How to plant those flats of annuals
You bought beautiful annuals by the flat, you have loads of colorful annuals that in your minds eye will fill your garden with bloom, but now you need to put them in the ground. Here are a few tips for good success.
First, make sure you keep those plants well-watered before they go into the ground. They are growing in very small amounts of soil and dry out and wilt quickly, so keep your hard spent money and careful picking of the best plants preserved by keeping them watered. By the way, the best plants are sturdy, not leggy, and just budding, not blooming. But if your plants are brought into bloom by the nursery to better catch your eye…. here is the next step.
Cut off all those full lovely blooms. I know you hate to do it, I know it is hard to delay satisfaction of looking at all those little spots of color, but more blooms will replace them…. and they will have the healthy established root system to support them, especially if the weather hits a dry and sunny spell. Cut or pinch off the flowers.
You have cultivated and loosened the ground, it is all ready for your new plant , and now all you have to do is pop them in, right? Well, you could skip this step, but you want your plant to reach full potential and that means taking care of that all important root system at the beginning. When you remove the plant from its growing pack slice it out or carefully shake it out, then with a tool, or garden scissors or a sturdy twig, or your fingers, tease out the roots a little. That means when you see them curling around in the shape of the pot pull them free carefully and then spread out the roots in the planting hole. Once you get started it only takes a bit more time and effort for this step, and the plant will establish so much better and sooner. It seems like a fussy step, but believe me, it makes a big difference.
Fill in dirt around your plant and firm it in, and then water and keep the plant moist for the first week or so. If it is a hot sunny day you can tip its pot over it to keep it shaded for the first day or so, if you like ( this only works with single pots!!!) . Don’t fertilize anything yet, give the plant a little time to get adjusted to the shock of being transplanted.
When you plant annuals one of the lovely things about them is that they bloom their little heads off all through the season, but sometimes they are a little too enthusiastic about it and start going to seed. You do not want your annuals to go to seed, since that spells the end of their life cycle. And besides, they can start to sprawl and look a bit ratty. So you dead head or else give them a little haircut. In plants like alyssum, you give a haircut: just shear off the excess growth to make a more compact plant. With other plants with larger blooms you pinch off the dead blooms before they can set seed. This will renew the urge for the plant to produce flowers and give some strength back to the plant- since making seed seems to be an exhausting process.
Annuals can be fertilized all through the season. I know you are going to have a beautiful garden!
Some good general garden books:
More annual plant fact and hints and tips on planting them:
My annuals page 1
My annuals page 2
Fernlea’s Growing Annuals
