Getting Perennials On A Budget, Importing Water & My New Water Pump Has Arrived!

Hello, it's Tuesday 14 July 2026.

Happy Tuesday! It's hot but not as hot as last week, thank goodness. I hope you're well. 

I've had a busy weekend: I had to import water because my IBCs finally ran empty, so all the details of this. Then my new submersible water pump arrived, which should make watering quicker and easier. If you're in the UK, I'd love to know your watering technique?

In this evening's episode I have an update for you on the flowers on the field right now including news on the relay planting technique I'm trying, plus details of the new seeds I've purchased for 2027, and the perennial I've just bought on a budget. I'm also sharing Piggy's clever technique for staying cool (Piggy is one of the hens). 

Finally I'm ending with a list of jobs I have to do this week including working out what I'll have looking beautiful for an early-August wedding. It's not easy working this out so far ahead of the event but it has to be done! Wish me luck!

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

Connect with me

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 0:03

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 a very warm welcome to the latest episode. It is actually a very warm welcome because it is still extremely warm outside. It's Tuesday, the 14th of July 2026, not 2028, as I said last week when I listened back to one of the episodes. I think it was Tuesday. I was a little bit horrified, so apologies for that. I'm sat about two inches away from my tower fan. Thank goodness I managed to get that. It's been an absolute lifesaver. It's incredible. So the temperatures dropped a little bit yesterday and again today, but now the cloud has cleared away, it is bakingly hot, and the forecast has changed again. I was hoping we were going to have some showers at the end of this week, but it's not looking likely. It's now looking to be at least another 10 days of no rain, which is absolutely bizarre, and I don't know how everything's going to manage, to be honest. Um, I mean things are fine on the field, but just everywhere else, everything is absolutely baking. I did a garden this morning, and I was so disappointed. I hadn't been last week because I was away, and in fact, not the not the Tuesday before either, and it was literally just burnt to a crisp, and I was so bitterly disappointed because I've worked so hard to get it to look really great, and it hasn't been irrigated for some reason. I'm not quite sure why. And everything was just over and burnt and baked, and the soil was incredibly dry. It was it was so demoralizing. I was just cutting back masses and masses of stuff that normally you wouldn't be cutting back already, and um everything just struggling. Now I know when the rains come everything will recover and all the rest of it, but it just seems a shame not to try and help the gardens along a little bit because some things just simply won't make it through, and that seems an awful waste to me. But there we go. I've had a massive case of the holiday blues in the last week. I'm always super grumpy when I get back from holiday. I find it quite hard to settle. I'm always desperate to get back, I can't wait. I'm so excited. I went straight to the field, everybody got a cuddle, all the chickens, but then the kind of doom sets in, and all I want to do is just get on a plane and go back. And um, I didn't go to the supermarket for about four days because I just couldn't face it. And I went in, I was just really cross. I was like, this is rubbish, this is terrible, I don't want this, this is awful. And uh yeah, it's yeah, just really, really had the blues, and I think coming back to these temperatures as well, everything being so much like hard work. Sorry if I sound really moony. I don't mean to be moony at all, it's just it just is hard work, and I would love to start the episode off by not moaning about the weather, but it's really really challenging. Um, yeah, well the flowers are doing the flowers are doing fine because they get watered every day. Um certainly all the annuals are getting watered every day, the perennials are not I'm doing them on a sort of as and when basis. They are doing absolutely fine, but obviously I need them to be at their best, so I'm gonna I'm I am having to water them, and then the shrubs having a water as well, and the roses, so it's the watering has turned into a bit of a mission, but I've got some exciting news about how that's going to be transformed later in the episode. The sunflowers are very interesting, so I had um two different batches. I'm trying a new um a new one this year called well I can't remember what they're called, but they're the pro-cut sunflowers, so they're like the professional ones, and um it could have been you that sent me the recommendation to grow them actually, and they've been amazing. And I planted them out in two separate places just to have a bit of a test. So knowing how robust they are, or certainly the normal ones that I have been buying all my life up until this point have always been really tough and just got on with the job wherever I've put them. So half of them have gone in the new beds where Nigel lifted the turf for me. Now the soil has not been cultivated or amended, it's not had any compost or anything put down, so whoever's gone in there's just had to really like strap in and get on with it. And those guys have not done particularly well, they've just started to flower, but they're incredibly thin and they're not spindly per se, they're not like the whomfing