That’s a real time saver for you!
Flowering annuals require much more care and are not ‘time friendly’. But there are some that bloom with little care, nonstop, and others will self-sow and become a
permanent addition to your garden– sometimes, whether you want them to or not— so careful selection of these annuals is important to a beautiful garden as well.
Three Cheers For Annuals!
Gardeners love annuals because they bloom so fully, and the color
is what makes everyone you know stop and wonder, then break
into open applause. A nice feeling for all gardeners - weekend and
otherwise. The essence of an annual is that it germinates from a
seed, growing into a mature plant that flowers, then sets its seed
and finally dies. All this happens in a single growing season.
By removing the fading flowers once they have faded - a chore called deadheading - you can prevent seed formation and the bulbs will just keep flowering. But deadheading is a time consuming task and require six or eight sets of hands scurrying through a large flowering annual bed just to keep up.
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Annuals are native to all kinds of climates, from alpine meadows, to low deserts, and some species have preferred weather conditions within these climates, as well. Some are cool-season annuals, favoring spring and fall conditions. Others are warm weather annuals, most hearty in summer heat
For this reason horticulturists have divided annuals into three distinct categories: Tender annuals
Hardy annuals
Half-Hardy annuals
Many seed catalogs code their annuals with these distinctions which can guide you in selection.
Most tender annuals like marigolds and zinnias, hail form regions where summers are hot and winters are mild, even frost free. Cool season tender annuals may need some shade in the South and Southwest, but may still die out when temperatures soar. Usually, tender annuals need a long growing period before they flower. Place them in soil that has fully warmed up, but don’t expect instant flowers; it may be August before you see them.
The best way to go, if you’re intent on seeding with tender annuals is to begin inside your home in late winter and wait until they are large enough to transplant outdoors in the spring after all frost dangers have passed. The easiest (though a bit more expensive) solution is to simply buy the bedding plants at your garden center in late spring. I do this and find the plants are much
healthier and usually already have
Easy Care Annuals
achieved some blooms.
You don’t need time consuming dead-heading for
Cool tolerant hardy annuals can
these annuals to prosper.
withstand some light frost in the
Each of these requires little attention, too!
spring and fall. In many climates,
Begonia (wax begonia)
their seeds will remain through the
winter if you plant in the fall, or if
Browallia speciosa (browallia)
they self sow in your garden, they’ll
geminate early enough to provide
Catharanthus roseus (Madagascar periwinkle)
good floral decoration beginning in
spring or early summer. Here you
Celosia cristata (cockscomb)
can purchase young transplants too.
Cleome hassleriana (cleome, spider flower)
In this category I love Bachelors
button, a lovely blue flower that is a
Impatiens wallerana (inpatients, busy Lizzie)
hardy annual because it defies frost
Lobelia erinus (edging lobelia)
into the fall each year. Another
favorite is love-in-a mist, this
Lobularia maritima ( sweet alyssum)
needle like foliage has circular
Myosotis sylvatica (forget-me-not)
Sanvitalia procumbens (creeping zinnia)
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lavender blue, pink or white flowers and it easily re-seeds.
Neither tender nor hardy, half-hardy annuals tolerate periods of cold in spring and fall, but any frost will cut their lovely lives short. If you sow seed rather than purchase bedding plants, it’s usually best to sow them outdoors after all threat of frost has passed.
Here warm soil is not necessary.
Two of my favorites in this class of half hardy annuals are cosmos, with its satiny pink, wine red, or white daisy like flowers, and the lacy spiderflower, which produces large, wispy heads of pale pink, rose, purple or white blossoms.
Now that we’ve decided on some lovely annuals for our weekend excursions into the backyard of our dreams we’ll take a quick look at those favorite garden flowers: the Biennials.
Those Bang-Up Biennials!
Biennials, like fox-glove, sweet William and forget-me-nots, live
only two years. With this two season life span, biennials get
themselves growing during the first season, but don’t flower or
set seed until the second. Instead of dying back in the fall, they
form a rosette of leaves that hug the ground all winter. Once they
do set seed they usually die (some modern hybrids may live on,
however) and you can help them along by scattering the ripe seed where you’d like them to grow.
Just wait until the flower stalks dry on the stem, and in mid to late summer, shake the seeds onto the ground.
