Hello and welcome to a warm and sunny Tuesday 5 August 2025.

I'm back to cheerful business this week. However, apologies for my voice on this episode: I have got a cold at the moment.

I've topped up one of the IBCs with a new water pump, which has been great and saved a lot of effort with no spillage, although it took the same amount of time as doing it by hand. I've also been planting out more of my strawflowers: some of them are flowering nicely and they're very pretty. Some great news: my hen, Shirley Bassey, has successfully hatched her babies and they're the cutest little bundles of fluff ever! I'm so in love with them already and Shirley is doing a great job.

In tonight's episode I answer a question about how I selected my sweetpeas for 2026 and also exactly how I compile my 'availability list' for my florist. I have made up an availability list template on a spreadsheet and I make a new one for each order using this template. I am a great lover of spreadsheets so I find it easier to do it this way but you could also do it on a notes app or on a piece of paper.

This morning I visited a fellow local grower, Fiona at Chiltern Sky Flowers, for a walk-around her plot. She shared lots of information with me and answered all of my questions: it's always brilliant to have this opportunity and if you're new to growing then I'd encourage you to visit as many growers as you possibly can. Fiona also runs workshops and you can find more information about these and her flowers here: https://www.chilternskyflowers.com/. Her insta is also well worth looking at because she's an incredible photographer!

I really hope you enjoy this episode: please come back and join me for the next one!

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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.