Garden Answers

Annuals

What is the secret to successful flower pots?
How do I care for Spanish Butterfly Lavender?
What can I do to keep my geraniums over the winter?
How can I add more color to my fall garden?
Why aren't my petunias blooming and beautiful? ?

Question: I want to put some pots of flowers around my patio, but I've had terrible luck in the past. Can you give me the secret to success?

Answer: You bet! Container gardens are a great way to bring color to an entry or on an expanse of concrete patio. There are three secrets to success: the pot, the soil, and the plants.

Choose a pot that's big enough for a variety of plants, at least 12" across. The larger volume pot will be easier to keep moist during the hot summer months since evaporation will be slower. Be sure the pot has a drainage hole, too.

Potting Soil is the next important element to container gardening success. We recommend Black Gold Potting Soil. It has plenty of organic matter to promote good drainage and aeration and won't clump with watering. By the way, there's no need to put a layer of rocks in the bottom of the pot when using good potting soil. If regular watering will be a problem, add Polymer Crystals to the soil to boost its water holding capacity.

The next step to successful container gardening is correct plant selection. Plants are either sun lovers or shade lovers. Will your container be in the shade, partial shade, or sun? Choose plants that will thrive in their location. If in doubt, look at the stakes we put in each plant. They'll tell you all you need to know about proper plant placement.

Now for the fun part, selecting and arranging your plants. Start with something upright and tall for the center or back of your container. Then select mid-sized plants to fill in the middle and some trailing plants to cascade over the edge. Crowd the plants, so they'll look great immediately and grow better. Cozied plants will shade and protect each other. Also, shaded soil will evaporate out its moisture at a slower rate for less frequent watering.

One more word on plant selection, look outside the norm. Consider non-flowering accents for texture and volume, like ornamental grasses, including Dracaena grass or Blue Oat Grass. Think edible, too. Herbs, kale, and leaf lettuce make container gardens more interesting. Use colored foliage, like coleus and amaranth, to spice up the palate of your flowerpots. And don't forget perennials with attractive foliage. Hostas, with their tropical-looking leaves, add an exotic touch.

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Question: I bought a small lavender plant called Spanish butterfly and the blooms on it have dry little seed things on it. I was wondering since it is drying do I just go ahead and clip off the bloom so that it can grow more blooms?

Answer: What you have is probably a variety of Spanish Lavender. Once the blooms start to fade, go ahead and cut them back. Be sure to cut off the flower stalk only, leaving the foliage. The plant will usually bloom again. Keep it in a sunny place, water it deeply, but infrequently, and fertilize it regularly. Spanish Lavender is NOT hardy here, and is usually grown as an annual. Hope this helps.

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Question: I've brought my geraniums inside and would like to keep them over the winter. What do I need to do for them?

Answer: Geraniums can be tough. While they thrive outside, it can be difficult to get them to do so indoors. Many folks who've tried this end up ditching them and buying new in the spring. Of course, I have a vested interest in directing folks to purchasing new plants!

The main thing that geraniums need is a lot of bright light. The sunniest room inside still doesn't give off the same amount of light as a shady spot outside, so put them in the brightest spot you can. The next thing to consider is the amount of water you give your plants. While outside you may have had to water very frequently, perhaps even daily in the heat of the summer, when they're brought inside, geraniums need much less water. They do into a kind of holding pattern, a dormant state, which uses less water. A lot depends upon your home: the temperature inside your home, the type of heating you have, the humidity, as well as where the location of the plant. For example, above the kitchen sink or in a bathroom, the plant will generally have a great deal more humidity than in most other areas of a home.

Another factor in maintaining a healthy indoor geranium is whether or not it should be fertilized. IF the plant is green, healthy-looking, and still growing, by all means give it a monthly feed with a good houseplant fertilizer (Miracle Gro would be fine). However, if your plant is pale and showing no new growth, do NOT fertilize it. It's in its dormant state and won't benefit from adding fertilizer. Most indoor geraniums will begin to look thin and leggy, which is typical and usually due to lack of light.

The final consideration involves the dreaded budworm which so many of us battle throughout the spring and summer. The winter cold usually kills them off, but if you're keeping your plant inside over the winter you could unknowingly harbor some of these guys in your plant. Warning signs include black pellets on your geraniums leaves or, it you get buds, the failure of those buds to develop and produce blooms. If you see any of these things, come in and see us about ways to control these little monsters!

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Question: I enjoyed great color in my yard all spring and summer. How can I add more color to my fall garden?

Answer: We all want to stave off the colorless months of winter as long as possible. The best flowers to depend on for great fall color are mums and pansies.

Mums are perennials, so they'll come back year after year. They have long been the traditional choice for fall gardens. Now, they're even a better choice. The new varieties have a longer bloom season and a neater, more compact plant, so they don't require pinching back to retain a pleasing shape. And there are always new colors to enjoy. Many of the new varieties will bloom in the spring as well.

Don't forget cool-loving pansies. Use pansies like bookends of color in your flowerbed. Plant them in the fall, and enjoy their color into early winter. But the color show doesn't stop there. Pansies provide early color, too-appearing in February when temperatures begin to warm and continuing to bloom until the weather gets warm in May or June.

To see pansies return in the spring, partially cover with a protective layer of mulch. This will shield them from winter's harsh temperatures and dryness. Be sure to water as needed, however. Most pansies are lost to winter drought.

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Question: Usually this time of year my petunias are full of blooms and really beautiful.  This year there are very few blooms on them.  I've looked for bugs and can't see any.  What could be the problem and how can I prevent this from happening again next year?

Answer: If the plants look healthy, my best guess would be an insect called Geranium Budworm. This insect is a small caterpillar that eats flowers. The plant generally looks fine, but there’s no bloom. Often you can see a small hole in the sides of the buds in the flower cluster where these little monsters have eaten into the flower. They usually only eat the flowers and leave the foliage alone. Sometimes people notice small black pellets on the leaves which are the caterpillar’s droppings.

The fact you haven’t seen any doesn’t surprise me. The caterpillar camouflages itself perfectly with the plant. I’ve looked for them before, knowing they were there and it took me several minutes to see them and they were right in front of me! They color themselves the same as the plant. There are a number of insecticides that will do a good job of controlling Budworm. Regular sprays of Permethrin, Acephate, or Imidacloprid work great. I’d plan on spraying the plant once every week to ten days. Sometimes people have trouble with these guys all summer long and they need to keep on spraying throughout the season, but most people get good control with two or three sprays.

There are other possibilities that would explain the lack of flower on your Petunias. If the plant just doesn’t look good, then getting that plant happy and healthy should do the trick. Sometimes the plant just needs a good dose of fertilizer. If the plant isn’t getting enough sun, it may bloom poorly. Take a close look at the plant to see if anything I’ve mentioned makes sense. One last thing to consider is to cut your plants back to stimulate new growth that will bloom better for you though it’s getting late enough that they’ll be freezing down before too long. If you’d like, bring a sample out to the nursery for us to take a closer look. Hope this helps.

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Bookcliff Gardens
(970) 242-7766
755 26 Road (North 1st at I-70) • Grand Junction, Colorado 81506
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