Your Potted Annuals

A good friend said the other night how attractive my flowers were and it dawned on me that those 25 years I spent growing annuals by the thousands taught me some things that aren’t emphasized to my knowledge anymore. I had many great years when people paid me to do my passion, creating plant pot sensations for their, and mine, enjoyment. This isn’t the place to think about what a blessing that was, but to those of you that fueled my passion, Thanks!!!!

The following seems cruel, but it’s not, and it works as long as you are also watering and providing the necessary nutrition. I water my plants every two days and feed with a granular Miracle Gro Flower fertilizer monthly.

Let’s get started and since I grew up with Clint Eastwood and still remember this movie vividly, I am going to call them

The Good

The Bad

Followed as only it can be, by

The Ugly 

Summer Care

If you also want to have beautiful annuals, here are the quick steps to success. Note that in photo 1, the flowers are even from the top of the basket to the sides, nice and proportional. In photo 2 and 3, they have grown out and gravity has pulled them down and now all the flowers are basically not in the basket but hanging from it.

Here's the why we do photo 4 and 5, cutting them back to the edge of the container.  Its July 20 and I just cut mine back for the second time and hope to do it once more in August. If you let them grow another month as they are in 2 and 3, they will keep getting uglier and uglier. This creates a view where the blooms are 2 feet from the container and the container is basically empty. 

You probably, as I am, will be tempted to put them out of their misery and dispose of them. The reality is that your annuals should be singing joyfully "look at me, please look!!" until the 3 weeks before frost. Yes, I admit it, plants sing to me, crazy or blessed is up to the beholder.

Note that I cut a full 39-gallon garbage can off of 7 pots of annuals.  

Questions are appreciated so please call or text. Let's enjoy summer, moment by moment, simultaneously enjoying the beauty created by nature, and the way the sunshine makes us feel.