An annual goes through its entire life cycle in a single season. They germinate from seeds, grow to mature
plants, flower and die within several months.
Annuals are fun! They are awesome
for children to grow and they are the pop in your garden.
Annuals are the beautiful
colors that flood our nurseries in the spring.
They are geraniums, petunias, impatiens, zinnias, alyssum, cleome, and nasturtium to name a
few. Don't you just love the names? Everyone has their favorites and they come in
so many colors that even the fussiest gardener can find the perfect color to
highlight their garden.
It’s fun to start your annuals from seed, but look for ones that have a short germination and short maturation period to do this. Otherwise they might take most of the summer to mature and flower. Nasturtium, sunflowers, and zinnias all are quick growers, but if you want a whole season of color I would buy petunias, impatiens, salvia, and and lobelia as small bedding plants because they take longer to reach blooming stage.
Unlike perennials, annuals do bloom for the
whole season, and by continuing to remove faded blossoms (deadheading) consistently all season you will keep
your garden tidy and insure that your annuals keep blooming.
Annuals
look good in borders, pots and window boxes. I also like to squeeze them in the spaces between my
perennials and voila -an ever blooming garden!
Annuals will die after a frost and they can
be pulled up and removed from your garden.
They will also die in the spring if you plant them too soon!They are
pretty cold sensitive. I live in zone 5. That means our winters are long and
cold. The rule of thumb for my area is
to wait until after Memorial Day to put your annuals into the garden. (There have been several years though that I plant mine around the 15th.) If you can't wait either be sure to protect them from late cold snaps!
Now that you have a pretty good idea what
an annual is, I’m going to confuse you a little. Actually, probably more than half of our
annuals are really tender perennials.
That means that somewhere else in the world where the climate is milder
some of our annuals would act like perennials.
It is winter’s cold that kills them-not their genetic makeup. You know this is true if you’ve ever been on
vacation and seen plants that we have to baby, growing like weeds in the ditches
of their native habitat.
When you’re buying a package of seeds, read
carefully the directions on the package.
It will tell you how and when to sow your particular seeds and any other
relevant information to help you be successful in growing beautiful annuals.
These are the annual flower seeds that jumped into my grocery basket this morning.
(We have had ENOUGH winter!)
Just Julie
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