5 Container Tips and 5 Recipes

Follow These Easy Container Tips

get the most beauty from your patio plants

1. Use sphagnum moss to retain moisture.
2. Planting in sun? Don’t use dark colored containers which soak up more heat. Use the largest containers to give your plants the best root growing environment. Larger containers look more impressive, too.
3. How you water is an extremely important part of container gardening. Use a good potting soil, water often.
4. Choose plant companions with similar water, soil, and light needs
5. Add worm castings to your container soil and fertilize every two weeks

What is a “good potting soil”?
Most bags of soil sold for purposes of container gardening are good, but if you like to make your own ‘Tapla‘ of Dave’s Garden Forums offers this recipe:
5 parts pine bark fines
1 part sphagnum peat (not reed or sedge peat please)
1-2 parts perlite
garden lime (or gypsum in some cases)
controlled release fertilizer (if preferred)
micronutrient powder, other continued source of micronutrients, or fertilizer with all minors .

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Container ideas
Plant Great Containers

More Tips
Almost anything can be a container for plants, but look for a wide enough opening to give your plants some room to spread.
Try several containers together- but stagger heights and keep color/style of containers similar. For added height place a container on a cinder block disguised by the front pots.

Five Beautiful Recipe Combinations

1. Purple Sun:1 Lavender plant, 1 Purple Heliotrope,2 purple petunias, lavender and purple verbenas, 1 licorice plant-Helichrysum petiolare ‘Limelight’, Miscanthus sinensis ‘Super Stripe’ or other striped grass.

   A similar recipe

2. Grandma’s Quilt::2 ‘Lemon Symphony’ Osteospermum, deep lavender violas, 3 ‘Yellow Madness’ petunias,1 ‘Dreamsicle’ Calibrachoa, 1 ‘Victoria’ blue salvia
3. Shady Strange Brew:2 Strawberry begonia -Saxifraga sarmentosa, 1 Light Coral New Guinea Impatiens, 2 variegated ivy, 1 Caladium x hortulanum ‘Rosebud’.
4. Red, White, and Green Fireworks:1 Red dahlia, 2 variegated ivy, 1 fiber-optic grass plant- Isolepis cernua,1 Phormium tenax ‘Variegatum’
5. Sweet Summer Days:  1 Purple Heliotrope, pink snapdragons, 2 Dusty Milller (Senecio cineraria), pink Bacopa, 3 ‘Angelface’ Angelonia angustifolia.

Bonus Combos- just because I like you:

• Tibouchina grandifolia, pink flowered portulaca, Phormium ‘Pink Stripe’, dichondra argentea.
• Snake plant, golden marguerites, Ipomoea batatas ‘Margarita’, and Melampodium divaricatum

⇒ More Container Planting Success.
Container ideas
Recipes for Success- tips for making your own combinations.

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