For gardeners, the ultimate pleasure is to be able to cut flowers from their own garden to bring indoors and to give away to friends and family.

The problem is that picking flowers from the garden reduces the floral show in the yard.

The solution is to establish a separate cultivated area specifically as a cutting garden.

Now is the time to decide what flowers you want in your cutting garden.

Fill your cutting garden with plants that produce the flowers and foliage you love.

Consider making it part of your vegetable garden.

This is production gardening, created to be cut down, so don’t worry about design correctness.

Create a cutting garden much the same way you initially establish a flower garden.

Choose a site that receives generous sun and prepare the soil so that it drains well.

Add humus in the form of compost, peat moss or chopped leaves to improve clay or sandy soil.

Create one or more beds to accommodate the available space.

They can be tucked into sunny spots along the back boundary, in a neglected corner or behind the garage.

While cutting gardens often look beautiful at the peak of the season, this is incidental.

Because they are not intended for display, a purely utilitarian layout makes the most sense.

Once established, they are easier to maintain and require less attention than ornamental beds.

For this reason, cutting gardens usually resemble traditional vegetable gardens.

They are typically planted in widely-spaced rows that are easy to move through and between while planting, thinning, fertilizing, deadheading and harvesting.

Be sure and mix into the soil a granular, slow-acting fertilizer at the beginning of the season to provide consistent, balanced nutrition to the plants over many weeks.

Periodic doses of diluted liquid fertilizer sprayed on plant foliage will boost the energy of certain heavy-blooming plants during peak production.

Rather than interplant seeds or young transplants of many kinds of flowers, group the species of plants for efficient use of space and easy harvest.

To get maximum production, plant in succession: early season, mid-season and late-season bloomers grouped together.

Cluster plants with similar requirements for sun, water and drainage for easier maintenance.

Plant tall types away from where they might shade smaller ones.

To minimize watering and weeding maintenance, spread a two- or three-inch layer of some organic mulch around the plants as soon as they are a few inches tall.

It doesn’t have to be attractive, so use whatever is inexpensive and at hand: chopped leaves, shredded newspaper or straw.

The mulch will discourage weeds, keep the soil moist longer and contribute nutrients to the soil as it decomposes.

Add to the mulch layer if it breaks down to less than one inch.

If you grow self-seeders, such as spider flowers (cleome), removing the mulch at the end of the season will help to clear away most of the seeds.

To maintain flower production of annuals, pick blossoms regularly.

Deadhead those that remain and become faded, thus preventing them from forming seeds which slows flower production.

Water about one inch per week if rainfall is unreliable.

Unmulched beds need more frequent watering.

As soon as the blossoms from one stand have been cut or plants begin to weaken, pull them, cultivate the bed and plant new seedlings to provide cut flowers for weeks to come.

Lots of different kinds of flowering plants are suitable for a cutting garden.

Long-stemmed annuals or perennials are most useful.

Don’t forget foliage plants that contribute texture and color.

You can have your flowers and pick them, too.

“Growing Green” is contributed by Diane Dorn, Lehigh County Extension Office Staff, and Master Gardeners. Information: Lehigh County Extension Office, 610-391-9840; Northampton County Extension Office, 610-813-6613