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Six Ways to Plant Flowers
Hardening and Transplanting Flowers
See every detail of six different ways to harden and plant annuals, biennials, and perennials in beds, borders, and landscapes in these easy step-by-steps demonstrations with pictures:
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- How to plant nursery starts and seedlings.
- Planting in beds and borders.
- Installing color bedding plants in home landscapes.
- Transplanting from grower containers.
- Planting areas and island beds.
You’ve already learned how to start flowers from seed indoors, in a cold frame, or in a greenhouse [see: Flower Plant Lifecycles].
Now, it’s time to choose the method that most closely matches your flower-planting needs. But first, harden your transplants so they’ll survive the move.
The Important Step of Hardening Seedlings
Seedlings and tender young plants raised indoors or in areas protected from cold enter the real world unprepared for the hardships that await them.
Whether grown in a greenhouse, a grower’s rearing area, or indoors in your home, young annuals live the good life, with perfect light, moisture, and soil, no cold nights, pelting rain, burning sun, or drying wind.
Unless they are carefully and gradually weaned from this comfortable existence, the hard knocks of garden living can damage or even kill them.
Hardening is the process of getting your plants accustomed to life outdoors by gradually exposing them to the elements.
Start by leaving them outdoors during the day for a few hours in a shaded, protected place, then bring them inside each evening. Expose for a little longer every day, allowing them more sunlight each time.
After a week or so, they’ll spend all day outside. At this point, you can leave them out at night as well, but keep them in a sheltered spot.
It may be necessary on some evenings to cover them with a blanket or a lightweight cover called a floating row cover for extra protection.
Always bring them inside if the temperature drops below 50°F (10°C), or during heavy, chilling rains.
Some gardeners help the hardening process along by using a cold frame.
Shade the cold frame at first, blocking direct sunlight that might wither or burn your tender plants.
Leave the cold frame uncovered for a little longer every day, gradually increasing the amount of time your plants spend in the sun.
Open the lid of the box on warm days. Instead of bringing your seedlings in every night, just close the box. If frost threatens, cover the cold frame with blankets.
After 10 days of full-time outdoor living, your hardened seedlings will be ready to transplant into your garden
The preparation and methods used to transplant seedlings or flowers grown in nursery containers to decorative pots are somewhat different than for moving flower plants into garden soil. [see: Planting Flowers into Containers.]
Step-by-Step Instructions
The demonstrations that follow show how easy it is to transplant flowers. Find the method you’ll use in your own planting, then read and look at how to perform each step of the process.
Gather the plants, materials, tools, and implements required, then follow these easy steps:
How to Transplant Flower Starts
Working as you transplant, gently remove seedlings from bedding trays.
Use a sharp, narrow knife to cut down and through intermingled roots.
Carefully lift plants up and out of the bedding tray using a spoon underneath them.
For young plants in small, 4-in. (10-cm) or 6-in. (15 cm) grower containers, gently invert the container.
Supporting the plant with your fingers on each side of its stem, slide the container from the rootball.
Never pull plants out of containers by their stems.
If the rootball has matted or encircling roots, use your fingers or a hand fork to cut through or unwind them.
This is important to avoid the roots from failing to grow into the garden soil and girdling the flower after planting.
Dig a hole twice the diameter and depth of the rootball.
Amend the removed soil by adding compost and starter fertilizer, such as 2–5–5 mix, according to its package instructions.
Use it to refill the hole to the depth of the rootball.
Place the plant into the hole.
Backfill around the rootball with amended soil.
Compact the soil around the plant by pressing firmly down with your fingers and palms.
Water immediately after planting to settle the soil.
Add fill as needed to fill any slumped spots.
How to Transplant Large Flowers
Dig a hole half again as wide and twice as deep as the nursery container of your large flowering plant.
Following the fertilizer package instructions, add balanced fertilizer, such as 5–5–5 assay.
Add one-third the soil’s volume of abundant organic compost.
Mix soil, fertilizer, and compost into the soil removed from the hole.
Invert the nursery container and gently tap on its bottom and sides to loosen the rootball from the container.
Remove the plant by inverting the container and letting the rootball slide gently onto your outstretched hand.
With a hand fork, gently break up any encircling roots to ensure that the plant quickly establishes itself and will grow into the surrounding soil rather than around the planting hole, girdling the plant.
Place the plant in the planting hole.
Level the top of the rootball’s soil with the surrounding grade of the site.
Backfill around the sides of the rootball with amended soil.
Pack and firm the soil around the rootball.
Water the transplant to settle the soil and refresh the plant.
