, bless her. She left us for her next life. Uh, very sad. I she's one of my original girls, so I got her, excuse me, I got her over well be over five and a half years ago, and she must have been about a year or two when I got her. So she's like one of my, well, she was one of the links to the plot when I first took it on. So that's really, really sad. She's a very special lady, didn't like to be touched, to mind you, but very special lady, and she was top of the pecking order. So, next one down in the pecking order is now Adele. She is my very last of the original girls. Uh, so thank you very much for getting in touch after the last episode. That whole annuals perennials topic is clearly of interest because I had lots of messages about it. Uh, Jo commented on Spotify that autumn sewing is an absolute game changer for her, so I am definitely joining that club. Um, hopefully, Daniel will remind me as well when I need to start doing that. Uh, thanks to Dawn for her comment about the dangers of SNPs after slicing my arm open, and she's also pulling out non-productive stuff, which last year I just could not do it, and this year I'm literally looking at everything with a very critical eye, going, yep, nope, you're coming out. Now, back to the annuals and the plugs. I've actually got a question for my uh well, I've got a question for if you're listening in the States. I'm sorry, I'm really, really tired. It's quite late. I ought to say that actually the podcast really comes out on Wednesdays and Saturdays because I'm so late to doing it. It's like half past eleven now at night. Um, okay, so if you're in the US, like I listen to a lot of podcasts from US growers, and I'm fascinated by the number of times I hear people saying that they start with plugs. So they grow plants from plugs and annuals as well. Um, so I'm really interested if you are in the US or even actually wherever you are, like Australia, New Zealand, um, anywhere in Europe, anywhere in the and the whole world, I would love to know if you actually start things off with plugs. I mean, is it common where you live to do that? Because it's so it kind of sounds like in the States, certainly on a big scale, it's really common. So please let me know what you do and why, how it works out for you regarding the cost, and if there's any impact on your margins. I mean, does it actually save you money in labour costs if you don't have to go through that whole sewing malarkey that I've been doing? Because obviously there is a labour cost because you have to plant the plugs, I get that, but you haven't had to babysit something for months or you know, six months if I actually do this autumn sewing. I mean, that's a long time to look after something for, and I know that um growers lose crops over winter, things just happen, things blow down, they fall down, we have had worse adverse weather, and that's why I didn't want to start my sweet peas in the autumn because I did have them and I could have done it, but just the thought of babysitting these guys for six months just really put me off. But having seen the size of my self-seeded ones this year, I am completely sold. So I'm gonna do it and see what happens. Um, please get in touch. You can drop me an email, you can send me a DM on Instagram. All the details of how to get in touch are in the show notes, and I would really love to know. And a couple of my UK listeners have messaged me uh wanting to know as well. So you would be doing everybody a massive favour if you just share what you do, that would be awesome. Now, in other news, uh, my wedding event florist, the lovely Jo, she posted photos from last weekend's wedding that she did, and I supplied a small number of flowers because I'm really only just getting going with the production. And I love it when she posts these photos on Instagram. I like to zoom in and spot my kids on their big day because that's how I feel about them. Like I tell them all for weeks and weeks and weeks, they're all going off to the most amazing day, mostly weddings. They're gonna have a fabulous time, and I'm gonna see photos of them, so I'll be watching them, and it always makes me smile, and also like this is gonna sound really lame, but it makes me well up a little bit when I see them. It the novelty never ever ever wears off. Um, so Joe did the most incredible displays, these really beautiful urns, huge, absolutely massive. Uh, and I could see my little kids in there doing their thing, and they looked very, very pretty as well. Very proud of them. Now, in the last episode, I said I would talk about numbers of how much uh I've been planting out and what I've done, and I've done a calculation um based on the spreadsheet, which is pretty much up to date apart from the um the last week, and then also I have a notepad that I carry around with me on the field. So I write everything down in the notepad and then update it on the spreadsheet. And the spreadsheet's got all these really clever formulas in. Thank goodness I did it in the winter because I would not have the brain power to do it now, and it adds everything up for me from all the tabs onto like a master tab, and then I can just look at this one tab and see exactly how many seedlings I sowed, how many I've planted out, the time it's taken me to do it, and therefore the cost of actually doing all of that planting. And I can break it down, I won't bore you with all the details, but I can break it down into like the most granular details, which is really amazing, and it's going to help me work out what to do next year, as you know. This is one of the reasons why I'm collecting all of the data as well, and it will stop me. I think