Recycling Ideas for Fall Container Gardens

Seasonal container gardens will keep your porches, decks and entryways looking pretty all year round.

In fall, for instance, flowerpots filled with cold tolerant beauties like Icelandic pansies, ornamental cabbage and kale, asters and chrysanthemums can definitely boost your house's curb appeal--and lift your spirits when you come home from a long day at work.

Ready to fill your flowerpots with seasonal plants? There's no need to start from scratch. You can reuse and recycle your planting materials.

Are your seasonal container gardens disease-free? Then try these recycling tips. You'll save time & money!

Recycle Plants

If you used annuals in your containers, don't throw them away. Compost them! If you planted perennials, try transplanting them into your flowerbeds. With any luck, they'll establish roots, and you'll be able to enjoy them again and again.

Reuse Potting Soil

You can also reuse the soil from your flowerpots. To increase the soil's fertility, friability and moisture retention, mix some new compost and/or new potting soil in with the old before planting your new container garden.

Applying fertilizer is another way to assure that yourplants get the nutrients they need. Recycled soil may lack all of the essential minerals that plants require, as these nutrients may have been taken up by previous plantings, or they may have leached out.

To replace them, use a slow-release fertilizer that will last until winter or apply liquid fertilizer every two weeks.

You'll add height as well as visual interest to your autumn containers if you plant them with thrillers, spillers and fillers.

Thrillers are tall plants with eye-catching colors, blooms and/or textures. In the fall, asters, flowering kale, chrysanthemums, cock's comb, pot marigolds and ornamental kale are good choices.

You'll also need a trailing plant, a spiller such as autumn fern. Pretty autumn fillers for your fall planter include Icelandic pansies, flowering cabbage and french marigolds.

Just as you can refresh a disease-free planter, you can also refurbish hanging baskets. Simply remove the tired plants, enrich the soil a bit and add a few new favorites.

The hanging basket featured right has a coir lining. Soak it well in water, then plant.

The sunny days of summer may be over, but the fun doesn't have to stop. Dress up your planters! Setting them on pretty feet or placing them inside cachepots will give your old pots a new look. You can also add attractive stakes and water globes to your pots, or try your hand at creating fall displays with lots of eye appeal.

Autumn planters look great in wheelbarrows, on haybales, beside foddershocks or on pretty plant stands alongside colorful gourds, pumpkins and Indian corn.

With a little imagination (and work) autumn can be just as colorful and pretty as summertime.

Although autumn flowers are hardy plants, they aren't completely impervious to cold snaps, especially when they're in pots.

The roots of potted plants experience colder temperatures and more drastic temperature fluctuations than those of bedding plants. This can cause root damage. Although root damage probably won't kill your plants, it will stunt their growth.

If possible, bring planters and hanging baskets indoors when heavy frosts are predicted or cover them. When covering hanging baskets, place them on the ground first. They'll stay warmer that way.