The container-garden hobby is a rapidly growing subculture among garden enthusiasts. Interest has grown enough over the last few years to warrant plant nurseries to supply the demand for container plant varieties.

If you walk into most department or economy stores now, Christmas decorations are everywhere! Our thoughts naturally start whirling with all the holidays coming up and homemade gifts need to be at the forefront. A nice present for anyone, but especially for shut-ins, would be a living, growing, changing pot with colorful foliage.

Everyone loves a little bit of nature and all those bright flowers and lush foliage can lift one’s spirits. Or perhaps, you want one for yourself to set outside, sprucing up your patio or front porch for the holidays.

Let’s take a look at preparations for these easy but much-appreciated gifts.

Container

Choose one that will work in the space of your room. Select a sturdy vessel, big enough to hold the number of plants you will use. It will need good drainage — drill holes if needed — and a saucer or tray underneath to collect excess water to protect furniture or floor surfaces.

If your pot is to remain outside, you will need to freeze-proof it and also use plants that will not freeze. There are several methods available to help ensure that your pots don’t break. You can use pine bark mulch in the bottom one-third and then fill with the appropriate soil mix. You can also line your container with bubble wrap. If you have a large pot, you can place a smaller one upside down over the drainage hole and then fill around the sides and top with soil.

Soil

Do not use garden soil. It contains unwanted weed seeds or disease and will not drain well enough for container growth. Use a good-draining potting soil. You can use a layer of water-absorbing gel and a layer of perlite if you wish to keep your plants healthy.

Plant selection

You may have some good plant choices already in your garden. Before the first frost, take tip cuttings from a healthy mature plant, such as impatiens, coleus, sweet potato vine, lantana, and creeping Jenny. Rooting usually takes three to four weeks. Or, as you amble down the aisles at the garden center, you may find those little annuals sold in multi-packs containing four to nine plants. They are the best buy. Pansies and violas are also plentiful now.

When selecting plants for containers you need to have at least two that will remain evergreen. Group your plants by their requirements for light, water and temperature range.

Remember, “Flowers come and go, but foliage packs a punch the whole season!”

Design

One approach you can use is the “Thriller, Filler and Spiller.” This approach will make your pot interesting and fascinating.

“Thriller” — a taller, single evergreen that will be the focus of your garden scene. Thrillers should be in the center for an all-around viewing or in the back if the container will only be viewed from the front. Depending on the size of your pot, you can buy a small evergreen, such as vertical grass “sky pencil” holly, Leyland cypress, yucca, arica palm or seedlings of a cedar from your garden. As these grow too large for your pot, they can be transplanted to your yard and replaced with something else next year.

“Filler” — mounding plants used around the Thrillers. Some suggestions are begonia, pansy, viola, purple shamrock, heuchera, lantana and ornamental peppers. Spring flowering bulbs could go underneath the fillers for a surprise show next February or March.

“Spiller” — trailing plants placed at the edges of the container. These will spill over the side and soften the look of your pot. Some suggestions are variegated ivy, creeping Jenny and trailing pansies.

Potting

For best results, lightly moisten mix. Don’t pack mix too tightly.

Position your tallest plant in the middle so it doesn’t obscure the final scene or block the light needed by the shorter plants. If you are using some daffodil bulbs or other spring blooming bulbs, they can surround the Thriller.

Put the mounding plants in next and then the edging ones. Check the view of your garden from various angles and make changes as needed. When you are pleased with the arrangement, press all of them into the soil. Clean up any excess soil or mulch off the plants and water thoroughly.

For any winter flowering container, to keep everything blooming well, feed a one-forth strength bloom-booster, water-soluble fertilizer such as 15-30-15 with each watering. Start two weeks after planting.

Container gardens can be very useful for the elderly and handicapped because they are readily accessible and have the ease of maintenance. These container gardens can be a delightful conversation piece.

A healthy garden gives the perception of a well-loved home. Picture: Supplied
Source: Supplied

SPRING is my favourite time of the year and it’s a great time to be selling a home.

Here are my top tips on making the most of your garden at this time of year:

Make sure the garden maintenance is up to date, as a woolly-looking hedge and lawn in need of a haircut screams “high-maintenance home” to potential buyers.

A healthy garden gives the perception of a well-loved home. So feed all the garden beds with a slow-release organic fertiliser and a liquid fertiliser at the same time.

The slow release will take you all the way through to the middle of summer and the liquid feed will give instant effects.

Mulch the garden beds to not only benefit the plants, but also to improve the whole garden appearance. Go for mulch with natural tones and stay away from coloured varieties because these look inorganic and cheap.

