The page that doesn't ship with the book — because links rot and dates drift, and this page doesn't.
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When the books improve — new flower portraits, refreshed dates, re-verified sources every January — you get the new version at no charge. Etsy doesn't move new files into orders that were already placed, so I send them to you myself. Both editions, attached to an Etsy message, from me. If a version ships and you haven't heard from me, message me and I'll send it straight over.
Current versions
The PNW Cutting Garden Planner — v1.2 (August 2026) · The PNW Cutting Garden Essentials — v1.2 (August 2026)
The first edition covered twenty-five flowers well and left three things almost unsaid. This update is mostly those three, plus seven corrections that came out of checking the book against the research behind the wedding planner.
Feeding— two new pages, and the arithmetic is the point. The book told you to feed and never said what, how much, or how often. It does now. Rates are published in actual nitrogen, so one pound of nitrogen is 20 lb of a 5-10-5, 10 lb of a 10-10-10, or 8.3 lb of feather meal. Same nitrogen, three very different scoops. Once you can do that conversion, every recommendation you ever read becomes usable. The number that surprised me: a 4 × 8 cutting bed wants between one and a third and two and a half cups of balanced granular for the whole season. Rates from OSU Extension EC 1503 and UMass, and both routes land in the same band.
The dry season— how much water, in the months it stops raining. An inch a week is the standard rule, and it is a season average rather than a July number. Once the canopy is full, midsummer moisture loss here runs about a quarter to a third of an inch a day. At that rate a July week is closer to two inches than one. There is a mildew argument inside it too: the book already blames mildew rather than frost for the end of zinnia season, and evening overhead watering is how you buy that mildew early.
Fillers and foliage— the supporting cast has dates now, and the hedgerow greens have a page. Every flower in this book gets a bloom window and a vase life. The fillers had neither, which was a strange gap in a book about timing. All nine now carry a sowing window, a cut point and a vase life, and four of them — cerinthe, bupleurum, ammi and bells of Ireland — want sowing in fall. Then a new page for the greens themselves. Salal runs backwards from the rest of the garden: you cut it fall through early spring and leave the spring flush alone, because the new growth is soft and wilts. Ninebark wants to be woody before you cut it, and does not want a flower cooler. And one page nobody else writes, which is what you actually need permission to cut, because in Washington evergreen foliage is a regulated forest product.
If you don’t have six hours— the page this book owed you. This book opens with me saying I can’t grow a cutting garden where I live. Not enough sun. It then answered that in one line. Now it is a page. Six of the twenty-five say part shade on their own pages, and between them they cover February to September. Two more want sun but forgive an afternoon of shade. And the honest half: peony, rose and dahlia each ask for six hours minimum, and in four they will live without giving you stems.
What it costs— an order log, and cost per stem. Two pages in the log section. The cutting log already collects your stem count, so the year-end tally turns it into your own cost per stem. It falls every year, and it falls fastest on the perennials.
Seven corrections.
Daffodil— the step almost every guide leaves out. Cut it to final length first, condition it alone for four to twenty-four hours, and then don’t recut it. A fresh cut reopens the wound and the sap runs again. Fixed on the flower page and in the harvest table, which had disagreed with each other.
Dahlia— softened from an instruction to what it actually is. The hot-water searing step is widely practised and poorly supported. Cutting at the right stage and getting the stems cold matter more.
Rudbeckia— the one that isn’t reliably hardy here. Rudbeckia hirta’s crown rots in our winter wet even when the cold would not have killed it. The entry says so now.
Calendula— the window undersold the plant. A September sowing can flower through a mild winter and open first the following spring, which makes it close to year-round here.
Sunflower— a tail into early October. The last sowing of the year runs later than the first edition allowed.
Zinnia— two pages that disagreed. The September page still said zinnias hit their best flush of the year in September. The flower page said August. August is right, and the September page now matches.
Bouquet math— whose stems are these? The stems-per-plant numbers are bouquet-length, cut the way a home garden actually cuts. Trials counting full market-length stems run roughly half these numbers, and the table now says so.
Two additions to the harvest pages. Why not the kitchen fridge, which is the ethylene-sensitive list, and that list is most of this book. And flower food, which buys snapdragon three or four days and does nothing measurable for lisianthus, scabiosa or dianthus. Buy the commercial sachets; what the kitchen sugar-and-bleach recipe leaves out is the acidifier.
The Essentials edition gets the same corrections and one fix of its own. It asked you to plant “a row of fillers” and never named a single one. It does now.
The planner is 87 pages, up from 80. The Essentials is unchanged at 28. Nothing was removed.
What changed in v1.1
July 26, 2026
Both books were re-checked against Washington State and Oregon State extension publications, the joint Pacific Northwest Pest Management Handbooks, and growers working in this climate — Floret in the Skagit Valley, Uprising Seeds in Bellingham, Triple Wren Farms in Whatcom County, Territorial Seed in Oregon. Most of the book held up. Seven things changed.
Zinnia— the correction that prompted the rest. The first edition said the September flush is often the best of the year. That is true of cosmos and not of zinnia: August is the peak here, and September mildew ends the crop rather than frost. Fixed on the zinnia page and again on the Fungus Report, where the same claim had been repeated.
Cosmos— now explains why it makes you wait. Cosmos will not bloom in earnest until daylight drops under fourteen hours, which in the Puget Sound lowlands is the third week of August. Sowing in April does not buy earlier flowers; it buys a five-foot plant that flops in the first September rain.
Dahlia— bloom window now split by method. Mid-July from pre-started tubers, August from tubers planted straight into the ground. The old single date was the best case printed as the typical one.
Snapdragon— the thing most sources get wrong here. Snapdragons are hardy in this climate, not tender. Set plants out in early April, three weeks before last frost. Waiting for warm weather costs a month and the best stems.
Strawflower— the drying crop has a deadline. The papery bracts pull moisture back out of the air, so once autumn rain settles in the harvest is over rather than tapering. Cut the drying crop before the rains.
China aster— late August through September. The first edition let them run to Halloween. That happens in a warm dry year; in a normal one, September rain browns the petals first.
Chrysanthemum— moved to October–November. September mums are greenhouse-forced on a manipulated day length. Garden mums in the ground here are later.
Nothing was removed, no page moved, and both editions are exactly the length they were. If you own either book, the new file is already waiting in your Etsy downloads — see the box above.
Dates worth knowing right now
Swan Island Dahlias — tuber orders for spring open August 1.
Dahlia Barn Flower Fest (North Bend) — opening weekend September 4–6, then weekends into mid-October.
Triple Wren Farms (Ferndale) — tuber pre-sale late summer; main sale late fall/winter.
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival — April 2027; exact dates publish in winter. Check back in January.
Checked July 15, 2026. Festival dates shift year to year — confirm before driving.
The Source Directory
Every source in the planner's directory, linked and verified operating as of July 15, 2026. Nobody paid for a place on this list — every source is here on merit. Re-verified every January.
A source that closes comes off this list the January we learn of it. If you find a broken link before we do, tell us — that's the whole point of a living page.