DIY- Quick Start Tips for Perennial Flowers - Container Gardening

Discover NEW ways to get a jump start on container planting. With this method, you start with larger more established plants, that will grow into a gorgeous container garden faster, all for FREE!

See the photo on the right, There are flowers from at least 3 smaller planters combined together into the larger pot to spend their winter together. They have come back bigger and better than ever this year..

Last year as I did my usual "shopping in my own garden" I decided to try planting a variety of perennial divisions into planters. I have a large collection of planters in various sizes. So, I collected ground covers, vines, and snapped off the tops of sedum and mums, and placed them into pots. (Yes, sedum and mums will grow roots in pots and come back the next year, as long as they are taken early in the year and watered regularly). -Another nice discovery.

At the end of the season last fall, while trying to figure out where to plant some flowers that I wanted to over winter, I decided to combine several plants into a large planter to see if they would survive. To my delight - they did, and this year I have larger flowers to rearrange into planters! So, some of my "shopping" is already done. This is a quick time saver, work saver and money saver all in one step!

Now all I have to do is take out the plants that I want to place in other pots and have an instant garden in the smaller pots. And since these sedum and mums already have roots they are better established than they were last year.

I would not recommend leaving small pots filled with flowers out all winter in cold weather for 2 reasons- the pots will freeze and crack if they are breakable. And because there is not alot of dirt around the roots, because of the size of the pot, the flowers will get very cold and possible die. When using this method place the flowers into larger pots like the one shown here or plant them into a raised bed garden for even more protection.

After filling the planters, I ran out of space and decided to place remaining flowers into my raised bed garden. They survived too, and are ready to transplant into planters. This gives the garden a function during cold months that it would not normally be used. So it is a better value for the space it takes up in the yard.

To save money on gardening costs, you can grow lots of plants from seed. Each year I collect flower seeds from several varieties of perennials and annuals within my gardens.

 Last year, I created a very pretty garden in an unfinished space. The new flower garden was completely grown from seed.

And the best part is - this was flower seed that I did not know if it would grow or not. The reason is because I had saved it for 3 years and figured that it probably wasn't good any longer.

 So I decided to give it a try, afterall I was just going to have to toss the seed out anyway! I might as well toss it in a NEW garden!

So, I planted my variety of seeds that included mixed sunflower, hycinth bean vine, zinnia and marigold annuals.. I also added perennials including blanket flower, and black eyed Susan seed along with a few others.

This was a "wishful thinking " gesture on my part. I had no idea if it would grow at all. Especially considering that, just one day after the garden was planted, a storm came through, and we got a very large amount of rain.

 I figured that all of the seed had washed away. Some did, but enough flower seed remained to grow into a nice annual garden.

After the annuals bloomed and were removed at the end of the season, I discovered that there was a dense covering of green growing in the garden space.

 I had tiny black eyed Susan and blanket flowers coming up! I thought that all of the perennials had either washed away or were no longer good.

So this year, I have an inventory of blanket flower and black eyed Susan to use in other parts of my garden. It is so exciting! I am using some planted directly in the ground in my new side yard garden, and others in planters.

The photo above shows both, blanket flower and black eyed Susan in a planter along with creeping Jenny and an red cabbage plant. I place the cabbage and creeping Jenny in for contrast in color. Special surprises like this are one of the many reasons I love gardening.

Remember to be creative, and have fun with your container gardening , just like the video says.