great things that I had last year, but I'm I'm guessing that these things are just different because they're just professional ones. But they are quite small, they haven't grown massively, and they've just started to flower, and the flower heads are quite small, so that is entirely soil-related because they have been watered every day apart from when I went away, and I've been keeping a very close eye on them, but they just clearly the soil is not supporting them in the way that it needs to. Now, some things that have gone out on that soil have not had a problem at all. The agrastema have just been flowering incredibly, the Achilleas and all the perennials are in the soil, the roses are in there, everybody else is okay, but some flowers just a little bit hit and miss, they're at the top of the slope. So I'm wondering if um nutrients are just moving down or it's just a little bit drier up there. The water tends to well, I say water, but what little tiny bit of water we've had obviously just tends to flow downwards. So they haven't been doing well. So the second batch is an experiment. I thought I would put them in the vegetable garden. So this is an area that the chickens cleared for me initially, and then my other half went in and took the nettles out because I was the only thing left standing that the chickens didn't rip up. And I've made that my little vegetable garden for this year, and that's been super productive. The soil is amazing, and because my other half can't do things by half, he ended up just turning over the soil, not to any significant depth, because he knows I'm always yakking on about no-till, but he said, in order to get the nettles out, that's what he had to do. So I couldn't watch, I left him to it. But what it meant when I went in to go do the planting is that it was absolutely effortless to plant anything in the soil, it just sort of parted, it was just amazing, super quick and easy, and everything that's gone in there has been really happy and very productive. So I've got spinach coming out my ears, potatoes, turnips, beetroot, peas. Uh, the beans have climbed so high they've actually burst through the netting at the top, and a lot of the beans I'm having trouble to actually reach them because they're so tall. So everything's fine in there. So I thought I'll put the second batch of sunflowers in there and see what happens. And the difference is enormous. So the sunflowers in the veg plot are quite fat and they just look like they're super happy, they have put on more growth, they're just a lot more robust and they look a lot healthier, so they're not at the same point of flowering as the other guys because they were sown a couple of weeks later. But I think when they do fly, they flower. Sorry, they're going to be quite a different kettle of fish. So that was a very interesting lesson. Um, one that I kind of knew the answer to before I even did it. But at the time the first lot of sunflowers went in, I'm not sure the vegetable garden was actually ready to have anything planted. So live and learn there. If the flowers turn out to be as beautiful as the first ones seem to be, then I will make a much bigger effort with them next year. But it's very interesting to see the comparison. They both have the same amount of water, same amount of absolutely everything, so it really has just come down to the soil and the location. The Panicum Frosted Explosion, the grasses are flowering and they are so adorable. I'm so glad I grow them. I wish now I'd done like a hundred because they're so much fun to look at, they just make me smile, very cheerful, and as I say, they've just got this frosted explosion of fluffy little things coming out the top. They are amazing, so I cannot wait to see where they end up. The bells of Ireland have been interesting. They've suddenly decided that they're going to grow, so they've looked the same height for weeks and weeks and weeks, which has probably been about 30 centimetres, something like that. And in the last week to 10 days, they've suddenly shot up, so they're now like 45 centimetres. Quite amazing. So I'm just leaving them. Um, I keep forgetting to put them on my availability lists because I'm an idiot, and I'm just going to leave them and see how tall they'll get. Um, but they are looking really, really cute. The relay planting in the agristema beds. Now I was talking about this a couple of weeks ago. This is a new technique that I'd been reading about, and it's where you plant your new little seedlings in amongst existing flowers so that when the existing flowers have finished, you don't have to wait ages to put anything in the ground. So just in between the rows of the agristema, I've planted a selection of things, including Cosmos, some asters, I think the gomfrina went in there, a few other bits and pieces that I can't remember now, but they've kind of gone in between the rows of the agostema, and they are getting watered every day, and they're doing absolutely fine, they're coming along really nicely. So when the agrestema have finished, which they haven't quite, I'm going to cut them down at the soil level. I'm not going to pull them out, I'm going to leave the roots in the soil so that it doesn't disturb anything else. And then the second lot of stuff will just come through and take the space left by the agristema. So I'm really pleased how well that's worked out. I'm definitely going to do that again. The zinnias that I planted out a couple of days before I went away and then left them for a week. They all collapsed while I was away, but I had a feeling I'd be able to get them