It isn’t rocket science, yet year after year gardens fizzle in midsummer. This annual decline is too often written off to the heat. But if that’s really the case, then why do high-end professionals manage to keep the beds at botanical gardens and fancy theme parks looking great all season? They apply just three simple fundamentals – and yes, they’re ones that can keep your home garden color-perfect all season, too:
Color gardens as dense as this require a great deal of fertilizer to maintain their blossoms all season long.
Photo Credit: Maureen Gilmer
Annuals like these tiny violas make great garnish in the kitchen when snipped as individuals or sheared off in mass for a salad. (The entire plant is edible.)
Photo Credit: Maureen Gilmer
Zinnias and marigolds are the quickest of all annuals to produce seed. Stay on top of them every day or they’ll go to seed before you know it.
Photo Credit: Maureen Gilmer
Big annuals like this Tithonia (Mexican sunflower) will produce new blooms for months if cut often. (They make a fine cutflower for warm-climate regions.)
Photo Credit: Maureen Gilmer
Never Let Seeds Form
Most colorful plants are annual flowers, which must sprout from seed, mature, bloom and set seed for the next generation. All this activity occurs in a single season. The moment a flower is pollinated it begins to create seed, which signals the plant to stop new bud production because it’s the end of the season. But if no seed is allowed to form because you’ve nipped off the spent flower, your plant will continue to produce new buds in an ongoing effort to reproduce itself.
The chief cause of annual decline is seen after the first flush of blossoms begins to fade. This coincidentally occurs just when temperatures rise. If your plants are left to form seeds, they won’t produce new buds to carry on the next flush of color. Instead, they’ll concentrate energy on seed production.
Beginning with this lull, great gardeners are out in their yards early morning and late evening when it’s cool. Drinking coffee or sipping cocktails, they leisurely nip off the day’s faded flowers. This ritual helps trick their color plants into thinking its May when it’s really late August, so the annuals bloom continuously.
Feed Continually
Humans don’t do well on yo-yo diets and neither do heavy-feeding annuals. They need a lot of nutrition when producing new buds on a continual basis. Problem is we forget to feed them when we’re in the middle of barbecue and beach season, leaving our flowers to languish on a Spartan diet. As a result, they don’t produce much color or maintain enough strength to resist pests, disease, heat and drought.
Use liquid fertilizer (like Miracle-Gro®) on annual color every 2-4 weeks whether they need it or not – because by the time you see the signs, decline has already set in and may be slow to jump- start again. Liquid food eliminates potential of burning, feeds through the leaves and speeds fertilizer down into the soil where it penetrates instantly. (Products distributed with a hose-end applicator are quick and easy to use, which ensures you won’t skip feedings because you’re too busy.)
Water Deeply
Standard spray sprinklers may wet only the top few inches of the soil, particularly in clays. This encourages your flowers to root in this thin surface layer, which tends to get hot and fry the roots during long summer days. No wonder plants languish at this time! They need proportionately more water and a bigger root system to support the longer bloom season you’re encouraging.
Even if you have automatic sprinklers, flood your beds with a garden hose at least once every week. This saturates the soil much deeper down, encouraging roots to search for it there. Deep rooting makes plants doubly resistant to surface dryness between sprinklings, increases the amount of fertilizer it can absorb and reduces the effects of periodic drought or heat waves.
Make annual decline a thing of the past in your garden by applying these three simple principles. The key is simply to understand the life cycle of the annual and to treat it accordingly. Pick off those dead, faded flowers every day. Fertilize on a strict schedule. Water like there’s no tomorrow. Then at the end of every day you can sit back and be proud as your neighbors succumb to the deadly sin of annual garden envy.
