Botanical Blog

There are many reasons to garden in containers

I love growing in containers.

Growing plants in containers lets you have a garden even when the space for one is limited or nonexistent. You can install a planter box below a window or use containers to turn a tiny balcony or patio into a leafy haven.

Gardeners with plenty of room appreciate containers, too, valuing the versatility they offer.

Blooming container plants bring seasonal color to garden beds, a porch, or the front steps and are easily replaced with new ones when their flowers fade.

In addition, containers give you the chance to experiment with new plant combinations and with plants not suited to the native conditions.

For instance, if your soil is alkaline or clay-like but you are longing to raise acid-loving plants or those that demand fast drainage, just fill the pots with the sort of soil they need.

Plants too tender for your winters can be moved to shelter when cold weather hits.

Choose containers with at least one drainage hole, so water won’t accumulate around your plant roots. Submerge terra-cotta pots in clean water and let them soak thoroughly. If the pots are too dry, they can initially draw water away from the potting soil. Scrub used containers with a solution of 1 part household bleach to 9 parts hot water.

A good potting soil allows roots to grow easily. It should be fast draining, yet moisture retentive. Quick drainage means roots won’t run the risk of suffocating in soggy soil, while good water retention saves you from having to water too often.

Regular garden soil, even good loam, is too dense for container use. For best success, most gardeners turn to packaged potting mixes, which don’t contain soil.

They’re soil-less mixtures of organic materials (such as ground bark, sphagnum peat moss, and/or compost) plus mineral matter such as perlite, pumice, or sand. Limestone may be added to balance the acidity of peat moss. Fertilizers and wetting agents (soil polymers) may also be included.

Before planting, flush the mix with water once or twice to eliminate excess salts.

Because containers have only a limited area from which to draw moisture, these plants must be watered more often than those grown in the ground.

In hot or windy weather, some (especially those in hanging baskets) may need watering several times a day. In cool weather, it may be sufficient to water less often.

Test the soil with your finger. If the soil is dry beneath the surface, it’s time to water.

Apply water over the entire soil surface until it flows from the pot’s drainage holes. This moistens the entire soil mass and prevents any potentially harmful salts from accumulating in the mix.

If the water drains out too fast, (virtually the instant you pour it in), there’s probably air space between the soil and the container walls. In this case, completely submerge the container in a tub of water for about half an hour. For larger pots, set a hose on the soil surface near the plant’s base and let water trickle slowly onto the soil.

A drip irrigation system can make watering almost effortless. Kits designed for these purposes are widely available.

Container plants need regular feeding, because the frequent watering leaches nutrients from the potting mix. Hydrate the plants before applying fertilizer.

If plants are dry and then fertilized, burning can occur due to too much fertilizer being absorbed. Water lightly first before fertilizing.

If using a granulated (dry) fertilizer, water lightly before and after application and follow up the next morning with another light watering.

If using a liquid or water soluble fertilizer, water at base of plant and not on foliage. Do this in the early morning or evening instead of the hottest part of the day.

Apply a liquid fertilizer every 2 weeks during the growing season, following directions on the label. Also, you can mix a controlled release type fertilizer into the potting mix before planting.

If roots are crowded and protruding from the drainage holes, the plant has outgrown its container and needs a roomier home. Because you want to keep the soil mass fairly well filled with roots, it’s best to shift the plant to a slightly larger container rather than a much bigger one.

If the pot is too large, the ration of soil to roots will be too great for the roots to absorb all the moisture after watering, a situation that often leads to root rot. Select a new container that allows just an inch or two of fresh mix on all sides of the root mass.

If the root ball is compacted (with tightly wound roots), make four shallow vertical cuts down its sides with a sharp knife to encourage the roots to move out into the new soil.

If you want to keep an older plant in the same large pot indefinitely, you can root-prune the plant periodically. Gently turn it out of its container and use a sharp knife to shave off an inch or two from all four sides and the bottom of the root ball.

