Gardening in containers expands the Colorado gardener’s options. In a container, we control every cultural aspect, including soil type and composition, water, fertility and exposure. Plus, containers are a moveable feast that can be relocated on the slightest whim.
I grow mostly frost-tender plants in containers, having discovered that grouping them together in one spot makes it much easier to protect them from early and late snows and frosts.
Tropicals of all sorts adore our hot summers. Frost-tender tropical bulbs and roots come back year after year when stored in a cool, dark place over the winter. Succulents and other tropical plants that don’t indulge in a winter nap are content to spend the winter indoors in a sunny window or under lights. But winter hardy flowers, shrubs, vines and ornamental grasses also make fine additions to container plantings. Just about anything that fits is appropriate for container gardening.
When I cleaned up containers at the end of last season, I potted up everything I wanted to keep in fresh medium in recycled plastic nursery containers. Since then, pots of brugmansia, cannas, pineapple lilies, agapanthus and dahlias, some at least 5 years old, have been stored in my garage
In a week or two, I’ll set these pots under lights in the basement. Because most tropical bulbs are frost tender, they can’t go out of doors without protection until around June 1.
Tender agave, cacti, aplema, cordyline , crassula, dracaena, echeveria, flax, kalanchoe, setcreasea, amaryllis and rain lilies, spend winter under fluorescent lights in the basement — and on on windowsills in the house. (When we brought them in last October, Randy informed me that I have an improbable 50 pots of cacti and succulents alone.)
Small pots come inside as is, their occupants left unmolested, but since there isn’t room for many large containers, I disassemble these and pot up each inhabitant separately, again in a recycled nursery pot in fresh potting soil. Like tropical bulbs, these can’t go out for their summer vacation until well after the average last frost date.
Seeds of frost-sensitive annuals, such as ornamental peppers and African daisies, can be sowed indoors now so that seedlings will be big enough to go outside in a month’s time. I also start stockpiling annuals for containers as they hit the stores, purchasing coleus, sweet potato vine and plectranthus but keeping them in trays in the family room at night and moving them outside onto the back patio when the day warms up.
Frost-resistant petunias, English ivy, vinca vine, lily bulbs, small shrubs, roses, and perennials like heuchera and lamium are also good in containers and can go out as soon as they are hardened off. Or plant right away, covering them with floating row covers for a week until they have had a chance to acclimate.
Marcia Tatroe is a garden writer and lecturer. Her most recent book is “Cutting Edge Gardening in the Intermountain West,” ($29.95, Johnson Books). E-mail her at rltaurora@aol.com.