back, and if not, I was going to have a really good try. And they have now come back. So they are now all facing upright, which is great because they were all lying on their sides looking sorry for themselves, and they are all absolutely fine. So I've kind of got there the tops of them to just poke through the netting, support netting, so that they they have a bit of a focus, they know what they're up to. And the zinnias that are next to them, which were like the earlier batches, they've already been pinched and they're already sticking way up through the netting, and they are looking very promising. So I cannot wait to see them because I'm growing two new different colours this year. Um, if you were listening last year, you'll know that I grew these absolutely vile colours last year, which didn't to me look like they did on the packet, but it was just how they came up, and they were just shockingly bright, you know, just sort of violent but acidic colours, and they were just horrible. And they were also next to the sweet peas where the duck water gets thrown, and they hated that location, so they got all sorts of mould, and I have no idea why because everything else has done perfectly well in that bed, but it just was not the ticket for them, possibly not enough airflow. So I've put them down at bed four, which is the lowest bed at the bottom of the slope. And when I was doing my trial beds in 2024, this is the kind of well, roughly the area where I had my zinnias the first time when I was trialling them, and they did really well there. So I don't quite know what possessed me to move them, but one of those silly learning curves. So the zinnias have gone in in bed four, and I've gone for two different shades this year. So I've got Isabella and sorry, Isabellina and Zinderella. One of them is purple, a very, very pale purple, almost like a lilac, and one of them is yellow. And because the names for me just got the same number of L's and Ena's and all sorts of stuff in, I can never remember which one is which. So basically, I've got like a lilac one and a pale yellow one, and I'm very excited to see how they come up because I have a wedding in August which has got a pale yellow colour scheme, so I'm praying that those guys are going to be ready by then. The sweet peas are not looking particularly sweet anymore. Um, they really, really peaked while I was away, which is just typical, and they've had um quite a lot of cutting back and deadheading and um taking down. Um, I'm hoping they'll have a second flush, but I don't think they're gonna like this heat. Um, you know, they're on these fence panels which are facing west and they're basically just getting absolutely cooked all afternoon. And I know they're struggling because they're covered in aphids, which I have been washing off when I've been watering them, but it's just a sign that the plants are struggling and the aphids are just taking advantage of that fact. Haven't got aphids on anything else, just the sweet peas. So I'm wondering if when the temperature's dropped, if I've pruned them back enough, I will get another flowering. That would be amazing. Speaking of amazing, the Rudbeckia look incredible, they're really, really, really tall plants. Um, these were grown by my neighbour last year, who is an expert grower, and they are absolutely stunning plants, and they're in the new perennial section because I for some reason decided not to move them. And they are just these gorgeous orangey, browny, just they're just absolutely flowering their socks off. Also, flowering their socks off is the echinacea, which just can't get enough of this weather, and in a week they've practically all opened. They look stunning. I really, really, really love those. It's very interesting to stand on the plot in these sustained heat wave conditions and really look around and see the plants that just could not give a monkeys what the weather throws at them. Really, really robust, and that would be the Echinaceas, the Rudbeckia. Um the bearded iris, surprisingly, I don't know why I'm surprised, but I am a bit surprised. They are carrying on like it's just a regular day, and there's absolutely nothing to see here. They're all interplanted amongst the peonies. The peonies have had a total crisis, they're very, very unhappy. I need to go and put some um bark chip around them actually this afternoon because they are really looking like they're just about to give up the ghost. And the other perennials, you know, the Achille absolutely loves it, Achillia the Pearl, loving it. Um, so yeah, it's it's really interesting, you know, to see the plants that are just doing superbly. It's very encouraging. Um, now the water situation. Well, this got really, really dicey after I spoke to you on Friday. Um, I made plans to go and refill the IBCs with water. So I have a place locally to me that will supply me with water. I have to go and get it. So, what I did last week was buy an IBC, a spare IBC from eBay, and it's turned out to be a bit of a disaster actually, and I'm really no good with eBay, I've got into a mess with it in the past. I just just for some reason I just never have any luck. I've never been able to sell anything or successfully buy anything in all the years that eBay has been going. But I bought this eBay because it was not very expensive and it was not very far away. And the thing is, uh I don't want to buy something for sort of £40 and then have to drive for two hours to go and collect it because once you add the time and the fuel on, it doesn't make any sense. So I bought this one from a buyer down the road and