getting overly emotional about some things because there are some things I'm like, oh, I'm always going to grow you because I love you. But I think no, uh, they'll be lucky if there's any annuals on the field next year, the way I feel about them right now. So these numbers are going to drive all the decision making next year. So so far this year I have got 1,200 seedlings in the ground on the field only. Now that is just for annuals. There's a ton of, well, there isn't a ton, there are a lot of perennials up there already. Big ones, small ones, old ones, new ones, all sorts of stuff. And actually, all my echinacea that I sowed, the white swan, they've all taken, so I'm gonna pop them on and they can go up there as well. So um, there's only about 30 or so that I've done. So I think I have included that in the number of seeds I've sown, but they haven't been planted out yet. So 1200 seedlings on the in the ground, and depending on your stage of business, this is either going to sound an awful lot of seedlings or nowhere near enough. Now I sowed about 3,000 and I still have some to go in the ground, but I definitely don't have um well just under 2,000 left to go in the ground. So I'm guessing some of that's gonna be germination, losses, and some complete failures. Because I do remember early on I had some trays that just never did anything and they got chucked. Um, so yeah, so it's a you know it's a reasonably decent amount. It's well for me anyway, it's a lot more than I did last year, and I'll have the numbers for that, but I can't remember where they are. Um, but it is nowhere near enough, and I have not done any seed sewing for ages. Uh, I don't even know what happened in May. I did do some in May, and then of course I went house sitting, and then everything just hit the skids enormously. I'm gonna have a go at direct sewing because I'm at that point now where I've got space and the soil is definitely warm enough, and I think I'll just give it a go and see what happens. I don't I don't want to see another chicken thigh tray until it comes to I'm guessing August for the autumn sewing, August, September. Don't want to miss the um the deadline for that because I know they've got to be a certain size before they go out, before the last frost date. So another calculation with frost dates, and quite honestly, they're so random anyway. I don't know. And then I suppose I need to think about some kind of cover or protection for them, like low tunnels, something like that, which I've kind of shied away from tunnels, but now I'm thinking, well, I don't want to go to all this trouble and have to look after them for six months and then you know have a snow event or sorry, not a snow event, just snow, um, or you know, crazy frosts. I mean, they are hardy, so they should be fine. I guess it's just how big I get can get them to get to before the winter comes. Um I've also planted my dahlias from Dahlia Beach, which is very exciting. They are really, really nice tubers. Um, I don't know where she's getting them from, but they are lovely. I've bought some tubers in the past years and years ago, like 10 years ago, from um catalogs and Jay Parker's and all sorts of random places, and they've been really hit and miss. Mind you, I didn't know what I was doing back then, I suppose it was before, well, way before I met Richard Bailey, my daily mentor, who's been incredibly helpful, but it's not that difficult to just put the tubers in a pot of compost and get them to sprout. So I don't know how I messed it up over the years. And I one year I had some cafe au lait that were absolutely incredible, but then they didn't survive the winter. I think that was the one. Oh well, anyway, I won't bore you with the details. We've had some killer winters, and my soil at home is a lot moister than it is on the field because it's flat here. So, anyway, the dailies are all in, they're all labelled, that's all fine, and it's been incredibly hot the last couple of days, and they don't seem to have minded at all, so they are doing really, really well. In fact, nothing that's in the ground is showing any signs of wilt whatsoever, which is great. Um, the few things that are in um sea trays or little pots or whatever, they are sitting in uh drip trays, otherwise, everybody just goes to a crisp. And I've got some trays of peas actually, which I really need to put in the ground, and they've all twined up each other, which is really irritating. So I don't even know whether what I'm gonna do about those. I think I'm just gonna empty them out sideways and just dig a hole and put them in and see what happens. Now, very excitingly, road pins. I know, I know is gripping this episode. Road pins. My other half was gonna get me some for my birthday, which is coming up in a couple of weeks, and he bought me some road pins I think last year, and I was so excited. Like, I love road pins, they are my new addiction. Like the palette phase is kind of past, and now it's all about road pins. So he offered to get me some, and I said, no, no, I have a business bank account now. I'm gonna pay for them, and it's gonna be a business expense, which probably worried him enormously on many levels, but now it means he has to come up with another idea. I'm sure he will. He's very good at presents. Um, he got me um a vacuum cleaner for my fish tank for our anniversary the other day, uh, which is this amazing bit of kit which siphons the water out of your fish tank into a bucket, and it also has a little scraper on it, so it gets the algae off the side. So, yeah, the guy knows how to buy presents. Anyway, so I said no, I will get some, and of course he knows where to get them