Cool Flowers. Lisa Mason Ziegler
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The lifecycle of a hardy annual is an oddity to most gardeners. It seems unreasonable to expect anything from seeds or plants put out in the garden when cold weather is just over the horizon, or in early spring while it’s still frosty and chilly like winter. It just doesn’t make sense. But the truth of the matter – the secret – is that hardy annuals are cut from a different cloth than that of our tender warm-season annuals (the ones we think of when we hear the term “annual”). And that’s why we must garden differently if we want these beautiful hardy annual blossoms in our gardens.
At-a-Glance
• Hardy annuals live for one year and survive cold temperatures. Many are planted in fall to winter-over and produce blooms the following spring and summer. These flowers prefer growing in cool conditions.
• Tender annuals live for one year and do not survive cold temperatures. These flowers are planted after the threat of frost has passed in spring and the soil has begun to warm. Tender annuals prefer growing in the heat of summer.
Pansies are among the most popular and widely planted spring bloomers. They are hardy annuals. Planting pansies in fall and late winter for the best spring blooms has been common practice for a long time. I like to refer to pansies as the “kissing cousins” to all the other hardy annuals, only related because they enjoy the same type of growing conditions. So, just think of pansies for a moment while we wrap our heads around this concept of hardy annual gardening.
Why is it so tough to grow these spring bloomers? Here’s why: in most gardens, spring comes on quickly and moves right into summer. It doesn’t hang around long enough to accommodate our natural gardening instinct to plant spring bloomers in… well, spring! We naturally think spring should be like summer. We plant summer bloomers in summer once the warmth starts, and then they grow into valuable members of the long, leisurely summer garden.
Following suit, we storm the garden on the first days of spring with our seed packets, plants and trowels to plant some of the beauties of spring. But it’s too late. Spring flowers don’t work that way. The window of opportunity has long passed, and our efforts are short-lived and frustrating. We never get the gorgeous display we are promised, because we are planting during the time that this group of flowers is being asked by nature to perform with wild abandon. New little plants just can’t do that.
Hardy annuals naturally develop and grow into strong plants when they have opportunity to do it during cool conditions. When these plants get the great start that cool weather provides, their stamina and ability to perform makes you wonder why you didn’t think of this sooner. It’s all about getting the plants started and established during their preferred growing conditions. Once they are well established, hardy annuals seem to look adversity in the face and bloom even more. What I said in the introduction bears repeating: plant them in the right spot, at the right time, nestle their roots deep into rich organic soil, and stand back.
The term hardy annual indicates a plant that typically lives for one year and doesn’t just survive the cold, but thrives under cooler temperatures. Both plants and seeds can be planted in the fall, winter and/or early spring depending on your region. In a large portion of the country, hardy annuals can be fall-planted to winter-over as immature plants. This allows them to establish an incredibly strong root system that gives the earliest possible blooms in spring and keeps them performing well into warm and hot weather. In more northern zones where there are frigid conditions or heavy snow loads, these flowers can be planted in the very early spring while waiting for warm temperatures to arrive. For those who plant in the fall, a repeat planting in very early spring can extend the blooming season; we do this with excellent results on our farm here in southeast Virginia.
As a general guide, hardy annuals can be planted 6-8 weeks before the first frost of fall, to winter-over as an immature plant, and/or planted 6-8 weeks before your last frost in spring. When you plant depends on where your garden falls on the hardiness zone map (page 138). Getting this better understanding of what makes hardy annuals tick will help you to tweak these guidelines even more to suit your garden. I encourage you to be bold and experiment with flowers that may thrive just outside of your zone; sometimes those results are the sweetest of all.
Bachelor buttons holding their own as the snow cover melts away providing a deep slow watering.
The life cycle. The hardy annual’s natural life cycle is to go from seed into making seed in the span of one year. The annual plant’s whole purpose in life is to grow into a plant to produce flowers that will produce seeds – and then die. The confusion with hardy annuals comes because their year of life follows a different calendar than we are accustomed too. They begin life from a seed in the fall, then winterover as a young plant, becoming well established so that when spring arrives, they quickly grow into a robust plant. Their life cycle continues as they bloom, make seed, and die.
This is why, once your plants start producing flowers in spring, you have a choice to make. On the one hand, you can remove the flowers as they bloom by either harvesting them for cut flowers or dead-heading once they begin to fade. This way, you will keep your plant producing more and more flowers in an effort to get those seeds made. However, if you choose to leave the faded and dead flower heads in the garden, they will develop into seeds. At that point, the blooming will cease because the plant believes its job is done and it’s time to die.
Knowing what the hardy annual is programmed to do can help you get the most from your plants in a profusion of continuing blooms. Here on our farm, we cut the flowers weekly to have as fresh cut flowers. This routine harvest keeps most of the plants blooming long after their expected time. Your course of action will depend on the purpose of your garden. Is it a cutting garden, a container for display, a landscape to enjoy, or a bed to attract birds and pollinators?
Delphinium are a perennial in the north, but gardeners in the lower half of the country can grow them as hardy annuals with great success.
In this book you will also learn about some plants known as perennials and biennials that can function better in some gardens as hardy annuals. Doing so brings satisfaction and success where it may not have been possible before. Growing conditions make some perennials almost impossible to maintain year-round. But they may be perfect additions to the garden when treated as a hardy annual. A great example of this is the delphinium. In the northern regions, delphiniums grow into amazing plants that return year after year. In other parts of the country, we can grow fabulous delphiniums by treating them as a hardy annual. The heat and humidity of our late summers weaken the delphinium so that they fall victim to disease and pests. It is liberating to the gardener to know when to plant these flowers so they can perform at their best. The gardener can work with nature to plant in the fall, look forward to a strong performance in spring and summer and then, when late summer arrives, accept their ultimate demise. New seedlings can be planted in fall for the next season.
‘Virgo” feverfew is my favorite because of its tight cluster of button blooms.
Another time that we treat a perennial as a hardy annual is when it is not a particularly