It’s interesting watching videos and reading blogs about how other flower farmers stake their plants- or don’t. I realized last summer how important staking would be for some of the plants. Snapdragons grew crookedly, and it was the devil trying to keep the bachelor buttons, cosmos, and Italian White sunflowers upright.

Heading into this year, I knew to get the netting for the plants in place early, and I created a twine webbing for the dahlias and the branching sunflowers. Here’s the snaps growing through the netting. In the right background are cosmos. They have two layers of netting since they grow so tall.

But some plants are new to me, and I didn’t know they needed staking until they were falling over. The dara, which is a better-behaved relative of Queen Anne’s Lace, is about 5′ tall and started falling over a few weeks ago.

Now I needed a way to get them staked up! I pride myself on using what I have instead of running to the store for every little thing. The challenge was finding things I can use as stakes, so I could use twine to gather the plants and get them upright.

I found an old dowel from off the deck and hunted about feverishly for another stake. Yes, folks, that would be a piece off a broken storm door jamb. This is not the first time I am grateful for Mr. Bee’s scrap metal pile.

I zig-zagged twine across the bed and around the plants. There is a second sowing right next to this one, so even though they aren’t yet blooming, the twine is there now to keep them upright.

The dara looks really pretty all tied from one side of the bed- but in the second photo you can see where letting them lay on their side caused the stems and flowers to grow crookedly.

Feverfew grew right next to the dara in this bed, and I should have netted that too. It’s a dense plant and while the main stems grew perfectly straight, the side shoots needed staking. Here’s the feverfew in June, just coming into bloom. At this point in late July, it’s all picked. Sad face. Next year I’ll grow more.

The rest of this particular bed are gladiolus. Those don’t need staking because I pick them long before they can fall over!

Here’s a bouquet, with a couple gladiola and the dara front and center! So pretty! I’m also showing you one of the sunflowers, it’s ginormous! But I wisely put the staking in place when it was just a baby seedling.

The Northeast weather is hot, humid, and miserable right now but flowers are blooming like crazy! Stay tuned for the zinnia update!