It Pays to Pinch

The most common advice I give to fellow gardeners is to pinch plants back at planting time. And by pinching back, I really mean get rid of the flowers which is the whole reason they bought the plant in the first place. Most people react as if I've told them to remove the heads of their children. But unless you want a straggly, unflower-y mess come late July, pinching off those flowers in May is a must.

The conundrum of plant buying is if the plant isn't blooming chances are you will overlook it. Buying plants can be such a visceral, emotional thing. A blooming plant is more likely to entice you to buy. However, this is not really the plant you want to plant. The best plant is short and wide, no flowers and preferably few buds. Sounds depressing, right? Basically, you want plants that have put their energy into roots and not flowers early in the season. Then when you plant them, they are well established and will bloom more than if you buy the flowering plant. 

However, in order to get you to buy the plant, retailers will try to make sure that plant is blooming when you come to buy. Makes sense, right? That's where the pinching comes it. You can basically force a plant to put down roots at transplant time rather than continue spending it's energy putting out those lovely flowers that made you buy it in the first place. 

Case in point,  I got these Red Morn petunias at work. Now our early warm weather in April made many of our plants go a little crazy, consequently, these are pretty leggy petunias. If I were to leave these as they are and plant them, the result would be disappointing. The plant would never fill out the pot I'm planting them in and the blooms  will be sparse on spindly, scraggly stems. So not the look I'm going for. 

By pinching off the long stems and yes, all the blooms, the plant will put it's energy into putting down a strong root system and sending out more stems on which to grow even more blooms. It's hard. I'm not even going to pretend that it isn't. It's taken me years to get on board this train and it still pains me to do it. The only way I can is that I know I will be happier in the long run. 

I do have to admit that the pinching back I had to do yesterday was quite dramatic and painful. Everything I loved about this plant was now going into the compost pile. And my pots, well, they're pretty pathetic. If you can't stomach the thought of doing this drastic of a beheading after spending your hard-earned money, try pinching back just half of the blooms, or leave just the buds. You'll notice I managed to save one little bloom and a couple of buds since they were growing low on the plants. Even this selective pruning will reward you with better blooming later. And you can always pinch off leggy stems later as the rest of the plant catches up and starts blooming. 

If you want full, constantly blooming plants it really does pay to either buy plants before they start to bloom or pinch them back at planting. Granted, containers don't look great now, but they will look good in a couple of weeks and more importantly, they are going to look fantastic in a month and beyond. Pictures will be forthcoming!

Spring Has Finally Arrived!

I admit, no, really, I relish the fact that I am a lazy gardener. That's the reason I do container gardening. Small contained gardens that are easy to grow and are beautiful. Yet, I still have this giant yard and I really, really, really hate grass so I have converted quite a bit to gardens. With our heavy clay soil and the sheer size of these beds, annuals are out of the question. I've been planting and learning about perennials. They have been a work in progress for 5 years now and I have felt like I haven't gotten all that far.

Imagine my surprise this spring when my garden sprouted color everywhere! Without any help from me! I think I'm doing something right. Check out these pictures from the second wave of flowers. I missed the first wave of flowers because I was busy with work but I had to snap some shots of these.
Sigh. Happiness.

New Container Combos for 2010

It's that time of year again when I get to do my favorite part of my job at the greenhouse. Create container combos! When they don't know what else to do with me, my bosses tell me to go make up some combos and I am only too happy to oblige. I love creating combos. The worst part is, I generally fall in love with every one I do and want to take them all home. If I did that, I could forget getting paid. Ever.

Because I need to get paid in something other than flowers (although that would be complete heaven, if not for the cost of living), I got smart this year and bought an micro SD card for my phone so I can take pictures of the combos I put together at work. I may not always remember to bring my camera, but I always have my cell phone in my back pocket (I know, low grade radiation. I will regret it massively when I have butt cheek cancer). I like the idea of having a record of what I put together. Often, it goes out the door before I can see it mature and I don't know if it works or not. And I forget what I've done. I think it will be interesting to see what I get fixated on this year as well. Last year, it was pink and yellow and blue which is weird because as colors go, pink and yellow are not my favorites. But I just couldn't stop planting pink, yellow and blue. Perhaps it was because my closest friend was pregnant and the baby thing was on my mind. She had a girl by the way.

