GARDENING - RENOVATING POTS FOR FALL

By Vikki Whitney Griffin’s

Greenhouses

GARDENING Renovating Pots for Fall

Once September rolls around your patio pots and hanging baskets might be looking a little tired or you might be tired of looking at them. It’s time to renovate your pots and welcome Fall to your home and garden.

Some plants in your pots might look healthy and be suitable for the cool Autumn temperatures. Plants to consider leaving in your containers: annual grasses, bacopa, nemesia, alyssum, dusty miller, ivy, dianthus, verbena, or any plant that looks Fall-like in its colour and looks healthy. Plants to remove, either due to a too-summery look or to their inability to handle cool temperatures: potato vine, geraniums, impatiens, begonias, marigolds (one of the first plants to be taken by even a light frost) and tropical plants.

Whether you remove one plant or all of them, you will need to freshen the soil before choosing from the abundance of Fall Fill-in Plants: mums, asters, ornamental kale and cabbage, fountain grasses, millet, pansies, asters, ornamental peppers, swiss chard and ivy. Perennials can even be added in: sedum, coral bells, rudbeckia, perennial grass, lysimachia, ajuga or even hydrangeas. To use perennials, either remove a healthy section from an existing plant in your garden (warning, there will be wilt and transplant shock) or purchase a new perennial, add it to your design and then be sure to remove

it from the pot and plant in the ground just after Thanksgiving. Perennials cannot over winter when left in pots in our zone; they must be in the ground.

Fun, decorative accents can make your new Fall Arrangement unique. Add in a scarecrow, pumpkin accent, even a witch broom. Colourful ornamental corn or gourds can be set beside your pots – even a straw bale. Saying good bye to Summer is hard to do, but when you have fresh Fall planters to look forward to, it lessens the blow.