arranged to collect it after I'd purchased it and absolutely heard nothing from the seller whatsoever, and I'm absolutely livid about it. I really am. Um, I'm cross with myself for not messaging the seller first and saying when am I going to be able to pick this up? Because I need it quite soon, and also for the fact that you know this guy's now taken my money and won't even reply to my messages. So I've asked eBay to cancel the order, and they've said not yet, because something about needing to dispatch it or something. I'm like, Well, it's a collection, so there is nothing to dispatch. I can't return it once I've had it because I won't have it unless I go and get it, and I can't go and get it if the guy doesn't get in touch with me. It's very irritating. So, what we had to do was carry one of the IBCs that I have on the field already, and I've got three, carry that out of the field, put it in my other half transit van, and take that to go and collect the water. But what it meant was I had to empty them on Friday night. Now, this wasn't going to be a problem because I was down to the literally the last hundred litres in there, so I knew that they were practically finished, but because they feed into each other, number two feeds into number three, and vice versa. I'd finished number three and then decided that I'd use number two to go and collect the water, and just I thought I'd better just check and have a look in the top and see how much water is left in there. And there was actually quite a bit, so I had to empty all of that out, and I thought, well, I might as well just use it for the plants. So everybody got an absolute soaking on Friday night, which was they loved it, they couldn't believe their luck. So then Saturday morning we went to collect this water, and it's amazing. It's amazing. I'm always surprised, I don't know why, but I am how clean water that comes from the mains is because I'm so used to dealing water with water, sorry, from the IBCs up there, and it's always a little bit grubby, which I've always been um a bit embarrassed about when the florists come to pick up and they can see the water, and they must think, oh god, this is disgusting. But it is all rain water, but because the IBCs were never cleaned, and they were just on the field, like I didn't buy them, they were just there, and they just sort of always seem to have a bit of algae in them. And I don't know if you've ever had to do anything with IBCs, but they're actually quite difficult to actually kind of clean them, really, to you know, to get the sides and the top and everything done. It's a bit of a mission impossible, and I can't put any cleaning products through because it's water that the chickens may drink. So, although they collect the rainwater and it doesn't tend to stay in the IBCs for very long. I mean, I suppose the maximum over the winter is a couple of months, but um I do get through quite a bit of water because I'm always quite generous with the ducks over the winter. But um, yeah, the water just always comes out a little bit green, a little bit murky looking, not very nice. So I was very excited to actually have really, really pristine water on the field now for the first time. And IBC3's had a really good clean out, and I've got all the little bits um from the where the water comes out where you open the tap. I've cleaned out all the mucky bits there, so it's absolutely pristine, it's amazing. What I've also decided to do is actually just take water from my home to the field in um old containers, and just when I've when I've cut flowers, I can use that fresh tap water in the buckets instead of using the water from the IBCs because I'm sure it's a lot better for the flowers, and it looks a lot better when the florists see it as well. So, in light of all of that, I also bought myself a pump which I think I told you about in Friday's episode. I was super miffed that my other half won't let me use this fancy dancy expensive pump he's bought, and with good reason, because I there is a chance I would break it, so I thought no, I'm gonna order my own. So I've ordered my own, and it is a submersible pump that is designed to be dropped into water butts or anything like that, any kind of container like a pond or a paddling pool or anything, and it sucks the water out, so it's got a battery and it's got a pump, and apparently the battery lasts about 40 minutes, which is amazing, and it's got this kind of little holster that attaches either permanently onto some kind of structure next to the water, or it's got like a little clip, so that I've clipped that over the IBC. So it all arrived yesterday about 10 o'clock at night, and I was on the edge of my seat. It was like Christmas Day, I couldn't wait for this parcel to arrive. Got it all out, had a look at it, and then took it up to the field this morning and tested it out. I nearly took my eye out because it's extremely, extremely powerful. I can't believe it. Um, apparently, it pumps 2,000 litres of water per hour. Now the IBCs only hold a thousand litres, so technically I could empty an entire IBC in 30 minutes, which is slightly concerning because I normally make them last months, months, and I do all this painstaking watering with watering cans, and I'm super super cautious. And when I just plug this thing in this morning, so you you drop the submersible uh pump into the IBC, and then you clip the battery pack onto the side, and then you press the button on the nozzle, and this enormous jet of water came out. I was absolutely horrified, I couldn't believe it. So I'm gonna have to be super careful with