We all know that there are annuals, perennials, biennials, and big permanent things (that would be your shrubs, trees, bushes, and other grownup things planted by people who believe in the future without caring if they will be here to witness it). Or perhaps they think that big things grow faster than they do. Or perhaps they are in that class defined by one writer...to paraphrase, that the definition of altruism is an old man planting a sapling tree...it is something that will provide shade that they themselves will never know, for people that they will never meet.
Or perhaps they don't overthink. I digress. This post was to be about annuals. Namely, how I have come to see them not only as one of those frivolities that one must make room for; but as an expense and addition to the garden that really is worthwhile and worthy of a piece of the budget.
When I first got into gardening, I bought what looked nice...what I liked. Not a lot of thought into location and light, watering needs, microclimates, pests, deer, or anything past pure attraction. Kind of how I dated, as well. Then, following that same trajectory of maturation, I began to put all of my faith into perennials. The move from South Carolina only deepened that feeling. On that topic...gardening in the south had its challenges, God knows. The heat, the humidity...the brief spring and only slightly longer autumn. Once you figure it out, though, you can marvel at how your houseplants tripled in size with one summer vacation out in the shade. And how some annuals really could serve as good groundcovers, growing a phenomenal amount in six weeks (hypoestus, the polka dot plant, is one). Tropicals are a dream in that climate...the banana/musa, the gloriosa lily, all sorts of amazing beauties.
Moving to Washington State was a real change. Overall, a positive one. Lower humidity made gardening an all-day sport, not one to be dashed out and finished before 10:00 am to avoid sun stroke. And the first time that I smelled water on air dry enough to make water vapor detectable, it was euphoria. But after fifteen years in the South, there were adjustments and things to be relearned. The long periods of rain mean rot for a lot of things not taken into the greenhouse, or properly buried in layers of mulch. I lost quite a few dahlias that way. Maybe there are no Japanese beetles, but there is black spot and mold...also, a few roses have gone onto greener pastures (somewhere). But finding myself in a climate with longer periods of cold and wet had me completely veering away from anything that was spent after one season. Only something that was engineered to be there year after year caught my fancy. Dependability...WITH flowers. Or herbs, or fruit. That was what made the cut. Annuals seemed like a foolish investment...buying anything that was done after that one season was not an option, since sunny seasons here can be short.
Or, rather, they used to be. If you want to know if global warming is a genuine phenomenon, ask a gardener. Or a hiker who really pays attention to the flora on their favorite trail, year after year. We see the plants that come way early, that one year, and the year after; we note when new plants show up, never before seen in a region this cold, because last winter, we never had that hard frost that turns most things into a melty black sop. And it's not always a bad thing that the cold comes and puts a stop to some plants. I lost a silver artemesia last winter because it did not get cold enough to send it into dormancy...the rain rotted out most of it. I was able to save one piece that had sent roots out, and it is now growing back nicely in an oak barrel.
I will admit that warmer winters have me delighted, in a selfish way, when I see plants coming back and even ahead of the calendar when I take a good look at the garden in March. Not just iffy things that sometimes need that mulch layer (like echinacaea, monarda, and orchid rock rose)...it's a thrill when you see how many of those you don't have to replace. And we expect a lot from campanula (every kind of Canterbury bell seems bullet proof here); from foxglove, hardy dianthus, hosta, hydrangea, penstemon (not just the red but that very cool blue/purple/pink flowered one), and many other reliables. Not to mention the ever-amazing butterfly bush, lilac, rhodies, forsythia. But when I walk out and see ornamental sages...hotlips and black-and-blue salvia...all leafed out by May and flowering in late July, I know that something has shifted. Before now, I bought those as annuals. Now, I will expect to see them reappear the following spring, and even without putting them to bed properly for a long, protected winter sleep, in a bunker of leaf cover. And if they do get tucked in, then my hopes will be sky-high, for sure, given this new reality.
So not only are those plants once "grown as annuals in the Pacific Northwest" now viable residents for more than one year; but their worthiness even over one season has become real. Not only are the winters themselves not as harsh, but the fall has usurped the early part of that season. On the other end, the spring is waking everything up a bit earlier; and, in the middle, the summer (even with its bouts of June gloom) is stretching itself further to both sides. Those periods of rain, followed by stretches of sun and temps that bump the 90s, really fuel the fire and give everything a touch of Santa Barbara fever. Planting those annuals fairly early after frost (which once meant May Day and now can mean April Fools) gives you much more than one cycle of bloom. And with a little regular maintenance, your flowers can be nonstop and utterly unbelievably gorgeous.