Some seeds may not germinate until the spring after the seed is set; these won’t flower either, until the following year. Some other nice varieties of this type are: Canterbury bells, honesty, Iceland poppy and garden mulleins.
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Keep ‘Em Comin’ Perennials
Here’s the mother lode for weekend
gardeners like you and me.
Perennials offer us an easy and
These deep rooted perennials will stay where you
reliable source of flowers year after
put them and grow larger and studier every year.
year, and demand very little effort
Time savers because they don’t require dividing
from the ‘time-strapped’ lover of
and rarely invade their neighbors.
nature. They are hardy, their tops
die down to the ground during
Achillea filipendulina (fernleaf yarrow) Zone 3
winter, but their roots remain alive
Aconitum napellus (common monkshood) Zone 3
and send up new beauty in the
Amsonia tabernaemontana (blue star) Zone 3
spring.
Anemone sylvestris (snowdrop anemone) Zone 4
Dicentra spectabilis (bleeding heart) Zone 2
I still love the time when their
Paeonia lactiflora (peony) Zone 2
foliage first peeks out of the ground
Rudbeckia fulgida “Goldstrum’ (Goldstrum
in early spring - all is well with the
Black-eyed Susan) Zone 3
world again and I haven’t had to do
a thing. It’s like Mother Nature
reminding me she can make such wonderful little miracles without my
sweaty brow and strained effort. In fact, two types of perennial I particularly
enjoy are bleeding heart and lung wort which undergo such remarkable
growth spurts you can almost watch them grow every warm spring day.
Another nice feature is that perennials spread their clumps increasing in size
each year. So every few years you will have to dig them up and divide them again but this is a wonderful source of ‘free’ plants for the rest of your garden should you decide to use them. Many grow for over 10 years without you needing to divide them– ideal for weekend dirt throwers–and peonies and poppies can go 50 years! My, that is a lifetime of pleasure and low-maintenance.
Woody perennials do not die to the ground in winter, though some do become dormant.
Their stems and branches are permanent so these are large growing plants - shrubs trees and vines. Some, like heaths, heathers and roses find the flower garden a suitable place to hang out.
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Bang Up Bulbs!
Right up there with perennials are
Here are some vigorous bulbs that will increase
those magnificent bulbs! They also
each year but never become weedy:
are ideal for the ‘time squeezed’
Agapanthus spp. (Lily-of-the-Nile) Zone 9
weekend gardener. They are low-
Anemone blanda (windflower) Zone 5
maintenance and will return year
Chionodoxa spp. (Glory-of-the-snow) Zone 4
after year, blooming beautifully
Colchicum autumnale (autumn crocus) Zone 5
with very little care.
Crocus spp. And hybrids (crocuses) Zone 5
Fritillaria melagris (checkered lily) Zone 4
Early bulbs like crocuses,
Galanthus elwesii (giant snowdrop) Zone 4
snowdrops and glory-of-the-snow
G. nivalis (common snowdrop) Zone 4
make you happy in late winter and
Hyacinthoides hispanicus (Spanish bluebell)
very early spring. Bulbs come up,
Zone 4
usually, well before perennials even
Iris danfordieae Zone 5
start to wake up and one of the joys
Muscari spp. (Grape hyacinths) Zone 2-4
of each spring, for me, is seeing
Narcissus spp and hybrids (daffodils, jonquils and
these come to life as if Mother
narcissi) Zones 4-6
Nature were reminding me she is
Sternbergia lutea (winter daffodil, lily-of-the-
quite capable of delivering joy to
field) Zone 7
the world without any effort on my
part.
The bulb remains dormant much of the year, usually presenting foliage and flowers for only a few months. Dying bulbs can be somewhat unattractive, but don’t remove them until they are turned yellow or the bulb won’t be able to store enough nourishment for the next growth cycle. If you carefully design your flower beds you can disguise, and draw attention away from these dying bulbs.
Bulbs, like annuals and perennials, can be tender or hardy. You will only
make for extra work if you plant tender bulbs in a colder climate. Instead,
make sure you make choices that match the best climate zone for your bulbs.
Where bulbs find the climate to their liking, many, including daffodils, grape
hyacinths, and crocuses will spread over the years into great clumps and
drifts. You can leave them alone or divide and separate them to plant
elsewhere. This offers you a great source of ‘free’ plants each year, too!
