container garden

There I am, waiting until the last possible week or so before I can no longer transplant my Flower Carpet roses (this week or next is about the absolute latest for transplanting in colder zones). After moving to a new house last Thanksgiving (when most of the leaves were already off the trees), I'd planted these easy-care roses in a back plot that I thought would get plenty of full sun. Wrong! A full canopy of leaves soon grew over them, and I've been meaning to move them to a sunnier spot all season.

I should've done this sooner – it was much less of a job than I'd anticipated (despite the fact that I had to use a pitchfork and pie server to do the job. My husband, apparently, decided the garage was his territory and took all the gardening implements he could find and locked them up in the back shed. So, since I was sneaking out while my daughter was taking a nap and had no idea where the shed keys were, well … the pitchfork I'd used for lifting Tropicanna canna rhizomes was all I could get in a hurry. The pie server actually did a great job of scooping extra soil out of and into the planting holes). After transplanting, I just watered them in and made sure to mound plenty of mulch, leaves or other insulating material around the base (I used leftover peat moss from storing the canna rhizomes). This protects the plant from frost heaves the first year or so, just until the roots really get established.

Luckily, Flower Carpet roses hold up well to winter's freezing, desiccating winds and freeze-thaw soil heaves. So no need to burlap my Flower Carpet bushes or mound them over with soil (although 2 to 3 inches of mulch is a good idea any time of year). All you need to do is forget about them and start focusing on the holidays. Around Thanksgiving, your Flower Carpet roses will go dormant as shorter days and colder temperatures signal it's time to shut down for a long winter's nap.

On the other hand, late fall to early winter is really the best time for warm-climate gardeners to transplant their Flower Carpet roses (that's when flowering will be at its lowest and the leaves will look the rattiest). In steadily warm, but not desert-like areas like California, you can transplant them any time. In places like Phoenix, Arizona (which get months of excessively hot and arid weather), you shouldn't transplant them in July, August or September (unless they're heavily shaded).

When transplanting in a warmer climate, it's recommended that you trim the plant back by at least half, and as small as a basketball immediately before transplanting. (Pruning stimulates active growth). Then water and wait about 2 to 3 weeks to feed.

What about overwintering Flower Carpet roses you've planted in container gardens?

Well, in warm climates, you can just keep them in the pot, provided it's about 20 inches in diameter, and trim them back at the appropriate time (as outlined above). In cold climates, however, you can just wait for them to start going dormant around Thanksgiving, then pack them closely together into a cool, dry (but not freezing) place like the garage, basement or shed and just get them up and off the ground. (I'll be putting mine in my preschool daughter's wagon, next to my Bluestorm agapanthus). Some people like to cover them with hay or put them in a box full of shredded up newspaper, but it's not really necessary. Whatever you do, however, DON'T cut them back or prune them at this time.

Well, there you go. It doesn't take much to make sure your Flower Carpet roses keep bringing you season after season of prolific, easy-care blooms!

Does anyone out there just plant up the perfect container garden at the start of the season and then not have to change the plants or move things around? 'Cause I've never been able to pull this off.

Plants get too big, bugs destroy them or they simply stop blooming and are done for the season. And with a 3-year-old, heading out to the garden center for more plants – much less anything else – always turns into a major project. So many times, I simply have to make do – ripping out a bunch of scraggly, overgrown plants from one pot, for instance, and replacing them with a smaller plant stolen from another. 

Hence this evolution of containers on my deck. I potted all these up between the middle of May and the first week of June, and already they've all required some major change-ups.

The diva

This container has had more costume changes than Beyonce at an awards show. It all started in mid-May with the Festival™ Burgundy cordyline that came via mail-order and the pink geranium and white-flowered bacopa put in the cart by my 3-year-old during a trip to Home Depot). I hadn't had a chance, of course, to really head out to a garden center and leisurely look for great plant combinations).

But then, of course, I stumbled across the container gardening articles at FineGardening.com and suddenly my container's understated outfit would never do. So here's Pot Number 2, after I finally got a half-hour to go down the street to the Agway garden center to pick up lime-green ipomoea (sweet potato vine), purple ornamental kale and red, white and lime-green coleus:

I was, of course, very satisfied with my oh-so-fashionable selection – that is, until the nasturtium in the container next to it got all out of control and monster-like. So I went for one more wardrobe change, snagging the ipomoea from this pot to replace it. I don't care if they say every pot needs a thriller, a filler and a spiller – without my spiller, I think the container looks more neat and tidy.