We all know how the annual cycle works. Annuals are plants that complete their life cycle in one year or season. They produce blooms that produce nectar; the nectar (along with particular flower colors) attract insects who feed on the nectar; these insects jump from plant to plant, and thereby assist in cross-pollination. This stimulates the production of seeds; and although some plants will continue to produce blooms and seeds until killed by frost, some will shut down after one crop of blooms has produced enough seeds to ensure a fat new crop of new offspring in the following year. Some perennials reproduce by seeds as well; but pretty much all annuals reproduce through the seed cycle. These are most of your vegetables and many of your favorite flowers. Snapdragons, sunflowers, zinnias, African daisies/oenothera, and herbs like borage, columbine, chamomile, marigolds, calendula are all annuals. Many annuals will continue to produce flowers until frost, not requiring deadheading...but some will begin to shut down the moment a few of them set seed heads. I've got snap dragons coming up all over the place, and never dead head them unless the plants was ravaged by slugs and needs a total restart. The point is that, with regular oversight, you can help your gorgeous annuals to remain lush, full of blooms, and as full as the day you brought them home...if not better!
I have to say here that I have many times fallen flat on this part. Each year, I make gardening resolutions, just before the spring. I mean to stick to them...but it was only this year that I have succeeded. Usually, even though I may begin with all guns blazing, I peter out around the 4th of July. Not this time. Maybe it has been the success brought on bittersweetly by climate change. I am not entirely sure. But whatever the reason, visitors have noticed that my gardens look the best that they ever have. Considering that this is a one-person undertaking, this has to be somewhat manageable, since it all competes for my time along with my full-time job schedule, being in a working rock band, my need for constant creativity, the explosion of the soap business. But when I realized that just a little more time would mean having a beautiful yard, I decided to stop trying to find time, and just to make time...and to focus on those aspects of garden maintenance that held the key to year-long success. Here are those things that made the difference for me in this past year:
(1) Simply visit your plants each day. With your morning coffee, your after-work smoke, or your midday break...take time each day to walk around and just observe. You can mitigate an unbelievable amount of disease, damage, and loss simply by catching it early. It is when you get busy, preoccupied, and the weeks go by without your taking a good look, that bad things happen. A lot of time can go by, during which your plants go on the decline; if you think about the winter months when three weeks can pass without you even seeing that side of your yard not by the front door or the driveway, you have to remember that this happens even more easily in summer when you have a wealth of opportunities to take you out of the garden and off to festivals, concerts and other NW delights. A daily visit can keep you on top of which patch of promising seedlings has been discovered by slugs; which area of the yard is not adequately fortified against the deer; which plants are not thriving in the area that you selected for them, and may need more sun, more shade, more water, drier soil, or even the ones that are blazing away with flowers, about to set seeds, and in need of a good cutting back. Catch problems early and you really can salvage the situation in a majority of the time.
(2) Make regular cut-back and deadhead sessions. This is something that I have found hard to follow up on, yet with no excuse. No, you don't need to do the whole yard at once; simply pick one bed, one patio, a few afternoons each week...it makes for less of a burden to chop this task up into little time increments. Over the course of a week or two, you can hit the whole yard. This makes this particular chore much more approachable and you will be less apt to put it off until you suddenly find that your whole yard has gone to seed by mid-summer. Simply take a big bucket and a pair of shears (and also some scissors) out to the area of focus, and whack back the stems bearing flowers...take them totally out, all the way down to the base foliage. Also, pick off any dead or dried leaves or foliage. You will find yourself taking a good look at each plant, and making this a good opportunity to spot problems. It might be hard at first to cut back all of those gorgeous blooms; you can just take off the spent ones, leaving the ones that are in their prime...but just remember to catch them before they set seed if that happens before you get back around to that spot again. Here is the amazing part: before you know it, those annuals (and even perennials) that you cut back will come back in a flash, looking even better than before. They recover after a cutting back extremely fast! It is as if they have been waiting for the refreshment that a cutback brings; you