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Take advantage of all the amazing flowers available at this time of year and fill any empty spots in the garden beds with something bright and eye catching.

Annuals and potted colour are coming into their own right now, so pick some suited to your climate and use them by the front door to lift the mood before entering the house.

Smell is a fantastic memory cue, so use scented plants where possible and feel free to bring them into the home to help tie the inside and outside together.

Dress the outdoor entertaining areas so potential buyers can see themselves using the space in the warmer months.

It doesn’t need to be over the top — just some simple hurricane lamps on the table and some cushions on the seats make the whole setting seem more appealing.

If your house has a pool, make sure it’s serviced and clean, as buyers who are unsure about buying a home with a pool will sway away from your property if the pool water has been left to collect leaves and dirt.

Painting the house trims can give the property the small lift it needs to maximise its sale. Go for bright white because it freshens and goes with almost any base house colour.

Get the lawn looking its best with some annual maintenance including dethatching, aerating, fertilising and patching so families can see themselves utilising the play areas of the home.

Charlie Albone is the co-host of Selling Houses Australia on The LifeStyle Channel and runs his own business called Inspired Exteriors.
 

Walnut Creek’s Ruth Bancroft is a national authority on drought-resistant gardening. Twice a month, she and her staff share their knowledge with readers.

Q Last year I bought a large Echeveria plant with ruffled leaves, and it looked great on my deck. However, the winter was hard on it, and I thought it was going to die. I find the colors of the Echeverias very attractive and would like to have more of them. Can you tell me ones to try that are not so fussy?

A Echeverias vary greatly in their cold tolerance and also in their sizes. The large, frilly kinds such as yours are hybrids of the species Echeveria gibbiflora, from south-central Mexico. They are showy, but not cold-hardy. A number of the smaller kinds, often referred to as Hens Chicks, can withstand temperature dips several degrees below freezing. We have made extensive use of these at the Ruth Bancroft Garden. They have varying colors with leaves that are blue or pink or tipped in scarlet or other wonderful hues. Here are some we recommend:

Echeveria affinis (leaves are almost black with red flowers)

Echeveria ‘Afterglow’ (lavender and pink leaves)

Echeveria agavoides (green leaves edged with scarlet)

Echeveria amoena (tiny blue-green rosettes with reddish tips)

Echeveria chihuahuaensis (frosted blue with pinkish-red tips)

Echeveria ‘Doris Taylor’ (fuzzy green leaves with a plush-toy texture,

orange flowers)

Echeveria elegans (white-powdered leaves, called Mexican Snowball)

Echeveria gilva (waxy-green leaves)

Echeveria halbingeri (pallid blue-green)

Echeveria imbricata (bluish leaves)

Echeveria lilacina (pale leaves tinged with lilac)

Echeveria prolifica (tiny milky-blue leaves with a pink tinge)

Echeveria ‘Pulvi-cox’ (green velvety leaves, with a short stem)

Echeveria runyonii (pale blue-gray leaves)

Echeveria secunda (bluish leaves)

Echeveria subrigida (pale blue-green leaves edged with red)

Except as noted, most of these have reddish-pink flowers, often with yellow tips. Almost all put out offshoots that form a clump over time. Most kinds of Echeveria do well in partial, rather than all-day, sun except in cooler coastal locations. With their neat rosettes of leaves, attractive coloration and dainty sprays of flowers, they make delightful additions to the garden or great potted plants.

We sell many of these at the Ruth Bancroft Garden, and will be offering some at our Fall Plant Sale today, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. See details at our website, www.ruthbancroftgarden.org.

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[Photo: Blake Handley / Flickr]

Darden Restaurants, Inc., which owns omnipresent suburban chains Red Lobster and Olive Garden, is gearing up to deal with new federal health care requirements. According to the AP, the restaurant group — which employs 180,000 people at over 2,000 restaurants — is running an experiment in four markets that increases the number of part time employees. (Darden isn’t giving out specific numbers at this time.) This is an effort to curb full time employees, as the federal government — because of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) — will begin fining employers for not providing basic health coverage to full time employees starting January 1, 2014. It also means servers at Red Lobster now manage four tables at a time instead of three, in case you’re wondering why your endless popcorn shrimp refills were taking so long.

· Health Changes Spur Test of More Part-Time Workers [AP]
· All Red Lobster Coverage on Eater [-E-]
· All Olive Garden Coverage on Eater [-E-]

The fall of autumn leaves is nature’s signal to gardeners that it is time to feed the soil. In the wild, fallen leaves replenish the soil by decomposing into spongy humus. Minute soil organisms consume decaying leaves, while little insects feeding amongst the leaves become food for foraging winter birds. Fallen leaves provide shelter for frogs, salamanders and centipedes, to name but a few.

