Freshen Summer Container Gardens with New Fall Plants

Summer's extreme heat and drought took its usual toll on container gardens and the flowers look well past their prime by late summer. Thankfully, fall's cooler temps have arrived. It makes you want to get out there and freshen those sad looking container gardens. It's the perfect time, because nurseries and garden centers are full of gorgeous flowers and plants that love fall weather. Many can survive frosts and freezing temperatures as well. Even if you only freshen a couple of street-side containers with new flowers, it adds so much curb appeal.

To make the job easier, roll out the wheel barrow and grab a sturdy trash bag. It saves time and allows for clean-up as you go. The old plant material and potting soil are then moved to the compost pile, so nothing valuable gets wasted. A garbage bag makes for easy disposal of weeds or diseased plants that you don't want in the garden beds or compost pile.

Pull the spent summer flowers from the containers and toss in the wheel barrow. Remove several inches of soil from the top of the container as well. This not only allows for larger plants to fit in the container, but also gives enough room to add plenty of fresh nutrient-rich potting soil for fall's plants.

The old potting soil can be added to the compost pile or mixed in garden beds, especially if the garden soil is clay. Even though the nutrients are mostly depleted in old potting soil, it still contains ingredients that help to loosen and aerate difficult garden soil.

Chrysanthemums are an inexpensive and plentiful fall favorite, especially considering they're perennials. Mums are available in several colors, including rusty reds, orange, bronze, yellow, white and pinkish-mauve. You're sure to find a color or two that coordinate with your house exterior and the changing fall foliage. The warm russets, bronze, white and yellow mums look great beside pumpkins and fall squash.

Tip for buying mums: Don't buy mums in full bloom. It's best to pick plants with lots of new flower buds and only a few opened flowers, just so you can be sure of the flower color. You'll get a much longer show of flowers this way.

Pansies are must if you want flowers in cold weather. These popular cool weather flowers can't take the heat we endure in the south, but they do love the cool weather of fall. It's not uncommon to find pansies blooming almost all winter in Tennessee, stopping only for the coldest temperatures. But spring is when pansies are the star of the show. Then summer temperatures get too hot for them and it's their turn in the compost pile.

For mixed containers, use a combination of foliage plants and flowers. It gives the most interesting arrangement when you vary the height and width of plants. Use ornamental cabbage plants for cool green tones that fill large horizontal spaces under tall mums

Let mums take center stage, then place pansies and evergreen ivy in the smallest spaces at the edge of the containers. This helps insure there's always something interesting going on in the pot. The mums won't continue blooming all winter, but the pansies and ornamental cabbages stay looking fresh for a long time.

Don't forget to water the fall containers, even in the winter time, especially if rain is scarce. Plants survive cold temperatures better when their leaves are filled with moisture. It helps protect the plants from cold winds that damage the leaves.

Don't toss those mums! When spring arrives, plant them in the ground for many years of pleasure. If the mums begin to set buds during the summer, keep them pinched back until fall. It postpones the flowers and keeps the mums short and bushy. They'll put on an even better show when they burst into bloom again next fall.

Check out more gardening articles by Donna Kay:
Fall is the Perfect Season for Lawn Care
Tips on Buying and Planting Tulip Bulbs
Recycle Those Fall Leaves