Waaay over the rainbow

Similarly, here are the original, rainbow-striped, original Tropicanna^® cannas I originally potted up in the beginning of June, and some ornamental kale and nasturtium I picked up at that same trip to Agway. With my frustrated inner artist out to play, I then grabbed some of the white stones out of our landscaping pathway and set them on top of the soil, just to see if a white "canvas" of sorts would intensify the color.

Then the nasturtium turned all yellow and ratty (I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that my approach to watering is to wait for the rain). So I ripped it out and added some croton. Why? Because I can. I fell in love with psychedelically-colored tropical plants on my April trip to Maui (see my previous post), and I think I just wanted the craziest, loudest collection of colors I could get my hands on.

Encroaching kale

And here's the Tropicanna Gold and Tropicanna Black cannas I planted along with aeonium, the white-flowered bacopa I stole from the first container (above) and yet more ornamental kale and nasturtium from that Agway trip, just to fill up the holes. But the nasturtium also overtook that, so I ripped it out of there, too. You can't see the aeonium or the white bacopa, so I'll probably move that over to the pot of Flower Carpet^® roses where I had to remove one of Dad's traditional cannas that got turned into swiss cheese by Japanese beetles.

And that's the life of garden containers. Even though it's an unpredictable game of switcheroo, it's a game I'll play again and again. Besides the croton I bought for like, two bucks at Home Depot, it didn't realy cost me an additional penny. Plus, it's like rearranging furniture – it gives me a creative outlet and lets me express myself. In other words, my husband would say, it keeps me out of trouble.

So what about you? Do you engage in Container Switcheroo? Or do you have a great container recipe that stays tidy and colorful all season long? Post a comment and tell me about it!

So I moved to this new house with a huge, tiered deck out back. It’s white, with tons of white snow on top. It makes me hungry for the colors of summer veggie gardening – red peppers, orange carrots, yellow squash and purple eggplant.

So looking out the window, I get this idea for a kitchen garden on the deck, with container vegetables just a few paces away. I pictured my preschooler proudly starting seeds or picking cherry tomatoes for Mommy’s salad.

My next step was to do a little Internet shopping, to find good container veggie varieties (see my next post). But before I got very far, I learned there are whole new lines and marketing programs focused on this very topic. Figures, since veggie gardening and small-space or container gardening are two of the biggest garden trends.

Here’s some of what I found, so if you’re looking for the easy-care gardening way to fresh produce, you can anticipate some of what the garden centers might be carrying this spring.

Culinary Couture^TM line (at right)

Available as seeds or finished plants at garden centers this spring, this fashionable and flavorable line from Hort Couture includes ‘City Gardener’ faves for the patio like Fairy Tale eggplant,  a "tabletop" cucumber, Apache chili pepper, Redskin pepper, Snow White tomato and Totem tomato.

Plants that Work in the Kitchen

Offered by plant commercializer Novalis, this line of herbs for the home garden launched last year. Even though information on new varieties for 2010 is scarce, the Novalis Web site has a "Where to Buy" section you can check to see which garden center near you carries the line.

Burpee Home Gardens

Ball Horticultural Co. Has partnered with Burpee to market 40 new varieties as ready-made plants that used to only be offered through Burpee as seed, including Tumbler, the perfect variety for hanging baskets and planters. The Burpee Home Gardens Program Web site has a “Where to Buy” section you can check (closer to spring) to see which local garden center carries the line.,

Patio Edibles

From Vegetalis, a new company created by Floranova, this line offers veggies and herbs that can be grown on the windowsill or patio and mixed with ornamentals. Offerings include Little Sun Yellow, "the little tomato with the big fruiting habit," Tumbling Junior Yellow, a compact cherry-type yellow tomato with a lightly trailing habit, a small, white-fruited eggplant with a well-branched, compact habit, Gigantic Chive, a taller-than-usual chive designed to be a thriller in the middle of a mixed herb container, Sweet n’ Neat tomatoes with cocktail-size cherry tomatoes (in yellow and red) and the neatly-mounding Aristotle basil.

For more information, you can also visit Joyful Abode, GardenGirlTV and these other container gardening blogs: http://www.container-garden.info and http://containergardening.wordpress.com/.

So now I want to hear from you: What varieties of container veggies have you tried, and what worked out? Or, do you plan to grow veggies in containers this year? If so, what?