Revive Your Container Garden for Autumn Pleasure

Fall container gardening can be a great way to extend the growing season. Just because your summer plants have faded is no reason to resign yourself to empty pots or a flower-less patio or deck.

Remember this basic container garden tip:
Choose to use one plant per container, or combine complementary plants in a larger container. It is a fun and easy task to rearrange your container display according to the season or whichever particular plants are currently the showiest. As summer plants fade, you can perk up your container displays by bringing in some fall plants. You will also want to revitalize your perennial containers and prepare them for winter.

Here are some more tips and ideas to help you keep your container garden growing well into frosty weather.

1. Get rid of spent plants. As soon as annuals are finished blooming, get them out of your containers. Not only are they droopy reminders of the past season, they can attract insects and disease. Prune back the plants you will be keeping so they are reshaped and ready to send out a final round of blooms or growth.

2. Amend container soil for new plants. As you remove old plants, take time to mix some compost or fresh potting mix into your containers. The soil that has been in the container over the spring and summer is depleted and needs to be fortified with fresh fertilizer/compost to support your fall plants.

3. Combine plants from different containers to consolidate and revitalize them. After you have cleaned up your plants and amended the potting soil, take stock of the plants you have left. Regroup them in large containers, potting complementary types that will share common hardiness and growing requirements. You can still mix various textures and types of plants; look for ways to use plants like coleus that have colored leaves. Beautiful foliage can easily replace flowers for a spot of color as winter draws near.

4. Move plants from your regular garden to containers. You may have a few regular garden plants that are still growing. Even vegetables can be moved from the garden to containers. Lettuces are lovely in containers, providing both color and texture, and they are edible, too!

5. Herbs are perfect in containers. Pot some herbs in containers, and they will provide lovely aromas and even some fall flowers. You can trim them back and have them ready to bring indoors for an indoor kitchen garden during the winter. Some perennial herbs may need a short period of cold dormancy, and then they will send out new growth when you move them to your warm kitchen. Fall container herbs are a good way to propagate new plants, and to ensure that tender or semi-tender herbs will survive the winter.

6. Pot semi-tender plants to move and protect them over winter. If you live in a zone where some plants survive the winter some years, and other years are too harsh for them to survive, move the plants that need the extra care into containers. The containers will be ready to move quickly into a protected location if extreme weather threatens. Large, heavy pots can even be left in a wagon, and easily rolled into a garage or porch for protection, and then back outside when the weather improves.

7. Decorate for fall holidays with container gardens. Combine your fall containers with collections of interesting seed pods, grasses, pumpkins, gourds, dried flowers and colored corn. Rearrange your containers and decorating items to keep them fresh as fall progresses. Move some of your fall containers indoors to decorate for the season.

8. It's time to plant bulbs. Not only is fall the time to plant most spring-flowering bulbs outdoors, it is the time to dig up a few from your garden and prepare them for forcing indoors. Bulbs need a period of cold, and you can achieve this by keeping them in the refrigerator for 3-4 weeks. Bulbs may be forced in shallow pots with a little soil, or in water only. The root end of the forcing bulb needs to be kept moist, and the growing tip needs to be upright facing sunlight. Special glass and ceramic containers are available for forcing bulbs, or any pot saucer is a good alternative.

9. Poinsettias are lovely container plants during the summer. They will grow strong and sturdy in a container outdoors. As fall approaches, it is time to regulate the day length to force your poinsettia to "bloom". Day length needs to be shortened to about 9 hours of strong daylight and the rest complete darkness. Even low light is enough to interrupt the cycle, so place your poinsettia in a completely dark closet during the "night time" and give it bright light during the short "daytime". It should grow some red-leaved bracts after about 11-12 weeks from beginning the light/dark treatment, so start in early October for December color. The light/dark treatment should continue for about 6 weeks, then give the plant natural day length.

10. The following plants are a few popular ones for fall gardens because they provide color, texture, and will survive a variety of temperature changes as the days grow shorter. They are available in most parts of the US, and are relatively easy to care for. Some of them can be wintered over as perennials or brought indoors to grow as houseplants during the winter.

Mums
Asters
Ornamental/Flowering kale
Helleborus orientalis [lenten-rose or hellebore]
English Ivy, Hedera helix [evergreen]
English Ivy, H. helix Goldchild [yellow edged ivy leaf]
Coleus
Herbs [double use indoors later]
Ornamental grasses [perennials]
Autumn Sage, Salvia greggii
Greater periwinkle,Vinca major
Pansies,Viola wittrockiana
Sources:
Personal Experience
http://containergardening.about.com/od/containersyearround/f/coldframe.htm

http://www.bhg.com/videos/m/21907681/fall-mums.htm

http://www.gardenguides.com/how-to/tipstechniques/containerindoor/houseplants/festivefallcontainer.asp