Cold Loving Spring Containers

Who says you have to plant your containers in May after the danger of a final frost? I have plants in my containers all year long and start in early March after pulling out Christmas greens using the long list of early spring flowers that can tolerate and love chilly weather.

There are so many flowers that you can use before the cold subsides that I make up at least a dozen containers  to cheer me up after a long cold winter. Having hung up my winter coat and gotten out fleeces, I am ready to plant.

I recently had a cold snap in April where the nighttime temps went down to about 29 degrees. I placed a frost blanket over my containers and they sailed through without any problems.

 

Hardy Annuals

Hardy annual plants are the most cold-tolerant annual plants. They can handle a slight freeze and are good choices for early fall and early spring plantings. A sustained freeze though will do them in. Hardy annual plants will  do much better in the ground, rather than in containers, since the ground will insulate roots better than the small amount of soil in a container. And plants that have had time to adjust to increasingly cold weather will be hardier than those that suddenly encounter it. So, don’t buy plants that were in a greenhouse and set them outside without hardening them off. This just means acclimatizing them to cooler temperatures gradually.

Here are my list of cold tolerant annuals:

• Pansies & Violas
• Calendula
• Foxglove
• Sweet Alyssum
• Larkspur
• Snapdragon
• Nemesia
• Swiss Chard
• Parsley
• Dill
• Culinary Sage
• Anemones
• Ranunculus
• Poppies
• Cerinthe or Honeywort
• Chinese Forget Me Not
• Cornflower
• Nasturtiums
• Bells of Ireland
• Petunias
• Cornflower
• Sweet Peas
• Lobelia
• Love in a Mist
  This list is by no means inclusive of all annuals that thrive in cool temperatures, but it offers a good selection of colorful and easy-to-grow flowers.

For early season flowers to plant in your cutting garden, read on:

Nigella or “Love in the Mist”

Winter is the time to sow your Cool Season Annuals as soon as the soil can be “worked”. This term is gardening slang for soil with a texture that is neither mud nor frozen! After determining that my soil was ready by drawing a rake through it, I gathered my cool season annual seeds together with plant stakes, sharpie for marking, and my favorite multi-bladed sowing rake. On the menu for sowing was Poppies, Bells of Ireland, Love-in-the-Mist, and Calendula.

 

Cool Season Annuals differ from annuals that you sow after the danger of frost is past because the seeds need cold temperatures to germinate and cool temps to grow well in the garden. When hot weather hits, they are history and I pull them out to make way for annuals that relish the hot weather. Poppies are one of my all-time favorite flowers and I make sure to plant plenty. If you are into blue poppies, go to my post on Blue Poppies.

My honey bees love the poppies and go into a frenzy when they are blooming.

Growing quickly in the cool temperatures of late winter and early spring, the cool season annuals are old-fashioned flowers that you would find scattered in an English cottage garden. Best sown outdoors, these flowers are frost tolerant and grow quickly to give you a much-needed dose of color after the long winter. If you want to plant edibles like brassicas, go to pegplant  who writes an excellent blog on gardening and is a fellow GWA member.

 

Raking the soil with my sowing rake is the only preparation needed. I broadcast sprinkle the seeds as evenly as possible, using dry hands, then tamp down the soil firmly with the rake, not adding any additional soil. Sprinkling the surface with bits of straw or leaves helps keep the soil moist and hopefully hides the seed from wandering birds. I spray a light mist of water on top to moisten the surface and wait with anticipation.

 

Sowing seeds with my favorite rake

Popping up quickly through the leaf litter, weeding and sprinkling with water is necessary if we hit a dry spell. Then it is time for the color show! Cutting flowers from these early blooms make great arrangements in the house.

Fore a great video on planting cool flowers, go to Cool Flowers, a great website by Lisa Ziegler.