We were on vacation last week. I hired a neighborhood college kid to water while I was gone and bring in the mail. I came home and most of my annual containers are close to dead. I'm thinking of dumping them in the compost pile. I'm headed to the garden center today - and I'm going to see what I can get for fresh annuals to replace them.

But here's the thing - I think I paid $20-30 total for all the flowers in those planters. I paid this neighborhood kis $70 to house sit for a week. I've thought of hiring a professional watering service when we go on vacation - but how much money do I want to spend to keep $30 worth of annuals looking fresh throughout the summer?

I am really sorry to hear about your containers. What a disappointment.

Plants in containers are unforgiving. There is no getting around it--they must have lots of water and fertilizer, every single day. Early in the season, when they are small and the weather is cool, you can skip a day here and there but by the Fourth of July, never.

My containers--pots, hanging baskets etc--get a gallon of water with 1/4 teaspoon Miracle Gro every single day. If it's over 90, I usually give them another gallon of plain water.

The best time to water is late in the day, if you can manage it. That gives them all night to absorb the water/fertilizer.

I've been doing this for many years and my containers are always full and packed with flowers with great foliage. There just isn't enough nourishment in the soil of a container to feed a plant all season.

As for kids who water, try to find one who is responsible well in advance of your trip. Pick one with responsible parents who will nag him or her, if necessary. Also look for someone you know who will be embarrassed to let your plants die.

Also have the kid over in advance of the day. Have everything written down in words of one syllable and in list form. Email it to the parents "as an extra copy". Have them water in your presence so they understand what to do. I train my kid-helpers to water the soil, not have it splash off the top of the flowers and foliage; to water slowly; to wait til water is running out of the bottom of the container; to water even when it rains. The flowers/foliage form an umbrella and rain does not soak the soil in a container.

Make sure they understand how much money all those plants cost and how badly you will feel if they die because they are really important to you.

Pay well! Shower them with gratitude and compliments--and let their parents know what a good job they did. There are lots of good kids out there and this job is good for them and your plants.

ginny, that is a terrific explanation of proper watering. I think I will switch to the way you add a 1/4 tsp of fertilizer daily instead of my once a week or onceinawhile feedings.
My whiskey barrel looks good. Contents: one pink geranium, some blue & white small pansies, pink petunias of some kind, a couple of begonias because I like the reddish leaves, a vinca, some verbena, etc. With a mix, they might compete but usually something looks good. But, this barrel gets shaded part of the day.
Hanging fiber baskets need to be watched since they are so shallow. They look ok but not great.
A galvanized tub of pansies. Someone once said they don't like pansies because they get wonky when it gets hot. They don't look too bad. I'm just leaving them there because I'm stubborn. They're in full sun, too.
Two buckets of impatients but both get some shade. One is next to the barn door on the east side. Next to it is a large terra cotta planter with verbena, petunia, etc. Again, afternoon shade it so helpful.
My almost daily watering is with a hose attachment that can either be a fairly gentle rain or a straight shot. I do the rain on the small pots but it's the straight shot for the large pots. Collection of basils in pots look awful. I planted them too thickly. 3 scented geraniums get shade from a shrub.
I like old galvanized tubs and whiskey barrels because of their depth but we have a country farmhouse and I don't do anything fancy.

I should have added that the best age for this job is sixth grade thru 10th--and maybe thru high school graduation, if you are lucky.

Once they get their licenses and can get jobs where there are other kids to have fun with, plant-watering loses its fascination, even tho you may be paying more than they can earn elsewhere. College--forget it.

Deanna - How big are your containers? The bigger the container the less prone they are to drying out. Small pots means lots of extra watering required. Use good soilless mix and you can try to add those water absorbing crystals that slowly release moisture in the soil.

Deanna, sorry your pots are not doing well this year, and pixie, that's so sad to lose the plants when you paid someone to water them for you.

My pots/containers are all doing quite well, especially now that the chipmunks are leaving them alone and letting them grow.

My problems have not been the weather, not that the weather has been good this year. We've barely had any rain now for almost 2 months and my town is on a mandatory every other watering day. If caught watering on the wrong day there is a fine: $50 first time, and $100 thereafter.

I'm not sure that I can be of much help because I don't buy any plants, annuals or perennials any more.

For the past 7 years I've wintersown all my plants, or get divisions from established plants from other gardeners at my annual spring plant swap.

This year was the exception in that I did purchase 3 perennial phlox at Russels gaarden center, a fairly new type called Phlox volcano.
But other than that it has been so little, if anything, I can't remember anything else that I purchased.

Besides my various garden beds and a huge fenced in area that is full of at least 30 different varieties of morning glory vines, I have at least 100 containers/pots of various sizes in both part sun and full sun and they all are looking fairly good considering the torture they have been put through with the chipmunks, the groundhogs and heat, humidity and only getting watered every other day.