Roses, Oh! Roses
I’ve got to tell you, fellow weekender, this is the most thorny issue of
all! No pun intended, but if you have to have roses in your weekend
garden, then God bless you. Of the hundreds of flowers that you could
plant in your flower garden, none are more beloved or demanding
than roses. They inspire poets and lovers, but these woody plants
require so much care that I’d like to tell you—“forget it!”
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But you are probably the kind of gardener that just can’t imagine a flower garden without this magnificent, specialized delight. Let me just say this: avoid the temperamental modern roses—though their blossoms are heavenly, they will continually disappoint you.
Let’s look at one kind of rose you can work with if you must— shrub roses. These are a species or old time hybrids that you can work with on weekends, — if you insist. There is
‘Bonica’, ‘Ferdy’ ‘White Meidiland’, and ‘Scarlet Meidiland’ which spread along the ground to make flowering groundcover and effective specimens in a flowering bed or can be grown as a flowering hedge.
Before I tell you more about these wonderful roses, how difficult they are in terms of climactic and locale, I’ll tell you a story:
My mother, from whom I’ve learned all my gardening techniques, had worked long and hard with roses here in New England (a northern climate) and once had her mother, my grandmother visit. Grandma Bonnie was from Georgia— a great southern locale that could grow roses in a completely different climate than up north.
She felt it was customary to cut these rose bushes back, deeply back - to make them grow fully. This is one of the great memories I have as a child as my mother came home one day to see her delicate, highly difficult rose bushes desiccated by this action. How my mother ever forgave my dear ‘Granny Bonnie’ I’ll never know! It must have been love.
Roses in particular climates react so very differently than any other plant I can think of.
They are so delicate by nature that what works in one locale, will absolutely not work in another.
Now I must say a couple of things here. These shrub roses I mentioned are really the only alternative for northern climates. They bloom repeatedly, forming new branches and producing more blossoms— even if you don’t cut off the faded blossoms (deadhead), as is necessary with “modern” roses.
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The second is that roses are so
marvelously intricate that, as a
weekender, I suggest you leave
them for the end of your flowering
Weekend gardeners who would rather spend their
garden planning— as a last
precious weekends with their hands in the dirt
experiment at adding beauty and
instead of shopping will find mail order
joy to your garden. Believe me,
perennials a God Send!
they are like dating a debutante or a
Pick a color scheme, choose a catalog and
rich prince— entirely too much
compare prices. Order the exact plants needed
attention is required to make your
and do it on a bleak January day when you don’t
beginning romance with a flower
have a single demand from your garden outside.
garden worthwhile.
You’ll save money (compared to your local
nursery) - but just remember they may be smaller
and perhaps won’t blossom the first year. But the
The Season Long Bloom
easy part of perennials is that once they do get
going - they stay going.
In general, perennials, those every
day plants you must use as a weekender, create less of a show than the more demanding annuals, and so much less than the prima donna roses. Most blooms are about two weeks a year during a specified season, yet some perennials may bloom as long as 4-6 weeks.
That’s flowering you can enjoy!
If you mix annuals with your flowering perennials, the scenario is excellent. Come early spring, all you have to do is pull the protective mulch back from the perennial, clean leftover litter and leaves - and you’re set!
Use annuals to perk up your flower garden but depend on perennials to be your mainstay.
This gives you a season long blooming with little effort. The annuals provide much color and the perennials fill in the foliage to make your garden a true delight with low-maintenance.
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Color In The Flower
Grow these in an orderly cutting garden and
Garden
you’ll harvest arm loads of beauty to transport
into your home.
Being creative with color is what
making a flower garden is all about.
Annuals
Making a stunning color theme is a
Antirrhinum majus (snapdragon)
challenge. Try to select neighboring
Calendula officinalis (calendula, pot marigold)
plants whose flower colors
Callistephus chinensis (China aster)
complement each other if they
Celosia cristata (cockscomb)
bloom at the same times and
Centaurea cineraria (dusty miller)
overlap. For instance, try to overlap
Cleome hassleriana (spiderflower)
white flowers, such as meadow
Papaver spp. (Poppies)
phlox or Shasta daisy with silvery
gray foliage plants like “Silver
Bulbs
Mound’ artemisia and Silver
Convallaria majolis (lily-of-the-valley)
Mound. Always separate and soften
Lilium spp. And hybrids (lilies)
bright color combinations so they
Narcissus spp. And hybrids (daffodils, jonquils
don’t clash. Remember, you can
and narcissi)
move plants around to make them
Tulipa spp. And hybrids (tulips)
fit your color idea. Just wait until
spring or fall to do the
Perennials
transplanting.