that. So, what I've also bought is 50 meters worth of hose, which is ironic because we've just had a hose pipe band come in in my area, which is very annoying. So I'm going to have to hide it under the plants so nobody sees it. So I'm not taking any notice of that nonsense. If Thames Water cannot manage their own water supplies, that is their problem. And they can't because they've stripped everything out of the company and not made any new reservoirs or any infrastructure whatsoever. And then so they've saved no water for us, and we've had like the wettest winter, the wettest spring. It was unbelievable how much water we had this spring. So for them to turn around and say, Oh, we've got a hose pipe ban, I think, yeah, you can stick that, I'm afraid. So I'm gonna have to hide hide my hose in case they go over in a helicopter or something ridiculous, and get the hoses sorted out, and then I'm gonna have a hose running down one end of the field coming off this pump, and then another one going the other way, and then each one is gonna have a spray gun on the end, so I will be able to do some proper watering. And this pump has a timer, which is amazing, so you can set it for five minutes, ten minutes, or fifteen minutes, which sounds very exciting. But if you think about how much water I would get through if I left it for 15 minutes, it doesn't bear thinking about. So I won't be doing that, I will be doing it under very, very close supervision. But that's very exciting to have that and to have all this water up there. And we also went back on Monday, oh so yesterday, we went back yesterday and got another thousand litres, so we've got two up there now, which will hopefully get me through until the next lot of rain arrives. Now, the chickens, I think I've said to you before, the chickens have been managing fine in the heat, and the ducks certainly manage fine, they go in their paddling pool, they don't really care. Um, and I actually found um one of the girls' piggy standing in her water bowl the other day. Now I think I mentioned this to you a couple of weeks ago. I used to have a hen, Whitney Houston, who would stand in the water bowls or on the water trays to cool herself down. And I remember thinking, you know, clever girl Whitney, I hope the others are gonna look at this and copy you. And absolutely nobody did. Now I don't think Piggy overlapped with Whitney actually. So Piggy's obviously just learnt this herself, but it probably explains why Piggy's water bowl is a lot muckier than everybody else's because now I've seen her get in and out, I understand why there's a lot of mess in there, but clever girl for doing that. Funny thing happened um on the weekend, I think it must have been oh no, Monday, yesterday. I'm all out of sync with the days. Um there was this weird cockerel crowing noise, and my other half and I were faffing about with the water pump and everything, and not concentrating on the chickens, and I could just hear this crowing, and I thought, oh, I wonder if Roland is ill, because I can hear I hear everybody's crows. I've got the three boys up there, Roland, who's the dad, and then Lion and Mo Lee, his two sons. And I I can recognise everybody's crow from a distance, I know who is who, and I could hear this cockrel crowing, and I thought, gosh, that sounds really odd. Like Roland must have a sore throat or something stuck in his throat. So I was heading over to investigate because it was so odd, and it turned out to be Dangerbird, who is a girl, which is a very, very interesting development. Dangerbird used to be called Miss Piggy, as in Daughter of Piggy, and then she became so aggressive and violent that I had to rename her Dangerbird because she is just or she was very dangerous to be around, and it's unusual because the hens are very placid. I don't have nasty birds at all. Roland is an absolute gentle giant, and lion is aggressive, but because he's just like a souped-up sports car, he's just bonkers that one. But the girls, very calm, very placid. I've never had aggressive chickens at all. So it was very odd for Dangerbird to be so violent towards me. Anyway, I put it down to her hormones, and true enough, everything just levelled out and she calmed down, and she's a really lovely girl now, and I can stroke her and pick her up, and she comes over for a hug, and she's absolutely fine. But to hear her crow like a cockerel makes me think something's gone a little bit squiffy with her hormones. Now it does happen with the ducks. One of the ducks, one of the girl ducks, has actually changed sex. Apparently, it's a thing with ducks. If the ladies run out of estrogen in their body, they basically morph into being gentleman ducks. So this happened to Dolores, and Dolores used to be a very pretty little girl, she's still very pretty now, but she just looks like a boy now. So all her feathers have changed, and she's got this curly tail feather, which is an indicator that she is a boy. So she and Mr. Wiggles look identical. Daisy just still looks like a pretty girl, and I think something similar happens to the hens as well, because um Adele stopped laying years ago and she's got really, really long spurs. So I think something funny happens to them when their hormones change, and I think something like this is happening to Dangerbird, and I empathise with her entirely because I remember when all of my estrogen left my body, I remember how I felt, and it really wasn't a lot of fun. So she has my sympathy. Now, a little bit of sad news in that Molly is on her way to the other side, she is leaving us. Um, she is my very, very tiny little