While raking the fallen leaves in your garden, treat them as a rich treasure. And consider these tips on using leaves and other goodies to feed the soil:

TEST PH — Fall is the best time to monitor your garden soil’s pH. Local soils, especially those in redwood forest lands, tend to be on the acid side. Raising the pH a bit, especially for vegetable gardens, is best done now by tilling dolomite lime. Adding lime to the soil now is an effective way to raise the pH toward the neutral zone, where most plants thrive. Liming also adds calcium and magnesium, vital elements that acid soil often lacks.

Acid-loving plants like blueberries, rhododendrons, camellia, ferns and potatoes cannot tolerate lime. In fact, it is best to add a mulch of peat moss to keep the pH on the acid side.

Before adding anything to the soil, check the pH with a test kit. They are widely available and inexpensive.

ADD MANURE — The abundance of horses and cows on the North Coast makes obtaining fresh manure not so difficult if you have a strong back and access to a pickup truck. Now is the

time to add fresh manures in your garden. Digging it in will assure complete decomposition by next spring.

TRY SHEET COMPOSTING — Sheet composting is the layering of organic materials to make raised beds. This is the best no-till method for making productive planting beds.

Begin by raking leaves to make a thick base. Next, add a 6- to 8-inch layer of rice straw. Add layers of fresh manures, compost, used potting soil and natural fertilizers like alfalfa meal, blood meal, fish bone meal, kelp meal and worm castings. The more goodies you add, the better the bed will be. Make the bed 12 inches high. Next, allow winter rains to thoroughly saturate the bed. Then cover with cardboard and mulch, or black plastic. Plant the following spring.

PLANT COVER CROPS — Sow cover crops in the fall just after a bit of rain moistens the soil. Planting alfalfa, clover, fava beans, buckwheat, oats, vetch or winter wheat at this time protects exposed soil and adds nutrients and organic matter. It is the cheapest and easiest way to feed your soil.

ADD NATURAL FERTILIZERS — If you want an organically fed garden, natural fertilizers bought in bulk are the way to go. Tilling them in now allows decomposition to proceed from winter into spring. They are best for perennials, roses and vegetable beds. Because they are bulky materials, natural fertilizers also add humus to the soil during the decomposition process.

Blood meal is dried, powdered blood from cattle slaughterhouses. Blood meal contains approximately 13 percent nitrogen and some iron. Use this sparingly, since too much can burn plants. It’s a good material to use in the compost pile if you need to heat it up.

Bone meal is powdery meal made of bones from the slaughterhouse that are cooked and pulverized. Liberal use of bone meal will add a bit of phosphorous to the soil and can raise the pH of acid soils. It takes a good deal of time for this material to break down into the soil. Fish bone meal is especially nutritious.

Kelp meal is a good source for trace elements like boron, calcium, chlorine, copper, iron, magnesium and manganese. Adding one pound of kelp meal per 100 square feet on a yearly basis will boost the micronutrient content of garden soil.

——

Terry Kramer is a trained horticulturist and journalist. She has been writing a garden column for the Times-Standard since 1982. To get in touch with Terry, send an e-mail to style@times-standard.com and put “For Terry Kramer” in the subject line, or write to Terry Kramer, c/o Times-Standard, P.O. Box 3580, Eureka, CA, 95502.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WWLP) – Temperatures may be getting colder, but that doesn’t mean it’s too early to think about spring.

While you won’t be able to enjoy the benefits immediately, it’s the perfect time to plant bulbs before temperatures get too cold to do that.

Right now, bulbs are for sale at your local garden center. At 16 acres garden center in Springfield, bulbs are sold in these little packets. While they’re little now, if you plant them soon, they’ll be nice big flowers by March or April.

But there is a race against the clock when it comes to planting bulbs, you can’t wait much longer.

“If there is a frost or if it’s suddenly cold for a few days, it will only be not even an inch that would freeze, so there is still some time. However, you want to plant the bulb before it freezes so that the roots could actually mature,” said Assistant Store Manager Nalini Benoit.

Once the ground freezes too deep, over 1 inch, then the ground will be too hard to plant bulbs. It’s best to plant the bulbs in healthy garden soil or better yet, compost.
    
You only need to water them right after you’ve planted and the fall rain should take care of the rest. Normal first freezes in western Massachusetts happen in the middle of October.
 

WASHINGTON – Decorating for fall should not provide pesky squirrels with a free meal. There are numbers of ways to keep squirrels from eating pumpkins.

WTOP Garden Editor Mike McGrath recommends using everything from hot peppers, to deer repellent and dog hair.

