How To: Potted Flower Gardens

Instead of installing landscape garden beds, consider growing your favorite blooms in a potted garden. Potted gardens allow you to adapt your garden design to fit your needs. Grow the flowers on patios, decks or balconies, or anywhere else a traditional bed isn’t a possibility. A variety of pots and planters are available that allow you to grow the container plants attractively, including clay, plastic and wooden planters. Potted flower gardens require slightly different care than a regular bed, but they are less labor intensive in other ways.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You’ll Need:

• Planters
• Potting soil
• Slow-release fertilizer
• Soluble fertilizer

1. Set the planter in an area that receives the amount of sunlight necessary for the type of flowers you are growing. Most flowers require full day sunlight, though some, like impatiens, require some shade. Refer to the plant tags for light needs.

2. Combine a balanced slow-release fertilizer with the potting soil. Apply the fertilizer at the rate recommended on the label for your planter size.

3. Fill the planter two-thirds full with the moistened lightweight potting mixture. A peat-based mixture works well for most flowers.

4. Water the flowers in their nursery containers until the excess moisture drains from the bottom of the pots. Lift the plants out of the containers, taking care not to damage the roots.

5. Set the flowers on top the soil in the pots, spacing them at half the distance recommended on the plant label. Adjust the soil level under the roots as necessary until the crown of the plants — where the stems emerge from the roots — sits 2 inches beneath the rim of the pot.

6. Fill in around the flowers with additional soil until the soil level is even with the crown of the plants. Water thoroughly to moisten the soil throughout.

7. Water the flowers every two to three days or when the top ½ inch of soil begins to feel dry. Water from the top of the pot until the excess moisture drains from the bottom.

8. Fertilize once weekly with a soluble fertilizer formulated for flowering plants, beginning two months after planting. Apply the fertilizer at the package recommended rate.

Tips & Warnings

• Potted gardens rarely have weed problems since they are grown in sterile, weed seed-free soils.

• Use flowers with similar water, light and fertilizer requirements in a single pot.