white bantam, bless her. I've had her a couple of years, and she was old when I got her, so I'm amazed she's lasted this long. She came with another bantam called Gertrude, who passed away not long after I got her, actually, um, which was very sad. So Molly's been on her own for these years. Well, she's been with the other girls, but she's so tiny she couldn't go in with Roland because he was too big and he squashed her. So she is in with Goose, who's got the damaged bottom, and the two of them have struck up this fantastic friendship. They go everywhere together, they sleep together in the nest box, like they're literally joined at the hip. And it's funny because Goose is like my biggest bird, and she's absolutely enormous, she's like a small dog, and then Molly is the tiniest bird we've got. And Molly is really, really sweet, but she's an absolute battle axe of a bird. She's always been not aggressive at all, but just aspirations to be at the top of the pecking order when she's at the bottom, really, because she's kind of the smallest, and she's spent the last three years just pecking everybody and biting everyone and charging round and interfering with things and getting involved in stuff that's not her business. So she's gonna be very sorely missed because she's got a very strong personality, and she's made it through the heat wave fine. I was keeping a close eye on her because of her age, and she made it through all of that, and then I let her out this morning, and um she was on that pathway, bless her. So I've said my goodbyes to her and put her in um a little tiny enclosure in the main hen house with goose so she can stay with the girls, and I'm gonna pop up and see how she's getting on this afternoon. But she is on her journey to the other side, bless her, and she will be very sorely missed. She's such a character. Now, um, back to the field. So I have just bought myself some new seeds for this year and next year. I bought myself some seeds, uh, I couldn't help myself, I just had this idea popped into my head, I need seeds, and I just couldn't fight it. So I've bought myself some cephalaria, some more scabius, because they seem to do really well on the plot, and I'm actually just good at growing them, so I thought, you know, stick to what I'm good at, and some more aguistema, because that is just like my plant of the year. And then I thought I would have a go at some perennials. Now, the perennials that I've got on the field, I did grow the Achillea, the Pearl myself, but a lot of the others, the Rudbeckia, the Echinacea, were actually grown by a neighbour of mine who is a fantastic grower, but he is not doing it anymore. And try as I might, I have not been able to convince him to grow more perennials just for me. So I thought, nope, be brave, put the big girl pants on, I'll have a go myself. So I've bought some verbena hostata seeds, some physistigia, and some porovskia because I am totally in love with porovskia and it is wildly expensive. So they have it in my wholesaler, and I was in there pricing up a job the other day, and it was just the pricing is just wild. And I said to the owner, why is it so expensive? And he said, Well, it just is. So I thought, right, well, I'm gonna grow that myself from seed. But I have picked up a couple of plants because when I went back in yesterday, uh, my wholesaler had some nine centimetre pots of Perovskia at a very, very good price. So I've actually bought a tray of those, and I'm gonna get those guys in the ground, and then I'm gonna have a go with the seeds myself and just see how I get on with those. Now, you know that I love getting your questions, and I had a great question this week from 57th Parallel Gardening in Sweden, who is doing so well with her flowers this year. Loving the photos, it looks absolutely incredible. I'm so excited, so excited about it. And her question was how many florists am I selling to at the moment, and what's the situation with sales through the hub? So great questions. Florists I'm selling to, actively selling to this year, only a handful. So I've got Jo, my wedding and event florist, who I did the interview with. Sorry if you can hear the dog barking outside. She's obviously seen someone walking past. Um, Jo, my wedding event florist, who I sold to last year, sold to her this year, and then I've got another couple of florists that I have sold to, and then obviously the very recent one was Ali last week that I told you about. So, yeah, very small number. I I'm I would love to have some more, but I'm still I've it's just well, it's just a confidence thing. Like there are lots of flowers on the field, and I just sort of have these wobbles about um going to get lots more florists, or trying to go and get a lot more florists, and then not be able to actually fulfil the orders. Um I think it's a really stupid thing. I uh even as I say it out loud, I recognise it's a stupid situation, and I really need to just get over myself and just have a whole load of florists that if I have to say no, I haven't got anything, then I have to say no, it's better than having too much product and not enough places to sell it to. It's just that whole confidence thing again and getting myself out there and pushing things, and I do just find it so difficult, and so I've been a bit of a chicken, and I haven't kind of enacted my marketing plan in the same way that I should have done, and I haven't been trying to add new florists. Hang on one second, I'm just gonna go murder the dog. Right, sorry about that. I am back. Hopefully, that's not um all her barking is not apparent on the