Back in early May, I went on a weekend adventure with my girlfriends. When I returned, to my delight, I discovered that my husband took the opportunity to plant flowers on the embankment near our mailbox. Hurray!
Ugh! A big weedy hole in my petunias!
Photo Credit: Megan Bame
Oh-oh! This sweet potato vine is getting out of control!
Photo Credit: Megan Bame
Use a post-hole digger to make large, round holes – perfect for larger plants.
Photo Credit: Megan Bame
A little judicious pruning can tame even the wildest beast – like this variegated sweet potato vine.
Photo Credit: Megan Bame
This weedy hole was pretty large, so I used three larger plants to add color and cover the dirt. Most importantly, each plant still has room to grow into its own.
Photo Credit: Megan Bame
Now, that might not seem like a big deal to you, but last year we never got around to planting that area. In fact, it was an overgrown mess most of the summer. (Quite frankly, it was a bit of an embarrassment, considering we’re both horticulturists.) This year was gonna be different, we vowed, and he got the ball rolling.
He used a fair amount of plant material, including several trailing kinds like Wave® petunias and sweet potato vines. Then I added lots more over the following weeks to bring in more color and to cover the space, using plants like marigolds, zinnias, Gerbera daisies, purslane and nicotiana. But with the exception of applying fertilizer and doing the occasional weeding and watering as needed, the bed hadn’t got much attention since May.
Now here we are in mid-July. The bed my husband started is really flourishing. (I could easily go out and pick an entire bouquet of fresh zinnias, and no one would miss ’em!) But in my daily walks out to the mailbox, I’ve started to notice a few areas that have just been gnawing at me. The main thing is that there are a couple of “holes” in my bed – gaps in the plant material exposing bare spots of earth, ripe for weeds.
And speaking of weeds, I noticed some. I must’ve missed a few the last time I weeded, because some real monsters had since broken through the flower canopy and were waving at me in the breeze – mocking me. And then there was the sweet potato vine. I know it’s an aggressive grower, but the variegated one in particular was about to take over the corner of the bed and overgrow the other flowers in that area. Not good.
Well, I couldn’t take it anymore, and the other day I got up early to spiff up my flower bed. (It’s not that I particularly enjoy waking up with the birds, but it’s about the only good, cool time to get the job done, since daytime temps typically reach the mid- to upper-90s this time of year. I’d recommend becoming an early riser, too, if you’ve got a similar garden project to do.)
First I tackled the sweet potato vine. The soft stem is easy to prune, and whacking away even the longest shoots barely slows this plant down. Our recent lack of rain and hot, sunny days have caused it some suffering, but removing some of the foliage helps it stay turgid longer. And of course, removing the shoot tips encourages lateral branching – to make it a fuller plant (if that’s possible).
Next, I took a look at my “holes.” My husband had brought home three Crossandra in 1-gallon pots. This time of year, planting larger-sized material is a better choice than trying to establish bedding plants grown in flats. While I was pretty sure one Crossandra would eventually grow enough to fill the hole, I wanted to fill the entire hole that day, so I planted all three in a triangular grouping for instant impact – and the orange blooms give that colorful “pop” I wanted. In another hole, I added a couple dwarf black-eyed Susans, adding another splash of instant color where there had been just a patch of red clay staring back at me.
My final chore was to weed. For whatever reason (probably stubbornness), I’m a hand-weeder. I just love the satisfaction I get from pulling a weed out, roots attached. (I highly recommend gloves for hand-weeding, especially if you have thorny growers like I do.)
There are two important things to remember about weeds:
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Don’t leave them in or around your flower bed to dry up. They become an eyesore, and it’s just ugly.
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If your weeds have seed heads, don’t add them to the compost pile where they can contribute to next year’s weed population. Toss ’em in the garbage or burn them in a brush pile instead.
Since our bed’s midseason makeover, I can’t help but get excited to see that full, lush bed each time I walk to the mailbox. It didn’t take a lot of work to revitalize it, and now I just know it’ll keep looking good deep into fall. And now maybe I’ll go pick that bouquet of zinnias…