The pots range in size from 6 inches to 20 inches and they contain various plants from dwarf dahlias, dwarf sunflowers, petunias, coleus, morning glory, malva zebrina, datura, sweet peas that have been blooming and growing all summer in this heat, 4 o'clocks, dwarf snapdragons, torenia, a large variety of herbs, both annual and perennial ones ( I always put the perennial herbs back in the ground in the fall to winter over), annual asters, torenia, monkey flower, plus my tomatoes are in very large pots ( both determinate and indeterminate), and I have window boxes full of lettuce (for some reason in this heat it is still growing, germinating seeds and doing fine), raddishes, beets, carrots, cucumbers, and strawberry plants.

All of them, as I said, are doing fine and certainly far better than they did last summer with 2 months of nothing but cold and rain.

I do the same thing every year. I fill the pots, sizes depend on the plants that are going in them, with fresh miracle grow potting mix, just the regular kind not the one with the moisture retention. I get the soil wet enough for planting, plant the seedlings, add more soil and then put about 1 1/2 inches of a cheap pine bark mulch on the top of the soil and water again well.
Then put the pots where they are going to go.

I never fertilize the pots because there is more than enough fertilizer in the soil for the growing season.

When I water them, it is always in the late afternoon, after the sun has gone off them for the day, usually sometime after 4pm and before 6pm.
I use a gentle shower nozzle on my sprayer and and I water each one until the water starts to pool on the top of the mulch. I let that soak in well while I'm watering other pots near the ones I just did. Then I go back and do the same thing a second time and if the pot is really large, like the ones the toms and cukes are in, I will do it a third time.

By watering this way, it is a slow process of getting the soil wet and lets the soil soak all the way down to the bottom of the pot.

Most of my pots are on the ground and so that water can be "sucked" out of the pots into the dry ground around it. So I make sure to water the ground that they are sitting on, which has mulch on it as well.

My hanging pots get the same type of watering but I do it more slowly so that the water just doesn't pour out of the bottom of the pots right away. I make sure that when I get to the point that the water is coming out of the bottom of the pots, that I let it come out slowly and build up till it appears to be "over watered" and is pouring out the bottom of the pots.

If the pots are small, you need to water them more slowly so that the water really soaks into the soil and the much is wet as well.

On these windy days that we have had, the plants dry out by way of the leaves as well as the soil down to the roots, so I am very careful to give the entire plant a light spray of water to help add moisture to the top of the plant as well as the soil and roots.

This is the method that my grandparents taught me to use and their containers where always perfect. They where farmers that owned a veggie flower farm when I was growing up and spent the summers with them.

Hope some of this helps.

Fran

Ginny, are you for hire? ;-)

i do have mulch on my window boxes, not hanging containers. I also have the moisture-retaining stuff in all of them. Here are some pictures of them to give you an idea. They are just kind of seedy and not full compared to how they were before mid-July.

When I water I don't do it very slowly, but I flood them at the top and continue to flood until the water comes out of the bottom. They're not getting blasted, but it's a healthy medium water flow. I figured that once water comes out the botoom, if the water pools up on the top well enough, then that water would gently saturate the plant.

In the window boxes the purple heliotrope used to have very full blooms. There is also an apricot verbena that is practically non-existent now. The alyssum is also more seedy and less full than before. In the hanging container, you see the purple supertunia doing well, but the ?lobularia? in front has practically all gone to seed and looks awful. Then the ground container is bad. There are very few flowers on the white plant, and the yellows are mostly seedy. It just looks all tired and worn out now.

Initially I was fertilizing every day. Now I'm much much less dependable. That could be a problem, as well. I'm using potting mix which is devoid of nutrients. I need to do better on fertilizing now. They're now getting watered every 24 hours now, but maybe it's hard for them to recover once they've been stressed.

There are definitely 'hot' and 'cold' weather annuals. I'm not sure there is enough water in the ocean to keep a 'cold' weather annual happy during a heat wave. It's not that they are drying out, but that they just don't like the heat. A lot like me:-)

I don't see anything 'wrong' with your containers. I agree with mad and it's August - everything usually looks dreadful after giving it's all in June and July. Not a mad scientist, but I swear the sun is stronger than it used to be in the summer. Never used to hear about "Ozone" warnings in Connecticut, but we do now. My helitrope isn't as happy as it was before the summer equinox despite daily watering, large pot, and 2" of straw mulch. Then again, I looked better before it hit 100 degrees, too. :)

Kindly,
Jane

"In the window boxes the purple heliotrope used to have very full blooms. There is also an apricot verbena that is practically non-existent now. The alyssum is also more seedy and less full than before. In the hanging container, you see the purple supertunia doing well, but the ?lobularia? in front has practically all gone to seed and looks awful. Then the ground container is bad. There are very few flowers on the white plant, and the yellows are mostly seedy. It just looks all tired and worn out now."