recording. So it's enough florists at the moment for me to feel comfortable that I can cope with everything, that I'm not letting people down by not having enough product, and that I can manage all the relationships in the way I want to. So I'm reasonably comfy with it the way it is right now. I'd love to have another couple on board by the end of the year, and then I would feel like I've achieved something because I've still um got a lot more on board this year than I had last year, so um okay with it, but definitely room for improvement. Now, sales through the hub. This is not good. Um, so I put some um product on there quite early on. I mean, obviously I had that disaster with all the tulips and didn't have anything to sell, and also the alliums, and I've since read some reviews of people saying that Farmer Gracie's bulbs are often not up to the standard that they were expecting. So hopefully I won't get sued for saying that actually with hindsight. Don't tell anybody I said that. Uh, so maybe that explains it because normally um bulbs I get bulbs from Jay Parker's and they're excellent, and all the tulips were fine this year, it's just obviously the rats just beat me to it. Um so I didn't have anything as early as I liked. Then I started selling to my wedding and event florists, so I didn't have any enough excess to go onto the hub, and then when I did have some product to go on the hub, it didn't sell, and I was um a bit disappointed about that, and then I didn't have enough to go on the hub because I had small weddings and I already had the stock allocated to go to the weddings, so I haven't put anything on the hub in the last week or so. I also then held back because of the heat wave because I was a little bit concerned about how things were going to manage. Then, of course, I went away for a week, so there was a whole other week that I couldn't do anything there, and also I was away on the Sunday, which is when everything needs to be uploaded to the hub. So there was like another week that I missed because I was away on a Sunday. So, all in all, bit of a disaster, and the hub is actually not operating this week because um uh well it's just not operating this week, so uh I am going to put some bits on over the next couple of weeks. I have another wedding on the 1st of August, so I'm hoping that I will be able to put my stems on the hub in the run-up to August without obviously compromising the August, 1st of August wedding. There's another, there's a few more in August and then a few more in September. So I am still very much looking forward to selling on the hub. I know I sounded a bit grumpy about the hub before, and my mother actually phoned me and said to me, Oh, you sounded really cross with the hub. It's like I'm not cross with the hub. Um, I just um honestly I'm not cross with the hub, it's amazing. I was just disappointed that nobody bought my stranger and I just had a bit of a kiddie fit about it. I was just really irritated that nobody bought them, which is just stupid because the you know they obviously weren't required by anybody that week, and it's perfectly fine. They got sold to somebody else, it didn't matter in the slightest, and I just have to stop expecting that the minute I put something out of a sale, everybody's clamouring over themselves to buy it. It's a very arrogant point of view that I have sometimes, and I need to get over that, and as I've said to you before, get comfortable with the word no. So I was not very good at taking my own advice there, I just couldn't cope with the fact that nobody wanted those astrontium. Anyway, so that's where we are with the hub. So I'll be back on it and hopefully selling through it as well because I have got some really lovely stems on the field at the moment. It will be great to see them go off somewhere exciting. Now, the rest of the week, well, this afternoon I'm gonna go up and um make up these new hoses for my new pump, which I'm excited about. I've got the fittings, all the attachments, and hopefully I've got something I can cut through the hose with. Um, so I will be setting all of that up. I need to finish staking the dailias. I started this before I went away, and I have got plenty of netting up there and some road pins, so I'm gonna go and finish staking those guys off because they're doing very well. They're not as big as they were this time last year, but that's because I haven't been very generous with the water for them. I know they like lots of water and I get that, but I was kind of hedging my bets thinking it's gonna rain any day now, and that will do the world of good rather than using up the precious amount that I've got left. Probably not the best call I could have made there, but anyway, that's what's happened, so I've still got time to go and net those guys. I'm also preparing an availability now, uh, availability list now for a wedding on the 1st of August, which is somewhat challenging to work out what is going to be looking perfect in two and a half weeks' time, given that we're already like a month into well at three weeks into a heat wave and no rain forecast for 10 days. So that is going to be a little bit of a brain um puzzle trying to sort that out, but I will do that, and then there's a couple of new places that I'm going to email to see whether they are interested in my flowers. So I'll update you on that when I know whether they're gonna say yes or not. So, yeah, so that's me signing off from Tuesday. I hope you have a wonderful rest of the week. Do come back on Friday for the next episode, please. You're always, always very welcome. All the best.