Annuals And Perennials AfterCare
Just like people, flowers need regular grooming to look their best. A mere few minutes of care daily or every other day will keep a flower bed looking great.
Watering
As a rule of thumb, flowers need one inch of water a week, either from the sky or from your hose. Use a rain gauge to keep track. If using a sprinkler, set a tuna can or other shallow container out so the water hits it. When the container is holding 1 inch of water, you know you've applied 1 inch.
Mulching
Nearly all flower beds do best with a layer of biodegradable mulch, such as wood chips, pine needles, or grass clippings. (Don't use fresh, raw wood chips since they rob the soil of nitrogen.) Mulch helps the soil retain moisture and prevents weeds. Keep the mulch to 1 to 2 inches so you don't suffocate the plants.
Weeding
Just a little weeding each week will keep you on top of this ongoing task. Use a hoe for large areas with small weeds. Use small hand-held weeders for smaller, tighter areas. Pull large weeds with a standing-type weeder or your hands to get all the roots.
If desired, in late winter or early spring when the bright yellow forsythia bushes bloom, use a pre-emergent herbicide. It prevents seeds from germinating and therefore is a tremendous time saver. It's great in a bed where you are planting only established plants, but not flower or vegetable seeds since it will prevent even the desirable seeds from germinating right along with the weed seeds.
Fertilizing
Be careful not to overfertilize, a common mistake. Your flowers will be too tall, floppy, and have fewer blooms.
An easy way to fertilize flower beds is simply to sprinkle them in spring with a slow-release fertilizer. Follow package directions exactly. More is not better! Depending on the formulation, you will have to reapply once or twice during the growing season. Again, read the package carefully.
Compost is the best fertilizer of all. Not only does it provide valuable nutrients to the plant, it also improves soil texture and important biological activity in the soil. And, unlike with chemical fertilizers, with compost it's hard to add too much. Therefore, if at all possible, work in plenty of compost at planting time. Then, each spring, it's a good idea to apply a 1-inch layer of compost to your flower beds. Also, many gardeners make it a rule to add compost to every planting hole every time they plant.
Deadheading
To keep flowers looking their best and to encourage them to produce more flowers, trim spent, fading, and dead flowers. With nearly all annuals and most perennials, deadheading promotes fresh flushes of bloom.
If the flowers are large, such as peonies, it's easy just to cut them off the way you would if you were cutting them for a bouquet. However, with some flower clusters, such as daylilies, you'll want to pinch or pluck off the faded flower in a cluster and leave the fresh and emerging flowers. On flowers with many tall stems of flowers, such as coreopsis, you can just trim off all the stems as well as the flowers.
Pest and Disease Patrol
Catch problems early and you'll have a better chance of conquering them. Walk through your garden daily (it's a treat to do this in the morning with a cup of coffee in hand) to keep an eye on things.
The best strategy is prevention. Take good care of your flowers and you won't have many disease problems.
When they do occur, disease and pest problems often can be solved just by trimming off the problem part and giving the plant a good spray of water.
Otherwise, if the problem isn't cleared up within a week, take a fresh, affected plant part into your local garden center and talk to staff about what the problem is. A knowledgeable staff person has probably seen the problem many times before and so can diagnose it. That person can then guide you through various options for treatment, some of which may be for sale right there in the store.
Winter Care
After frost kills back your flowers in fall, pull up annuals. With perennials, if desired, cut back to just a few inches (hand pruners, hedge shears or even a power hedge trimmer work well for this). However, this task can also be performed in spring if you desire and if it's a better time for you.
In cold regions (roughly the northern two thirds of the country), protect flower beds by covering the ground to a depth of 1 to 6 inches with autumn leaves that have been chopped either by running through a shredder or running over them with a mower. This provides excellent insulation for perennials and minimizes plants' dying out over the winter.
