By Mike Darcy
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With warm weather upon us, many of you have already taken the opportunity to shape your yards, gardens, decks and patios with color and style. However, I constantly recommend a practice of container gardening for home gardeners that want to add true unique appeal to their landscapes.
Container gardening allows the use of a variety of traditional and nontraditional flower pots. This includes hanging baskets or planter boxes, mixed in with old watering cans, or even wooden crates. There is literally an endless supply of items to use when customizing your landscape. Many containers remain light enough to be moved to a deck, patio or even indoors. This can be crucial for plants that don’t require full sun. Utilizing light containers allows you to use certain plants, such as geraniums, heliotrope, nasturtiums, bacopa, impatiens and lobelia, as long as you know how much sun, shade and water each plant requires.
Simultaneously, container gardening provides the opportunity to experiment with new plants, increasing the fun and creativity throughout your yard. Most summer annuals will provide color into the fall. By clipping off the old flowers, you will encourage plants to continue flowering instead of going to seed. Sometimes by lightly shearing petunias after they have bloomed, you can get a new surge of flowers. I think it is also fun to try some new plants each year.
Some of my favorite methods include planting flowers that will grow over the sides of the container and then mixing them with flowers of various sizes. This creates a visual effect of the plants growing out of the pot – a look your neighbors will envy! At the same time, hanging baskets can provide a multitude of color, allowing flowers to cascade over the sides of their container.
Of course, container gardening does require some upkeep. Follow these simple tips to keep your plants in bloom:
• Learn how much sunlight is required for each plant. Remember, the plant’s roots are not buried safely in the ground, so they can heat up in full sun.
• Use high-quality potting soil, especially if the plant sits or hangs in an area with constant, drying winds. The soil will retain more moisture and allow the plant to thrive.
• Add fertilizer when first potting the plant, as well as some a little bit later in the season. Constant watering can leach vital nutrients from the soil. The addition of fertilizer replaces what’s lost, thus supporting the plant’s growth throughout the summer.
Container plants, as with any plants, are still a prime target for pests. As with all-things-flora, the Pacific Northwest provides slugs the opportunity to attack any number of plants across a given nightscape. In fact, slugs are commonly seen climbing up the side of containers to feast on their favorite summer annuals. When first putting plants in a container, I recommended lightly applying slug bait as a precautionary measure - especially around young, tender plants. If you are growing annuals, including marigolds and dahlias, you’ve probably already seen them destroyed often enough to understand that despite their small stature, slugs are highly ravenous pests that can destroy gardens incredibly quickly.
When baiting a container plant for slugs, it is important to remember that due to daily plant watering, a bait that is effective when wet is the best way to go. Corry’s® and Deadline®, both containing Meta® active ingredient, are known to maintain their efficacy in weather conditions; helping to minimize slug damage throughout the course of the spring, summer and fall. Also, Meta® active ingredient is readily decomposed into carbon dioxide and water by microorganisms and has been shown not to harm beneficial organisms such as bees, earthworms and Carabid beetles when used according to the package directions. Available in meal, liquid paste or pellet formulations, the slug bait can be used to create an effective barrier against slugs, while not leaving the unsightly or messy look of scattered bait.
Remember, container gardening provides home gardeners and apartment dwellers alike an opportunity to have fun with their plants and flowers. Mixing tall, short, colorful or decorative containers affords a new, creative element for gardeners to explore, helping gardens bloom to their vast colorful potential, adding personality and uniqueness to homes and contributing to an overall greater enjoyment of gardening.
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