will be amazed with the results. Of course, you are extending the life cycle of the plant by delaying its seed production stage; as long as it can't set seed, it will have to produce another set of flowers that get pollinated in order to set seed. This process will keep on until frost comes and tells the plant for sure that the game is over. Repeatedly removing the flowers, the vehicle through which seeds are produced, extends the plant's efforts to make more flowers. Of course, as mentioned above, some plants only make one blooms effort; columbine is one of these that put on one show only. You can't really extend the bloom time of these, but you really should take the opportunity of your whack sessions to harvest and save all of the seeds that you can, from plants that have been proven in your garden; you will have a lot of good seed stock to grow more plants that you know will succeed, as well as plenty to give away and trade with gardening friends, as discussed below;
(3) Save your seeds! Taking an interest in seed saving is a good way to ensure that you will stay on top of plant maintenance. When whacking back your repeat bloomers, clothespin a few small ziplock baggies to the side of your bucket. This is a good way to ensure that you grab those ripe seeds before they pop out and choose their own destiny in your garden. It is fun to have those volunteers show up each spring and fall, but it is wise and equally fun to save back some as well. Trading seeds with local friends is awesome; you are getting something that you know will do well in your yard (although you always want to ask your friend about any special tips...never take a pass on the benefit of someone else's experience). As you make your way through the garden, and spy some seeds ready for harvest, you just pop them into individually labeled bags. For some that are harder to capture (like perennial sunflowers, my beloved columbine, poppies, etc), the baggie method is perfect. Since snapping the seed head off often sends a lot of seeds flying, you can just tip the head down into the bag and shake it empty. Tip: I often end up with a lot of seeds that look identical once removed from the plant. I always label the bag, or include a dried seed head with the seeds, to make sure that I know who is who. Do make sure that your seeds are fully cured/dried before sealing into any airtight storage container; otherwise you might sadly lose a lot of next year's savings account to mildew. If your harvested seeds are not obviously dried when you pick them, you can either (a) clothespin and hang the baggie open for a bit; (b) spread them thinly on cheeesecloth or paper, or a fine screen, until dry. I store a lot of seeds, once dry, in mason jars...this is a good idea for seedheads that might otherwise be crushed, or if you have a sizeable quantity of seeds. Store your seeds in a cool, dry and not too bright area.
(4) Save your useful flowers, too! There are a ton of wonderful things that will give you joy and health long after bloom time. As with seed saving, harvesting useable flowers regularly helps keep these plants pumping out color all season; if you take an interest in their uses, you will stay on top of the maintenance. Flowering medicine is undergoing a real renaissance right now; people are rediscovering the traditional medicines and home cures with which their grandparents and great grandparents were well acquainted. Before we ran out to buy Sting-Eze for a bee sting, we stepped out to the backyard, clipped a few leaves of plaintain, chewed them up into a quick poultice, and slapped it onto the affected area. Try it sometime...the pain will stop after about one minute, and repeat applications will result in a stunningly-quick healing. You can grow calendula easily from seed; the bright orange, peach, apricot, gold and yellow flowers are stunning and a favorite of the bees and butterflies. When harvested and thoroughly dried, they have a million uses in cold-process soap, infusions with skin-loving oils like olive and sweet almond, lotions, and more. Try to grow the strain Calendula officianalis, which is especially high in the skin-loving resin that makes calendula a widely-used flower in quality beauty-care. I've headed off a few potentially horrible sunburns with my home-infused calendula oil (which should pop up in a future blog). Also, many types of lavender thrive with little care in just about any part of the country. Every yard should have a nice knot of lavender; the fragrance is heaven and it is another favorite of the pollinators. The flowers appear either as stalks of tiny blooms that you harvest by pinching your fingers and dragging them up the stalk; or as lavender "bees" that are picked easily. The smaller flowers dry quickly and the bees will dry after laying out for a few weeks. You can simply keep them on hand for an olfactory treat; a bedtime whiff to help send you off; or for use in oil infusions or soap making. And for cooking; the next time that you make a buttery pound cake, throw in a couple of teaspoons of dried lavender for a lovely fragrant accent. Remember that this herb has powerful astringent properties and that a little goes along way!
