Caring for Annual Plants in the Summer
By Jodi Torpey
As the gardening season progresses, garden chores transition from preparing and planting to a regular schedule of maintaining a healthy landscape. Our annual flowers especially need extra attention this month.
As the season moves along, plants use up the nutrients gardeners added at planting time. Annuals that are planted in hanging baskets and containers need additional nutrients because some are washed away each time we water. That’s why July’s the perfect time to give your annuals a boost.
Most annuals benefit from a feeding of an all-purpose plant food that’s slightly higher in phosphorus to help them reach their blooming potential. The two main types of fertilizers for annuals include slow-release (or time release) and water soluble.
Slow-Release Fertilizers
Slow-release fertilizers, like Osmocote or some organic plant foods, are granular and they give out small quantities of nutrients over a set amount of time, like 3 or 6 months. These fertilizers work well when lightly sprinkled around annuals planted in beds and borders and then dug in around the plants. The nutrients will be made available slowly and will probably take the annuals through the rest of the season.
Water Soluble Fertilizers
Because water and nutrients wash away with every watering, containers of annuals and hanging baskets may need fertilizing more often. Water soluble fertilizers, like MiracleGro or fish emulsion, make it easy to feed annual ornamentals planted in containers.
When diluted with water, these fertilizers make nutrients available to plants more quickly than the slow-release plant foods. Even if you added a slow-release fertilizer at planting, by mid-summer flowers can use a quick boost to keep them blooming. It’s a good idea to keep fertilizing container annuals every few weeks through the rest of the season.
Deadheading Spent Blooms
Another way to keep annuals healthy is to remove spent flowers by pinching off the dead ones. Deadheading keeps the plant from producing seed, so it keeps on blooming.
Fortunately for gardeners, many of the new annuals sold today are bred to be self-cleaning and don’t need deadheading; however, it’s easy to remove old flowers from plants that need it by pinching or snipping off the stem just below the base of the flower.