Add amended soil to fill any slumping spots.
Water frequently until the plant becomes established.
How to Transplant Flats of Flowers
Rake and remove any mulch, rocks, and debris from the planting site.
Prepare the soil by loosening it and adding amendments and fertilizer.
The bed should be smooth and level for planting.
Space plants evenly across the bed at the interval recommended for the species.
Avoid spacing plants either too far apart or closer than recommended.
If drip irrigation will be used for watering, lay perforated drip tubing with regularly spaced emitters.
Once plant locations are spaced and marked, set the plants aside and dig planting holes.
Set each plant into its planting hole.
Press each plant’s roots down with both hands to ensure good contact with the soil so it will root quickly into native soil.
Water gently as you complete each area of the planting.
Keep the soil evenly moist for a week before reducing frequency.
How to Install Flower Beds
Landscape plantings are more than setting out combinations of several individual flowers.
As you plan to plant, allow sufficient time to mark locations, set out each specimen properly, avoid exertion, and get your plants off to a fine start. Divide large areas into several manageable sections.
Water your plants the day before planting. They should be moist but not waterlogged.
Gather your plants, your garden plan, a means to measure, a round-tipped shovel or spade, a hand trowel and hand fork, granular and liquid fertilizers, a hose-end sprayer, organic mulch, and a rake, then follow these easy steps:
Planting a Flower Bed
Match your plants to their locations on your garden plan.
Transfer the measurements from the plan to your planting area.
Mark the perimeters of each species or flower color and the locations of plants with proper spacing.
In a properly prepared and amended planting area, set out plants in their grower containers at each marked location.
Use a yardstick or tape measure to space plants correctly.
Mark the locations of any missing or future plantings with bamboo stakes.
View the planting area from all sides. Look at the planting through indoor windows.
In a formal or semi-formal design, adjust planting locations to blend the plant combinations smoothly into the whole, match groups symmetrically, and create crisp edges.
For casual designs, make sure that your groups of plants are balanced.
Tall plants used as accents should lead the eye through the planting.
Avoid squared-off edges, straight lines, or accidental symmetry.
Adjust your plants as necessary.
Install flower starts, bedding flats, and grower containers using the methods previously demonstrated.
Water the plants after completing the installation.
How to Add Color Accents with Flowers
Annual and perennial color makes great accents for planting in small flowerbeds in your yard. Small-space beds come alive around trees, along fences, by statuary or sculptures, and in corners.
Gather 4- and 6-packs of color annuals, fertilizer, compost, plant spacing information, and a hand trowel or small shovel, then follow these easy steps:
How to Plant Spot-Color Accents
In a fertilized and amended small-space area, mark the locations of plants at the recommended spacing for the species.
Dig holes as deep and wide as each of the plants’ growing containers at each marked spot.
Plastic 4-pack and 6-pack containers are made of flexible plastic.
Flex the containers, then gently remove the plant by pushing up on the rootball from underneath.
Avoid pulling on the plants’ stems.
Set each plant into its planting hole, backfilling with soil as needed.
Compact the soil around each plant with your open palms to ensure good contact.
Water the planting.
Annuals renew the bed by replacing the transplants after their flowers fade, making a color succession.
Once all transplants have been planted, seed the foreground with a mix of low-growing or trailing annuals of one species.
Their flowers will grow and fill the foreground, first with foliage, and later with flowers.
How to Plant Hanging Planters
Seasonal color in planters—window boxes, fence planters, and wall —highlights the architectural features of your home.
These colorful planters are a job tailor-made for annuals.
Filling boxes and planters with growing flowers takes only a few hours to plan, plant, and install.
Choose annuals that either trail over the rim of the planter. As an alternative, choose those that mound high up into the window opening, where they’ll appear from indoors as though they were in a frame.
Gather rearing pots, potting soil, plants in grower containers, a measuring tape, drip irrigation tubing and emitters, and follow these easy steps:
Planting a Windbox with Color Plants
Measure the dimensions and depth of the decorative planter.
Obtain weatherproof containers sized to fit snugly inside it.
For continuous color, obtain several sets of rearing pots to replace pots as their flowers fade.
For planters that will be located high on walls or where access is limited, install timed drip irrigation tubing and emitters for each pot.
Plant annuals into the containers, using a pair or trio of transplants in each pot.
Planting several plants ensures a colorful floral display if a plant should fail.
Add a whimsical garden decoration, if desired.
Annuals grow quickly. They will fill their pots and the windowbox with color.
Water on alternate days and fertilize the plantings every other week throughout the growing season.