In theory, anyway, you can plant in Front Range communities any time the ground is not frozen solid. But there’s no question that survival rates improve during spring and fall, when temperatures stay cooler.
The one exception is container gardens. These can be changed out and moved, even in the searing heat of a Colorado July.
Every year around the first of June, I pull out cool-season annuals like pansies and snapdragons and switch them out for something more heat-tolerant. Ratty-looking blue and yellow primroses that had provided color to the front porch the past two months go into the garden, where they come back and bloom the following March.
Contemplating taking out the blue and yellow pansies was harder. Because this year’s June was relatively cool, they’re in peak performance later than usual. They get to stay until they start to lose their enthusiasm. I’ve learned to purchase replacements now, while annuals are still available to buy.
One of the pleasures of container gardening is how easy it is to remedy hasty decisions and correct mistakes. One day recently with a party imminent, I had a chance to study my handiwork and rearrange several plantings. In one container, Perfume Lime flowering tobacco, green-edged Pretty Much Picasso petunia and a deep red-violet trailing verbena fairly cried out to be joined by shiny red-violet-and-green Persian Shield.
I know: It sounds like too much red-violet, but with their slightly different shades and vastly different flower shapes this really did work.
This went on all afternoon until I’d traded out approximately one-tenth of what I’d planted a few weeks before. I do this several times a summer — assessing and primping containers. Anything that doesn’t work out, for any reason, either goes to a new location or gets the boot.
It’s not so different from dealing with a fresh flower arrangement. When the roses or lilies stop blooming, you toss them out, but there’s no reason to jettison the entire arrangement. So you might add more cut flowers to the long-blooming chrysanthemums, baby’s breath and alstroemeria still in the vase.
The only trick is to keep pots well watered. It can take a lot of water to fully recharge potting soil. After the soil dries out just slightly, water until it starts to run out of the drainage holes. Most pots don’t need watering every day, so I use a watering can for anything newly added for the first week or two.
Also watch for soil settling and fill any holes to prevent roots from drying out. It also helps to fertilize at least once a week with fish-based fertilizer. I try to deadhead (remove dead flowers) once a day.
In a good year, come September, the containers on the front porch and the back patio do the garden proud — just in time for the first freeze.
Marcia Tatroe’s most recent book is “Cutting Edge Gardening in the Intermountain West” ($29.95, Johnson Books). E-mail her at mtatroe@q.com.
