Kim - the key to annual scabiosa is to cut it before its too far open. You may or may not be able to use the side shoots, depends on your use! If you want really long stems for florists, then the side shoots usually are sacrificed. However, the short middle stems work great for vases! Same with Knautia and perennial scabiosa (the smaller head variety). Last year I used two layers of netting and that worked the best so far. It is a pain to harvest...but the flowers to last and add a nice filler effect! A large number of my annual variety actually wintered over this year and they're about 9" tall now! And, they do reseed sometimes, or you can save the seed pod heads of the flowers you missed harvesting! These look somewhat interesting in fall arrangements as well.

Enjoy!
Wendy

Thanks for the response and your help Wendy. I spoke with some florist customers yesterday and they said they get 'em both ways, single stem without side flowers and main stem with sideflowers. I may cut a bit of both and see how they are received by my customers.
Cheers Kim BFFF

How large an area do some of you growers have planted in Scabiosa? I have seen some at the wholesale floral supply. It was sad looking.
I am assuming it doesn't hold up well from picking to distribution.

Erin