Your heliotrope is leggy and not blooming well because it needs to be pinched back and deadheaded to bloom well.
The alyssum looks typical of alyssum at this time of year, unless it has been cut back for new growth after it's first full bloom and successive ones after that.
I will cut mine back at least twice during the season so that it it doesn't get leggy and seedy, then after it's third full bloom let it go so that I can collect seeds for next year.

Your apricot verbena is doing poorly and may or may not be on it's last legs because you "gave it too much love."

From past experience and calling several local nurseries including Russell's in Wayland, I was given the following info on verbena.

1. They need to be deadheaded or they quit blooming, You need to cut the blooms off the stem as the blooms finish.

2. Fertilize once in spring only

3. use well draining soil in a pot or in the ground.

4. If using miracle grow potting mix, use only the regular kind, not the one with moisture retention and use 1 part miracle grow to 4 parts of unfertilized potting mix.

5. Plant where the plant will get the most sun, at least 8-10 hours of sun, if possible

6. Water only when the plant is dry.

Over feeding, over watering, not dead heading will kill the plant, allow powdery mildew to take hold and destroy the plant.

All the above explains why my neighbors didn't survive last summers deluges of rain for 2 months.

"In the hanging container, you see the purple supertunia doing well, but the ?lobularia? in front has practically all gone to seed and looks awful"

supertunias do well in all weather, even cool damp and deluges of rain that we had last summer.

lobularia is a cool weather plant that will do well in spring till the temps heat up and the humid air arrives. It will probably pick up again and look well in the fall when the temps cool down again.

"Then the ground container is bad. There are very few flowers on the white plant, and the yellows are mostly seedy. It just looks all tired and worn out now."

Try cutting back the white plant and the yellow one and see if that brings on new growth and then new blooms. you didn't say what those flowers where.

In the window box, try cutting back on the watering to see if it will help the verbena.

Fran

I went to Russells yesterday and picked up some new annuals to replace the half dead ones in my pots. Tomorow I will pull out the saddest plants and replace with my new annuals. These are all my pots out on my back deck - they are small pots (maybe 6"?). Hopefully I can keep them nice looking until early October.

My pots out front don't look that bad. Tired, but look OK from the street. The geraniums still look nice, the allysum looks like deanna's, and some other flower I put in there has completely died out, but has left nice green foliage. In about a month I plan to dump all those pots anyway and put out Mums.

I tried an experiment with my gladiolas this year. Instead of planting them in the ground, I put them in pots on the patio. So now I have 6 gorgeous pots of gladiolas. They seem to not mind this heat. And they have added a great splash of color to one side of the patio. I moved them over to the side of the patio that can be viewed from the street. And moved my container tomatoes to the non-visible side.

I still have my own personal conflict - how much am I willing to pay somebody to water $30 worth of annuals when I am gone on vacation?

I have mainly foliage plants, or perennials like lavener, in pots, so when they slow down on flowering it's not such a problem. My pots are all pretty large, which gives the plants a little breathing room, but they're also all terra cotta, which doesn't hold moisture very well.

So, when I travel, I try to move most of them into the shade - all but the biggest pots. It's less devastating to them to miss a few days of sun than to bake in dry soil.

When the soil in a pot has really dried out, it helps to set it in a saucer and keep soaking it for several hours. Soil can shrink when it gets too dry, and water will run out the bottom of the pot, without being absorbed by the soil.

I have cut back on containers because they do add quite a chunk to the workload. The containers I do have don't look too bad. They do get daily watering with few exceptions. I really never fertilize enough. I was going to try to be more consistent this year, but I still didn't. They get constant grooming.

I did try a few new things this year that worked out really well. I bought a tropical hibiscus in standard form at the beginning of the season and it has enjoyed the heat and humidity. The nursery staff told me they love water and fertilizer. I have given them both but have skipped the fertilizer a few times and it could be flowering more.

One pot has just a Julia Child Rose in it and that has grown very well and flowered well and been blooming for a long time. The heat doesn't seem to have bothered it at all. A shade pot with Sophia Begonia, a Caladium and Fuchsia in it also looks good without much attention.

I think if I were giving them more fertilizer, they would look even better.

de-
in the window box,what is the silver plant hanging down in front? when i loaded up at russell's this yr. i was looking for plants like that but all i found was the green 'baby's tears'? plant. i bet they had yours but i just didn't recognize it. so neat!
thanks much,
mindy

For some reason I missed these last few posts. I have been meaning to respond to Fran's very thoughtful and helpful post for quite some time, and here I get on this thread to find more comments have been added!