(5) Don't wait to whack a plant back if it isn't thriving right off the bat. Now and then, I buy a plant heretofore new to my garden, simply because I like it. And I get it home, and find that although I place it and water it according to any information source I can find, it just does not thrive. A week after coming home, it looks terrible. Remember that this does not mean that you're doing something wrong. The plant just left its nursery, where it may have spent its whole life thus far; it rode on a truck for a while, found itself in a nursery or grocery store garden center whose climate might be very different from where it was born. And it is expected to look fabulous until it sells, so that it does sell. Then there is always the wild card factor of being at the mercy of a garden-center attendant who thinks that watering is everything; or that watering is optional; or that everything needs full sun. This whole traumatic transition might take a toll on the poor thing and cause it to lose its pizazz; sometimes, this downturn happens just after it is sold, and goes with you to its new home, when it finally feels that it can relax and stop trying so hard. And you conclude that you have lost your green thumb. Don't forget that this is a living thing that has had no time to adjust comfortably. Even though many plants are grown today for their ability to adapt to shipping times and conditions, plants have their limits. Don't expect for your new plant to begin its term in your yard with a bang-up premier. Sometimes, the best way to begin your relationship is with a big whack-back. It gives your plant a chance to focus on its roots, lay back on flower production, have less infrastructure to support; remember that many experts advise that you plant perennials toward the end of the summer, and that you cut back the ones that you have so that they focus on developing the healthy roots that will sustain them through the winter and put them in prime shape for spring rebirth. (You can also save bank on buying healthy but tired plants at season-end...I'll address that in another blog). Case in point: I recently bought two lavateras at my grocery store's garden center; I didn't have a place for them but the price was too good to pass up, and I knew that after a summer on the back porch, I could find a place for them to brighten up in the garden, and that they would do well here (I have one huge Rose of Sharon that I grew from a twig, and a smaller lavatera that has grown up through several inches of compost, after I forgot that it was in the spot planned for the new vegetable garden). But the moment I got them home, they looked pretty darn forlorn. They were pretty thirsty, but had plenty of water; enough sun; everything that they needed. But they just looked like they were always wilted, with a permanent case of the vapors, and in need of a fainting couch. So I gave them a good whacking back, much sooner than I had thought I would. Less than a week later, they are coming back with fervor and looking better than the day I bought them. Apparently, the trip from nursery to store took its toll, and they just were not going to recover without a break. Now, they look fantastic and will likely pump out the blooms until I cut them back and place them in one of the garden beds, where they will come back gloriously next spring. So don't forget to employ this strategy if your new plant looks under the weather; sometimes that is the best way to counteract the stress of that long trip from the nursery to you.
(6) Stay on top of the watering. You can tell who the gardeners are; they're the people who rejoice when rains come after even a modest period without. When they say, "We needed it," they really mean "My plants needed it." Furthermore, they mean "Now I don't have to start watering when I get home." But there are those times when you are the rain. It is likely that just as many plants die from overwatering as from lack thereof; but that is why that regular walk-around inspection is critical. Some plants are better off going dry and showing some droop before you drag out the hose; and some will need water almost daily. You need to keep an especially close eye on your potted plants in full sun; containers dry out much faster than garden beds. A layer of mulch on either helps to retain moisture; good drainage is critical for all containers. And your hanging plants are in especial danger of drying out, due to the airflow all around the container. You might like one of those watering wands that attaches to your hose for them. Get a few of those sprinklers with multiple settings, and make sure that the area that you want to cover is being covered by the setting. And we should always be conservative with water, as it is a precious resource (especially in areas like Central and Southern CA); but remember that it is always better to water deeply and less frequently, than briefly and more often. This has to do with root development; the first method will cause water to weigh down on, and to sink down into, the soil; consequently, the plants' roots will learn that they must grow downward in order to access it. Shallow, frequent watering leads the roots to believe that they should stay close to the surface and spread out in order to get their water. Plants with deep roots will better survive colder winters; so the deeper and less often, the better. In order to keep track of how much water you've laid down, you can either time yourself for 20 minutes, or you can put an empty tuna can out in the area and move the sprinkler when the can is full. Rain in the forecast? Take a few minutes and move any plants under the eaves outside of the rain shadow, so that they get the real thing...somehow, nothing is as good as rain water. This is why I have three heavy duty rain barrels outside, to catch rainwater; they have narrow openings that I fit with automotive funnels and a little piece of screen, to keep free of leaves and other things that can clog them up. Having these barrels placed strategically around the house near groups of potted plants makes watering a lot easier, when you choose to do it by hand and not the hose. In the same spirit...watch for places where drainage is poor, and there is standing water that is hurting your plants. You will need to keep the sprinkler away from those spots, and possibly also find the source of that water if it isn't obvious; you may have a plumbing leak, gutters in need of repair, or at the very least, a problem spot in which only bog plants will thrive.
So...these are all some tried and true tips that will have not just your annuals thriving for months, but your perennials doing better than ever. There is a saying for challenging careers that "Showing up is half the battle" and that applies in the garden as well. Looking at your garden every day is the best thing that you can do to spot and address issues; and just taking thirty minutes or so each day, focusing only on one small bad or patio, to cut back, harvest precious seeds, collect useful flowers, and water, is all that it takes to keep your garden and your whole yard in beautiful condition, and to create a space that is peaceful, serene, visually fulfilling, and nourishing to body and mind, for most of the year. There are many options for growing beautiful plants during those winter months, as well; but if winter is the time when you take a break from the garden, you can spend time working with the flowers and herbs that you diligently harvested during the year as part of your maintenance; and you can also look forward to the spring, when you will have a rich arsenal of seeds and tubers ready to replenish your beds and containers with new color. Keep in mind also that having all of those beautiful seeds at the ready will save you a significant amount of money, and give you gifts to share with your friends.