from because he's bought them from me before. So I said, How much are they? And he's like, Oh, they're 40 pounds for 10. And that was the deliberate pause there, so that we can all take that in. That's four pounds a road pin, which is absolutely outrageous. So I said, No way, I will find some myself, thank you. So I went online and I have found some £14 for £10, £1.40 each, and these are the eight millimeter ones. So I don't mind spending that. Apparently, it's a capital expense, and um, I haven't got a clue, but apparently it's a capital expense. So I have bought myself a whole load of them and they are being FedExed over, which is very exciting. Didn't I mean I haven't seen a FedEx courier for years, mostly it's like DPD and DHL and all this sort of thing. So a FedEx man is delivering me a whole load of road pins, which is wildly exciting. And if you haven't got into road pins yet, I hope I've convinced you they are the best thing ever. You can use them for so many different things, supporting and staking, and just ah, they're just amazing. Now, plant profile of the week. Now, this is a different one, and I'm this is at the point that I'm really, really glad that I called this series plant profile of the week and not flower profile of the week because I am going rogue here, and tonight I'm talking all about bindweed. Yes, bindweed. I have been digging it up this evening, which I know is not exactly the right thing because unless you get all of the roots out, any tiny little bit that's still in the soil will just re-sprout and grow a new plant. But I was clearing a bed that has been covered in weeds for ages, and I deliver deliberately left them there as a strategy to keep the soil covered, keep the soil microbes fed, because obviously all the roots are are um giving out these exudates into the soil, and it's perfect. Uh basically like a free cover crop that I didn't have to sow, don't have to dig well, I had to dig it up, but I don't have to do anything complicated with it. But unfortunately, mixed in amongst it was a whole load of bindweed, and I don't remember having a bindweed problem there last year. So whether it's come in from seed or whether the entire plot just has the root system underneath it, I do not know. So I had two different piles, a pile for anything with bindweed in it and anything with nettles in it, and then the other pile was just the normal boring roots, which will uh root uh roots of weeds and weeds that will just go on the compost heap and get recycled. And I shake most of the soil off, but it doesn't matter if there's a tiny little bit because it all helps with the composting process. So I thought I'm gonna tell you all about bindweed tonight because do you know bindweed is actually really pretty. I've got a whole rogue area of it, not just in the middle of this bed that I'm talking to you about now, but around the back of the old duckhouse that nobody lives in anymore, it's just a storage blaze, are a massive stack of hazel poles which we coppiced years ago, and they're really tall, so maybe 15 feet tall, something like that. And I thought that I would keep them to grow things up, but of course, I can't get them in the ground because it's just too hard and I don't always have the depth. So then I thought I know I'll keep them and offer them to florists if they want them for big installations, but then of course I haven't actually told any of the florists that I have them, so they're just sitting in a pile, they look lovely, and the bindweed obviously want to go straight up them. So I've got this wonderful section with this incredible bindweed going up it, all flowering. Looks absolutely stunning, like they're really, really beautiful. Obviously, an absolute nuisance. Bindweed are in the group of perennial weeds, things like nettles, ground and elder. Um well, Japanese knotweed, but that's just like seems to have a category all of its own. But those are the main ones: ground elder, bindweed, and um nettles, which are perennial ones, so they don't die back, they're not really killed by anything apart from like really crazy weed killers, which I don't use. Uh, and so it is a bit of a problem. So it belongs to the family of um plants like morning glory and sweet potatoes. So if you've ever grown morning glory, you'll recognise that the shape of the flower, they're really, really pretty. And um, there's two different types, apparently. I have had to look this up because I really didn't know anything about it. I've always just had this plant in the category of absolute nuisance, total disaster, lots of hard work, pain in the neck. And I thought, no, I'm gonna have to look this up because it's I want to know a bit more about these guys. There are two types apparently. There's a hedge bind weed, which is the one I've just been talking about, that's got these really large, beautiful white trumpet-shaped flowers, super vigorous. I would love actually to measure how fast they're growing because they're quite extraordinary, native to Britain as well, and um they're the they're the most obvious ones that you see growing up through hedgerows or trees or whatever, they're just incredible and very pretty. And then there's the field bind weed, which is much smaller, and it's got very pretty pink and white flowers, so it's mostly like ground cover, it kind of just spreads over the ground, doesn't really go up. And often found in fields, and I think I have that actually. Um I must make a note. Well, I don't know, I don't know whether I'll dig that up or not. It doesn't seem to be as much of a problem as the hedge bindweed does. Now, interestingly, native to Britain and much of Europe, very