There’s not an easier way to add color to your springtime garden
than with annual bedding plants.
There’s not an easier way to add color to your springtime garden than with annual bedding plants. Annuals give home gardeners a lot of bang for your buck. After all, you can buy them in inexpensive six-packs or flats, already budded and blooming, and plant them wherever spot color is desired.
Sure, annuals are temporary, but you have to admit they put on some temporary show! Planted now, summer annuals will bloom in our area well into October when our usual first frosts hit. And they’ll be blooming all along the way. Compared to shrubs, trees, vines, perennials and bulbs, annuals are positively cheap for what they do.
The choices are also staggering when it comes to annual bedding plants. You can choose from ground-hugging alyssum to three-foot-high zinnias. Even 10-foot-high sunflowers compared to 6-inch milliflora petunias. Or, the most popular annual flower of them all – shade-loving and easy-to-grow impatiens.
To be completely truthful, practically all annuals are easy to grow. About the only things you’ll have to do is water and fertilize them. Of course, good soil will insure that whatever you plant will get off to a strong start. While annuals are remarkably tolerant to a wide variety of soils, you’ll always do better if you plant them in a well-drained, loose, loamy soil. Our local clay soils should be amended with plenty of organic soil amendments, such as compost, soil conditioner or peat moss, to name a few.
The only other mistake that home gardeners might make is planting in the wrong location of your garden. Although there are notable exceptions, in the main, most annuals love a full sun location. You may be able to get a sun-loving annual to put on adequate show with only four hours of direct sun a day, but you’ll be doomed to disappointment if you plant a sun-lover in full shade or a shade-lover in full sun.
You should also protect newly planted annuals against snails and slugs by placing bait out right after you water them for the first time. It’s amazing how snails find newly planted bedding plants, but I’ve had many a bedding plant chopped off in a snail feeding frenzy the first night after planting!
To keep annuals blooming at the peak of their ability, try to fertilize once a month or so with a complete fertilizer, such as a 10-10-10 formulation. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a liquid or dry fertilizer. I often use a timed-release fertilizer, such as Osmocote, in combination with a liquid fertilizer, such as Miracle-Gro.
Finally, try to deadhead flowers regularly. “Deadheading” is simply a fancy horticultural term for removing spent flowers. Once a flower head reaches the point where its seeds are mature, the plant will usually stop producing flowers. Deadheading fools the plant into putting its energy into more buds and flowers rather than seed.
So get out there and plant annuals. Your local garden center has a full supply of already-started transplants, or you can also plant by seed.