Some of the plants, like the alyssum and the blue ?lobularia? (almost), have recovered. Those superbells still look good, though. The supertunia is still superb. I generally don't like petunias, but this one isn't seedy and leggy at all. Next year I'll do more of then, especially since Fran says they handle cool rain and sizzing hot equally well.

First, arbo_return, the silver plant is a PW plant, Dichondra hybrid 'Silver Falls.' It was in plentiful supply at two of the three nurseries at which I do most of my shopping. It might have been at the third, but I can't remember. You shouldn't have a problem finding it next year. Mine ended up being just OK, but when they work out as expected they create a very full and solid wall of foliage down the front without adding any extra height. Instead of going up they just go wide.

Fran, thank you so much for the time you took to send such an informative e-mail. I'll remember the verbena info next year and plan more carefully. Do you know if the info applies to the Superbenas that are more of a trailing type? I wondered if they would do better than my 'Obsession Apricot,' but your comments make me think that they do best by themselves and not with other plants. By themselves they can get the special attention, or lack of attention, they like. I did deadhead my verbena after your post and the ones on the porch are recovering very nicely. The window box verbenas seem to be a loss, though, at this point. The Superbenas aren't supposed to need dead heading, so I didn't think mine would, either. Based on the lobularia being a cool plant I'll plan more carefully if I use it again next year. Can it handle a little shade?

That white plant that is doing NOTHING, and even at nurseries and other places I go I see it doing NOTHING, is also a PW, Sutera 'Snowstorm Giant Snowflake.' Realy a dud, and it's not just me. I see them dudding out everywhere. All foliage, no bloom.

Thanks, everybody, for your comments!

HI all,

My containers here are mostly still looking really nice right now. I do water twice a day and in some cases of the very large Brugmansias and my big Ensete (seven to nine feet or so) I have to water them three times a day this time of the year when its 95 degrees, dry and windy. It just sucks the water out of those plants at light speed. We recently took a four day trip and I hired my niece to water as well as take care of the kitties while we were gone. Most of the containers did OK without me around for a few days but I have had problems with my Tithonias and canÂt figure it out. I donÂt know if it was too much water or not enough or maybe theyÂre just tired for the season? Does anyone else here grow them in containers and do you find they fade out late summer? Most of the fuchsias are still sulking because itÂs just been way to hot for them this summer. TheyÂd started budding up beautifully last week with the cooler temps but have gone back to sulk mode except for ÂJack Shahan and ÂSunray which are looking great at present. All the combo pots are beautifully filled in and putting on a terrific show so lots of fun still left for the season even if the borders are winding down earlier than normal. The stars this summer are the Acalyphas which are all getting huge and beautiful especially my ÂRaggedy AnneÂ. Great plants! Here are a couple pics of a few of my containers and borders of containers.

This border is in full sun. The large Brug on the right is ÂCharles Grimaldi that IÂve had for five years or so. ItÂs just budding up at the moment and I canÂt wait for its show.

This NoID white brug really put on a show a couple weeks ago. ItÂs currently resting with a few flowers on it but is also budding up again.

The Tithonias prior to our vacation. They are pretty sad looking at present and IÂm thinking of replacing this pot with an orange mum for now.

Fuchsia ÂJack ShahanÂ

More containers
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The weather people are predicting high 90Âs tomorrow through Thursday and IÂm surely hoping thatÂs the end of this awful heat for the season.

Deanne

Hi Deanne! Nice to see you. You have done an amazing job of keeping your containers looking great with all the heat and drought we had this year! Its not a surprise that you have had to water them twice a day. Such a lot of work with that many containers, but your whole garden looks just as fresh as last year.

I need to thank you. I saw a Caladium when I was shopping for annuals in late spring that I remembered seeing in a container you grew last year. It was a Miss Muffet. It went into one of my three pots this year and worked out really well. It did a great job of filling in and looked really nice with a Sophia Begonia and a variegated Fuchsia. Ive been looking up how to overwinter them, but from what Ive read, it doesnt seem like theyre easy to do. Not sure Ill bother. I probably wouldnt have even tried it if I hadnt loved yours. I will definitely grow them again.

I was just reading a post about Tithonia, where someone reported how awful theirs look at this time of year. I linked below. Hope that helps.

Thats some amazing Brugsmania!

Even though I meant to post a loooooooong time ago, better late than never. Deanne, I must say your containers are beyond belief, truly amazing. They look phenomenal. You are my new container hero! Really inspiring pics.

I must say, though, that I couldn't see any "sad" tithonias anywhere. I saw those beautiful ones in the pots, but the sad ones escaped my eye. I find it hard to believe any of your plants are truly "sad." Unless, of course, sad=beautiful. That would be Bizarro World, and i could then say my containers looked so happy they were ecstatic.

Fantastic job!