Achillea filipendulina (yarrow)
Aster hybrids (aster)
Chrysanthemum (garden chrysanthemum)
Coreopsis lanceolata (lance leaf coreopsis)
Taking The Outside Inside
Dicentra spectabilis (common bleeding heart)
It’s a real joy to grow flowers that
you can cut and enjoy indoors. Regrettably, this all too often leaves the flower garden bare. The simple answer is a cutting garden whose only purpose is to provide you with a supply of cut flowers that you can use to bring beauty into your home.
The majority of flowers in a cutting garden should be annuals, because these bloom profusely and keep on producing flowers as you cut off the fresh ones. Of course, annuals are heavy feeders and need to be replanted every year, so a cutting garden can easily turn into a high-maintenance garden if you aren’t careful. Keep your cutting garden small and design it with ease of care in mind.
Locate it out of site, since a harvested cutting garden can many times look rather thread bare. However, don’t hide it from the sun! It will need an average of at least 6 hours of sunlight to prosper. If you don’t have any ‘hideaways’ and must place it in plain view, try enclosing it with a low picket fence, or a garden wall.
It’s best to plant your flowers in a row, just as you would in a vegetable garden, leaving enough space in between so you can harvest them easily. In the next chapter we’ll be The Weekend Gardener by Victor K. Pryles
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looking closely at vegetable gardens, but for now, remember that many of the techniques and ideas in that chapter will stand in good stead with a cutting flower garden, as well. In fact, you may wish to “double up” your vegetable garden and cutting garden into one piece of landscape.
Enjoy the Loveliness Of Your Care Free Flower Garden
We’ve all seen the miraculous, highly sophisticated flower gardens in parks and botanical gardens— and wonder at them with a tinge of envy. However, the smaller, homeier
backyard flower garden on your little plot of earth should fill you with special wonder too!
You’ll have created, with your own hands, a flower garden that will allow the same bright sunlight to shine through translucent flower petals, allowing the same sense of peace and joy that those magnificent public gardens allow. Just because it’s on a smaller scale and can’t compete with the many professional landscapers that attack en masse, spending many thousands of dollars and man hours, shouldn’t cause any envy at all.
You see, you now have a care free flower garden — and your weekends too!
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Chapter 4: Delicious Weekend Vegetable Gardens
There is nothing, absolutely nothing to compare with garden fresh
vegetables and produce. You simply can’t beat the fresh taste which
literally explodes onto your taste buds. Even the vegetables you get at
the local farmers’ market, though delightful, still take longer to get from
full production and picking to your table. And supermarket vegetables,
well let’s be kind and just say they just don’t compare. Not so with your
own veggie garden. You snap a pea, pull an ear of corn, uproot some
beets and - bang! - they are at your table full of vitamins and minerals and bursting with delirious, succulent flavor.
My only word of caution as we enter this enticing world is to make sure you plan to produce only what you really can consume. Making a large garden that’s 1,000 square feet for a family of four (or even five and six) is just going to be a time consuming event.
Think of gardening as recreation, and grow what you really enjoy - not every vegetable in the catalog.
I don’t want you bending down on hands and knees tending a garden that will force you to harvest with an army of workers, sending you on neighborhood jaunts begging folks to take some vegetables from your garden. Don’t get me wrong, you can be just as
generous, hand out plenty of ‘freebies’ to friends and neighbors and still plan a garden that makes sense.
Besides growing a carefully chosen selection of favorites, you should plan on the perfect weekend crops - perennial vegetables. Once you’ve prepared your soil and planted, you’ll have asparagus, rhubarb, and other perennial vegetables coming up year after year. That’s smart!
In this chapter I’ll give you ways to produce large yields in small spaces. We’ll look at what’s called intensive gardening, renewing every year, making the bed, making an efficient bed garden, some crop tactics, selecting the best vegetables and bringing plants to harvest. Getting hungry, already? Then let’s get started.
Intensive Gardening
The best way to get going with your backyard vegetable garden is to cultivate using intensive gardening techniques, which can produce large yields in small places. The process can be boiled down to two practices: creating a rich, abundant soil, and spacing plants in beds instead of rows.
Much o