Favorite annuals
If you shop earlier in spring (before the garden center has been picked clean, I mean) or go to a place with a big selection, you see lots of choices. If you find certain types too boring or common, look around for alternatives — one big trend these days is familiar annuals in new colors, even bicolors. Get creative!
Have some fun! Here are some popular annuals:
• Eustoma: A plant with very long lasting, silk-like flowers
• Feverfew: An annual covered with double, mostly white chrysanthemum-like flowers
• Annual foxglove: A plant with charming, nodding flowers on a tall spike, adding a dramatic vertical element to any garden
• Honesty (money plant): An annual grown for its translucent quartershaped seed pods that make it choice for dried arrangements
• Larkspur: A plant that’s easy to grow by directly sowing the seeds in your garden in the early spring
• Nemophila: A plant with sky-blue cup flowers on compact mounded plants
• Nierembergia: A ground-hugging plant covered with purple cup-shaped flowers
• Stock: An annual with heavenly fragrance and flowers from white to pink to purple
• Torenia: A flower that looks like an open-faced snapdragon on compact plants, in shades of blue, pink and white.
Raising annuals from seed
Of course you can raise annuals from seed! Some are simpler to grow than others. Annuals with very small seeds like snapdragons and begonias are a bit more of a challenge because you need to start them indoors in a bright windowsill or under fluorescent lights.
Just buy the seed packets in late winter and sow them in flats or pots (particular directions are always on the back of the packets). Raise the seedlings indoors until spring weather comes and the soil warms up and all danger of frost is past; then move the plants outside.
Some annuals are so fast-growing that you can sprinkle their seeds on good soil in late spring, right outside, and they’ll quickly sprout and grow. This group includes popular ones like zinnias, marigolds, and nasturtiums. This process may require you to do some thinning at some point, but otherwise, it’s dead easy. Again, consult the back of the seed packet for details. One advantage to this tack is that you can grow some more unconventional or rare annuals. It certainly makes for a more interesting garden!
Beholding a one-time show
The very definition of an annual — a plant that goes from seed to flowering to death in one season, completing its entire life cycle in short order — states that annuals are a one-time show. When it’s over, it’s over. (Except when it’s not; if you garden in a mild climate, many annuals merely slow down for the winter but survive.)
If you garden in a cold climate, you can try digging up some favorites or bringing potted annuals inside. Keep them in a nonfreezing place, out of direct sunlight, and let them rest. Cut back all spent growth. Start reviving them with water and plant food when spring returns. However, if despite your best efforts, your wintered-over annuals don’t return to their former glory the following spring, accept their fate, pull them out, and replace them with new ones.
If you shop earlier in spring (before the garden center has been picked clean, I mean) or go to a place with a big selection, you see lots of choices. If you find certain types too boring or common, look around for alternatives — one big trend these days is familiar annuals in new colors, even bicolors. Get creative!
Have some fun! Here are some popular annuals:
- Sun-lovers: Angelonia, California poppy, cleome, cosmos, geranium, lobelia, marigold, million bells, nasturtium, nicotiana, petunia, portulaca, salvia, and zinnia
- Shade-lovers: Ageratum, cineraria, coleus, forget-me-not, impatiens, nemophila, pansy, primrose, sweet William, vinca, wax begonia
- Unusual, offbeat, but still easy annuals:
• Eustoma: A plant with very long lasting, silk-like flowers
• Feverfew: An annual covered with double, mostly white chrysanthemum-like flowers
• Annual foxglove: A plant with charming, nodding flowers on a tall spike, adding a dramatic vertical element to any garden
• Honesty (money plant): An annual grown for its translucent quartershaped seed pods that make it choice for dried arrangements
• Larkspur: A plant that’s easy to grow by directly sowing the seeds in your garden in the early spring
• Nemophila: A plant with sky-blue cup flowers on compact mounded plants
• Nierembergia: A ground-hugging plant covered with purple cup-shaped flowers
• Stock: An annual with heavenly fragrance and flowers from white to pink to purple
• Torenia: A flower that looks like an open-faced snapdragon on compact plants, in shades of blue, pink and white.
Raising annuals from seed
Of course you can raise annuals from seed! Some are simpler to grow than others. Annuals with very small seeds like snapdragons and begonias are a bit more of a challenge because you need to start them indoors in a bright windowsill or under fluorescent lights.
Just buy the seed packets in late winter and sow them in flats or pots (particular directions are always on the back of the packets). Raise the seedlings indoors until spring weather comes and the soil warms up and all danger of frost is past; then move the plants outside.
Some annuals are so fast-growing that you can sprinkle their seeds on good soil in late spring, right outside, and they’ll quickly sprout and grow. This group includes popular ones like zinnias, marigolds, and nasturtiums. This process may require you to do some thinning at some point, but otherwise, it’s dead easy. Again, consult the back of the seed packet for details. One advantage to this tack is that you can grow some more unconventional or rare annuals. It certainly makes for a more interesting garden!
Beholding a one-time show
The very definition of an annual — a plant that goes from seed to flowering to death in one season, completing its entire life cycle in short order — states that annuals are a one-time show. When it’s over, it’s over. (Except when it’s not; if you garden in a mild climate, many annuals merely slow down for the winter but survive.)
If you garden in a cold climate, you can try digging up some favorites or bringing potted annuals inside. Keep them in a nonfreezing place, out of direct sunlight, and let them rest. Cut back all spent growth. Start reviving them with water and plant food when spring returns. However, if despite your best efforts, your wintered-over annuals don’t return to their former glory the following spring, accept their fate, pull them out, and replace them with new ones.
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