Archive for the ‘plant it’ Category

It’s June and I’m just getting around to planting my window boxes and pots.

That’s only 3 weeks late.  The weather has been SO cold this spring.

Here’s a couple of quick tips I use when planting:

When a terracotta pot breaks, I save the broken pieces.  No, I’m not being overly sentimental.  It’s because they are useful.  I always place a few pieces of broken terracotta over the drainage hole of my pots.  Place them so they allow drainage and cover the hole at the bottom of the pot.  This aids drainage, keeps the dirt from running out of the pot when watering and takes up a bit of space that I don’t need to fill with expensive potting soil.

I know, I know.  I don’t have a baby.  So why do I have diapers?

They are for my window boxes of course.  As I know from the days when I did have babies, diapers can hold A LOT of liquid.  That makes them the perfect thing to put at the bottom of my window boxes.  Whenever I water, they fill right up and hold the water, rather than having it all drain out the bottom of my planters.  This keeps my plants from drying out in between watering.  This is very good thing, since they are South facing window boxes in the hot sun.

My favorite tip for planting my pots came from reading P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home and from watching his show on PBS.

His formula for choosing plants is to pick a tall and spiky plant in the center, surrounded by round and full plants, and a cascade around the edge.  I’ve used this formula for a long time and I’m always happy with how my pots turn out.

The pot in the photo could not be simpler.  I’ve used Dracaena in the center, seed Geraniums and double Petunias for the round and full and Lobelia for the cascade.  All of the plants were chosen, not only for color, but because they were economical.

One last dirty trick… that I shouldn’t admit to… is that I reuse potting soil from my containers.  It gets darn expensive to fill my pots every year.  So some years, especially when money is tight, I empty the old soil into a my wheel barrow and mix it about half and half with new potting soil.  To be on the safe side, you can pour boiling water over  the old soil before mixing it, to remove any potential fungus that might be lurking in the soil.  I’ve never had any noticeable ill effects on my plants even though I am breaking a cardinal rule of container gardening.  It might be that here in Utah, were the air is so arid, the soil is less likely to develop contamination… I don’t know.  But until I have a problem, I’ll go on breaking the rules.

Now I better get out and finish up my planting!

This week, I finally did a little planting in the vegetable garden.  It’s been snowing so much this spring… there have been very few opportunities.  I planted some Buttercrunch and Red Sails Lettuce seeds.  And Spinach and Arugula from seed as well.

These plants could not be easier to grow from seed.  Plus starting from seed always saves lots of money.  One little seed packet costs about $2 for more seeds than we can eat in a year!

I sow my seeds around the outside edge of my raised cedar garden boxes.  That way I can still plant my tomatoes or peppers in the center of the boxes without getting in the way.  By the time my tomatoes are big, the spinach has been eaten.  Plus they look so pretty planted that way.

My favorite trick is to succession plant.  That means I try to plant the amount of lettuce or spinach I think we will eat in a one to two week period, then I plant a small strip of seed, usually about two feet.  In a week or two I’ll plant another strip.  It’s smart to place plant markers at the beginning and end of the strip you’ve planted.  That way you know where to start the next strip if the first hasn’t germinated yet.

Yes, in reality I always plant more than we can really eat, but it’s a technique that greatly reduces waste in my garden and keeps us in good supply of the delicious plants that we love… and won’t keep.

In my area I can succession plant these cold loving crops for about 2 months.  Typically I am planting my first crops in late March and ending in late May.

One other smart planting tip:  Try to crop rotate.  I planted lettuce in the same bed for a few years and noticed a sharp upsurge in pests.  If you keep your plantings on the move each year, you can keep the pests confused.  This is especially helpful if you are trying to grow an organic vegetable garden like I am.

I hope a few of these tips are helpful.  Happy planting!