interesting. For some reason, I don't know why I thought it was an import, but it's not. And um, it absolutely loves it here. So it's one of those plants that you wish other plants could copy what bindweed does because it's so successful and such a fabulous plant. I wish my annual seedlings could grow a couple of metres in a season and flower as beautifully as these guys do. Now the bindweed has really long roots and they spread for metres metres underground horizontally, and they are like this incredible source of energy for the plant, which is why if you leave even a tiny little bit of root behind in the soil, it can make a whole new plant. Now, the annoying thing about bindweed is that it wraps around other plants and it spirals around them, and I think it is going in an anti-clockwise direction. Now I learnt this a few years ago that climbing plants have a preference as to whether they go clockwise or anticlockwise. And ever since I read that, I've been looking at them all to try and work out which one it is, because I think that's really fascinating that something is coded into their genes that says, guys, we want to go left at this point or we want to go right at this point and keep going right. I think that's really, really clever. But of course, the downside is that it wraps around everything and kind of doesn't necessarily strangle it. Well, it it kind of does actually, because it's found its way over to my sweet peas, so I had to detangle it from all of my sweet peas, and it's really, really strong. You end up having to snap it like with your fingers, with your nails to just break off individual chunks because you can't just pull the whole lot out. And um, yeah, it just kind of smashes everything together, kind of strangles it everything on its way to get up to the sunlight. Now, I've been reading that the flowers produce seeds that can stay in the soil for years and still be viable. Again, why can't other annuals do this? I just don't know. Um, and it also spreads around with compost on the boots, uh on the soles of your boots, rather, in any manure or any machinery, like even just like things like wheelbarrowing from one place to another. And it's obviously a disaster because it of this strangling technique that it has. So it just kind of swamps everything and um blocks out the light. And just totally dominates everything. It's also competing for water and nutrients as well. And takes you longer to harvest things, and crops look really messy. But when I was reading about it, there are apparently some benefits to it. So let me share them with you. Pollinator value. Who would have thought? I mean, I haven't actually ever seen any bees on the flowers. But I'm wondering whether other types of buzzy things like going and pollinating it. So it's got nectar in that um cup or trumpet shape, which they all love. And um one of the other perks of it apparently is soil stabilization, which of course I hadn't thought about, but with a root network as extensive as what it has, it helps to bind the soil together and reduce erosion. So it's actually got quite a lot of um perks to it, to be honest. And um no wonder it's enjoying everything on the field because the soil is great. Uh, there are lots of things that go upwards, like all my Heras fence panels, which is what the sweet peas are up, and um, it gets lots and lots of lovely sunshine, so um it's absolute bindweed heaven up there, and I was feeling a little bit smug actually, which was silly of me because I knew I had one patch and I'm very, very careful around that area, but I did not know that I had it in the entrance area as well. So digging it apparently is futile because you know you risk breaking up the roots, and it's just got a huge system anyway. So, what you're supposed to do apparently is just keep um taking the shoots down to the ground to weaken the root structure, and basically that is apparently the way to deal with it. Um, and I guess once I've got crops in this bed, then I'm not going to be trying to dig up any more roots. I will just literally snap everything off at the base as soon as I see it coming up. There are other techniques like smothering with silage tarps or black plastic. Um I'm not going to do that because I need the bed space to do things in and I haven't got any plastic on the soil. Um, so yeah, and obviously there is a herbicide route which I would never go down because I am chemical free, so can't do that either. But definitely better to get on it quickly because I swear they have grown about a foot just in this week. So uh I've got a little bit more to do tomorrow because I want to get all the rest of the seedlings out this weekend, and I know I say that to you nearly every weekend, but this weekend it is absolutely happening. Like this is my mental cutoff point. I think anybody that doesn't get in the ground this weekend is either going to get given away or composted because I just cannot be dealing with any more seedlings looking at me in trays. I need a break for July at least until I start the whole seed sowing thing again. Now that is what I wanted to talk to you about tonight, and I have done. Um I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and um do please get in touch with me about if you use plugs or starts, whatever you call them, um, from wherever you're growing, because I am genuinely interested in that. So have a wonderful weekend, and um, do please come back and join me on Tuesday. Or actually, probably by the time I get around to it, it'll probably be Wednesday morning, but that you get it. But I do actually record them on Tuesdays and Fridays. So, all the very best from me. Have a wonderful weekend.