This year, I'm able to do combos earlier and hopefully will be able to get some idea of how these turn out. As always, sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. Plants don't always cooperate and grow like they say they will. They are rebellious that way. But the trial and error is part of the fun. So here are some photos of my baby designs that don't look like much yet, but as always, I am in love with them all. I hope they grow up well.

Orange King coleus is one of my favorites although I think it's hard to combine with other plants. Often I end up including it in all foliage designs. Here I've combined it with another favorite coleus called Indian Summer and a variegated lysimachia that's basically yellow foliage with yellow flowers. Not sure why it's called variegated but what I like about it is that it's similar in color to goldi lysimachia with much larger and fleshier leaves. I love the warm color combination of this and how it ties in with the pot color. I've also combined Orange King with burgundy oxalis (the little one with yellow flowers) and goldi lysimachia. It was gorgeous. Orange King gets really large so use this in a fairly large container.

Here's a new favorite coleus, Kingswood Torch. I love the orangy-red-pink color. You'd think that color would be impossible, it is not. And it's gorgeous. I've combined it here with Genta Antique Red diascia and Sweet Caroline Sweetheart Light Green sweet potato vine. Pretty simple design yet I think this one could be gorgeous. I may hide this one so I can see it grow up.

One thing I am noticing this year in my designs is that I am tending to simplify designs to enhance one particular plant. Last year I was hella flower crazy (with the pink, yellow and blue) and this year I seem to be going for the subtle yet dramatic. We'll see how that goes. New to our greenhouse this year is Iochroma Purple Queen. I wanted to feature this plant since it's flowers are so unusual yet fairly subtle. I combined it with Breathless Euphorbia which will give it an airy look with tiny white flowers and Sidekick Black Heart sweet potato vine. The hope is that these two plants will allow the Iochroma to shine while adding texture and drama.

This is similar to a combo I did last year that I really loved. Unfortunately, I did them for specific customers and then they went right out the door so I didn't get to see how they grew up. I love the tropical look of this. I started with Baby Tut and added Painted Paradise New Guinea Impatiens in pink. If the New Guineas never bloomed this combo would still be gorgeous. In fact, I chose the Catalina Gilded Grape torenia to go with the foliage rather than the flowers. Hopefully, the pink won't look too out of place. If it does, I guess I'll just pinch them off because I think this combo is pretty much perfect right now.

I'm excited to see how these grow up. They feature a new plant for us called Violina Violas in orange. This is a trailing viola and right now, in the greenhouse, it is gorgeous. I combined them with both Baby Tut and Juncus Big Twister. I also threw in some Halloween Pansy plugs between the violas. Hopefully they won't get lost. I think the orange/black combo could be really cool, not to mention that it's the high school colors here.

I loved the way the bronze sweet potato vine looked against this simple tan planter but I didn't want it to be boring. I brightened it up with Electric Lime coleus which will get more yellow throughout the season and Genta Antique Red diascia. For a bit of whimsy I threw in a Juncus Big Twister. I might have started with tan but I think this combo will be anything but boring. I may have to hide this one, too.

Sometimes, when we have an abundance of something, my bosses will request that I use a certain plant. A lot of a certain plant. This year, we went a little overboard on the Burgundy Star Easy Wave. It's the boss-man's favorite plant. They were getting a little leggy and in need of planting so I did a series of combos you can see here, here, and here. My favorites are this one are this one with curry and tricolor sweet potato vine and this simple little diddy with Juncus Blue Arrows and bacopa. I think it's the pot that makes it work. It's just cute. It's fun to have a challenge to use something I might not otherwise choose and see how many different ways I can use it.

That's the beginning of my combos for this year. Hopefully, I'll be able to post some pictures of them as they grow so you can see what works, what doesn't and why.