Dried flowers are not really my thing. But strawflowers and statice are two of the most useful flowers I grow, so they’ll never be eliminated from my growing plan. Statice is stiff, and it acts as an armature in arrangements, holding up other flowers. And left in the vase, both statice and strawflowers sometimes dry themselves.
Right now I have a beautiful blue-flecked pottery crock, filled to the brim with copper and apricot strawflowers, and it’s been on my dining room table for nearly three weeks. During the first week I checked a couple of times and added water as needed, but after that I forgot, and yesterday when I checked, the crock was completely dry. A few blooms had drooped, but most were still standing tall and beautiful. I don’t know enough about strawflowers to know how and why some of them can dry themselves while standing in a vase, but it does seem to happen to many of the blooms. I know that if I wanted dried strawflowers I would need to hang them upside down in a dark, dry place, but that’s not for me.
Last month I finalized my 2022 growing plan, and of course statice and strawflower were included. But I also evaluated which varieties have done well this year and which ones should probably be eliminated. I weeded out two varieties of strawflower – Pomegranate and Scarlet – because they simply aren’t very attractive to me and didn’t combine well with my other flowers. ‘Apricot Mix’ is my favorite, followed by ‘Vintage White.’ Two pink varieties and a copper will give me all I need for next year.
I decided that all the statice varieties would return, but I’ll plant far less ‘Seeker Yellow’ than I did this year. It opens as a bright canary yellow – never the easiest color to use in arrangements – and although it can be charming as small accents, I’ll never use tons of it. On the other hand, Seeker varieties of Rose and Light Blue are fabulous. So is ‘QIS Apricot’ which is a muted salmon that changes over time.
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