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Planning Your Garden for Annuals First, decide how many plants you need for a given area. Take some grid paper and outline the beds and borders you wish to plant. If you want your flower beds to look colorful for a particular time of year (late spring, for example), choose plants that have similar blooming times. If you want color through several seasons in your beds, we recommend alternating hardy annuals with half-hardy annuals and tender annuals. Now that you’ve planned your garden, you’re ready to order your plants! Selection of Site Most annuals enjoy a full-sun position and well-drained soil. The majority of annuals enjoy at least 6 hours of sun each day. Annual plants appreciate damp, but not soggy, soil. Therefore, it is important that your planting site has good drainage. If your flower bed has a drainage problem (i.e. not draining well), create a raised bed. By bringing in quality topsoil, or fluffing up the existing soil with peat moss or compost, you can raise the existing soil level as much as six to twelve inches. The soil can then be held in place with stones, or treated lumber. Soil Preparation The worst soils for growing any plants, including annuals, are sand at one extreme and clay at the other. Both lack a vital soil ingredient – humus (decomposed particles of animal and vegetable matter that we sometimes call “compost”). To improve sandy or clay soil, you need to add lots of humus, such as peat moss, compost or leaf mold. You could even consider adding some topsoil, which is never bad for your flower beds. |
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