Wait, I Thought I Just Needed to Water This Thing!

Part of the fun of gardening to me is finding unique plants to spruce up my yards.  This means tossing out the idea of most run of the mill annuals like Petunias and Geraniums.  Unfortunately, my limited experience in gardening consisted previously of helping my mom maintain those flowers by water, watering some more, fertilizing and dead heading the Petunias, ie. taking the dead heads off the flowers to create many more blooms.

It turns out, dead heading most flowers is crucial to getting fuller blooms.  My mom was recently in town and told me I had to dead head my front flowering bush.  I did not understand why it would bloom, I would pluck the spent flowers and it would not bloom again.  It turns out that you need to reach beyond the head of the flower down to the stem and pluck from there.

She also gave more advice with regard to its size:  it is getting a bit unruly and spindly.  Here I thought this is just the way things grow.  But it turns out that by pruning back the plant, it will do the same thing as dead heading: it will make the plant thicker and fuller and avoid it overtaking its space.

A few weekends ago, I transported my lavender, which had taken over its cute little pot that had cracked due to an extremely cold Winter, to a larger wooden crate with plenty of drainage.  I read that lavender likes full sun and mine has gotten it.  Its new crate will also allow it to have a deeper root system.  As much as my lavender has grown though, it has done little in the way of flowering into the type of lavender you see dried in stores.  I wondered what I was doing wrong.

So I went online and found my answer:  I need to prune back the flowers so it doesn't overtake it's space...or at least I should have done that year 1.  Year 2 it would have come back fuller.  Now, it still smells lovely but the flowers ended up in a vase in my bathroom and the lavender will hopefully be a more mature, fragrant part of my garden next year.

If you are planting lavender, remember the soil should not be overwatered.  Lavender likes to be dry.  Because of the full sun requirements and the dry soil, it's a perfect choice for a lazy, city gardener like me or perhaps someone with a roof deck with limited access to water.  Just don't forget to prune!

My instructor from the gardening class at Terrain said it's wise to check your garden every morning, carrying around a pair of pruning scissors, cutting off and dead heading what needs to be removed, to supplement your normal watering.  It not only makes for healthy, fuller plants but also makes them immediately look much healthier!!