Deer and squirrels hate dogs. McGrath says squirrels will avoid pumpkins placed on top of dog hair.

Both creatures also hate the smell of rotten eggs. Look for deer repellent with high concentrations of the active ingredient “putrescent whole egg solids.” Do not worry about the smell lingering. McGrath says human noses will not detect the odor after the spray dries.

Hot peppers also work to repel squirrels. McGrath recommends using the hottest peppers available and blending them with just enough water to create a sprayable solution. Add one drop of washing liquid and one of cooking oil. The oil and soap will help the pepper concoction stay on the pumpkin.

McGrath says not to worry about burning a fuzzy creature’s mouth with the pepper solution. He believes all bets are off in what he calls the never-ending battle against “evil squirrels.”

McGrath warns against trying a squirrel-fighting suggestion that involves spreading used kitty litter around a pumpkin.

Cat waste is a source of
toxoplasmosis, which is an infection caused by a parasite. It can can cause health issues affecting the brain, lung, heart, eyes or liver. Toxoplasmosis can be especially harmful to people with suppressed immune systems, and infected pregnant mothers can spread it to their babies through the placenta.

McGrath says it is a bad idea to use kitty litter for pest control.

WTOP’s Kristi King contributed to this report. Follow Kristi King and WTOP on Twitter.

(Copyright 2012 by WTOP. All Rights Reserved.)

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STUART —
If you are new to gardening in Florida, and aren’t sure how you are ever going to master the art of transplanting all of this, read on for some tips to help you get started.

Assuming you are from somewhere to the north, perhaps you are wondering how you’ll be able to do without such wonderful plants as forsythia, lilac and daffodils. Don’t be homesick. This is a gardener’s paradise! For every plant you can’t grow here, there is a new one to replace it. You can grow most of the annuals during the winter as well as some of the familiar perennials. And you can grow vegetables too.

This is the time of year to get started. It’s a reverse season. The cool season vegetables such as broccoli, peas, spinach, etc. can be planted starting in October. Tomatoes and the warm season vegetables can be started in August. In addition, we can grow oranges, lemons, limes, mangos, bananas and more that they can only dream of up north.

I come from Massachusetts and having gardened there for many years, I wondered how I would ever relearn all this. I am now 15 years into it and still learning, picking up new things every day. To speed up the process I first of all encourage all of you to read. There are large quantities of information available. The University of Florida website http://solutionsforyourlife.ufl.edu/ has a seemingly infinite amount of information on exactly the things you need to know. There are lots of wonderful books on Florida gardening in the libraries as well as at bookstores. Books are great sources for plant identifications.

Consider a subscription to Florida Gardening magazine. It has a calendar of all the upcoming gardening shows and plant sales around the state as well as pertinent articles by experts in the field.

The Stuart News has an informative and timely gardening article by Carol Cloud Bailey on Sundays in the At Home section. Look out for announcements in the paper on the Florida Yard lecture series and Master Gardener events at local libraries. There are several Florida Yards lectures scheduled on vegetable gardening in October. These are hosted by Fred Burkey, Florida Yards and Neighborhoods Agent. Burkey also hosts the television program, “Your Florida Yard,” which airs frequently on Martin County television, MCTV.

In addition, reach out to local gardeners. Come in and talk with the Master Gardeners at the Martin County Extension Service. We can help you with all your questions and solve the mystery of what disease or insect might be bothering your plants. Perhaps you’d like to work on becoming a Master Gardener, learn about native plants and help spread the word about good gardening practices that don’t harm the environment.

Go to plant shows. There are several wonderful plant shows coming up where you can meet experts in their field. One is at Heathcote Botanical Gardens in Fort Pierce November 17-18, and another is at the Mounts Botanical Garden in West Palm Beach on November 3- 4. The Tropical Ranch Botanical Gardens on Ranch Trail in Stuart is another option, they have year-round events with plants for sale.

In the near future, the Martin County Master Gardeners is having its annual plant sale on Oct. 13 at the Martin County Fairgrounds, where you can pick up some unusual specimens, talk with Master Gardeners, and check out a demonstration vegetable garden and displays on hydroponic gardening.

The sale starts at 9 a.m., plan to be there early as there’s a regular following and the plants go quickly. There will be other gardening-related items for sale as well. The website for information is http://martin.ifas.ufl.edu/.

Adapting to Florida gardening is easy and fun. Take my suggestions and before you know it, you’ll be a gardening addict, like me.

Tess Murphy is a Master Gardener with the Martin County Cooperative Extension Service. To reach the Extension Service staff, visit the office at 2614 SE Dixie Highway in Stuart or call 772 288-5654.