Place fresh potting mix in the bottom of the container, replace the plant, and add fresh mix around the sides. Water thoroughly and fertilize with the above mentioned recommendations.

This summer many people are planting vegetables in containers as they lend themselves well to this type of gardening. With some thought to selecting bush or dwarf varieties, almost any vegetable can be adapted to growing in pots.

Vegetables that take little space such as carrots, peppers, radishes, lettuce, or crops that bear fruits over a long period of time, are perfect for containers.

Seed companies have seeds on the market made for containers, including cucumbers, round eggplants and round carrots.

There are blueberry varieties that do well in containers and are easy to grow. Citrus do well in container, too.

There are so many choices of plants that will work in containers you can start filling in your garden today.

If you have questions about container gardening, ask a Master Gardener. We are at the farmers markets, libraries, and other advertised events.

We have a hotline, 784-1322, where you can leave a detailed message and we will return your call. Send us an e-mail at [email protected].

We’re here to assist you with your gardening questions.

Sharon Rico is a Master Gardener with the University of California Cooperative Extension office in Fairfield. If you have gardening questions, you can call the Master Gardeners office at 784-1322.

This is the perfect area to grow tea roses

Dont shy away from growing roses. If you understand that any plant will grow only as well as its location permits, you can apply that knowledge to roses well.

After all, all roses are not the same. Some really are easier to grow than others.

A rose is not a rose is not a rose. That is, a Damask is not a polyantha and a hybrid tea is not a tea.

In past articles, Ive suggested growing rugosa roses, the most disease resistant and hardy roses of all classes. Or growing certain shade tolerant roses where the location warrants.

In this article, I will encourage you to grow the roses perfect for hot, sunny climates, those sunbathers, the teas.

When I write teas I do not mean hybrid teas. The latter are a latter-day offspring of the tea rose (Rosa odorata), which derives from China.

Humes Blush arrived in Europe in 1810. It was both the first tea and the first repeat-flowering rose of the Western world. It still survives today in Germanys famous rose garden, Sangerhausen.

The first cultivated tea rose that made a distinct impression seems to have been Adam in 1833. Highly scented, it is of a fawn color with coppery salmon in the center.

Thereafter, the tea varieties multiplied quickly, reaching an apex of 402 different teas by the end of the 19th century. Clearly, they were popular roses.

With the advent of hybrid teas, their popularity declined. Nonetheless, today, though rarely advertised or sold in standard, commercial catalogues and nurseries, they are the most popular of Old Garden Roses. Special nurseries such as Ashdown Roses, Greenmantle Nursery, Texas Rose Emporium, and Vintage Gardens carry many of them.

True, the teas are not winter hardy, meaning that as a whole they do poorly in temperatures below freezing. Their plant tissues adjust themselves more slowly than those of other roses. Thus, they are the roses for the South and for central Californias coast and the Sacramento Valley.

A hot, dry zone is their cup of tea. They thrive in the climates of Dixon, Fairfield, Vacaville, Vallejo and the spaces in between.

In addition, unlike hybrid teas, most tea roses are immune to mildew and seldom troubled by blackspot. They are especially easy to propagate, and they live long.

Many of the old roses found in Californias early cemeteries, abandoned farms, and small Gold Rush towns are teas. Teas that have survived years and years on abandonment and neglect.

As to form and color, they are, as many a rosarian has called them, the aristocrats of the rose world. Their colors are generally subtle and refined. Nothing gaudy, garish, loud, or demanding of attention. They are delicate pinks, delicate yellows, delicate copper, soft whites, and cream.

Unlike the modern hybrid teas, they are not stiff and stout but usually twiggy and gracefully lax or lounging, their heads often bowed in modesty or contemplation. In the climber teas, this trait is particularly attractive as they nod, drape, droop, or hang in festoons or like lanterns or bells around or over porch, pergola, deck, or window. They have, and require, a very long season of bloom, something that much of California offers them.

Tea roses do ask for fertile and well-drained soil. Clay will have to be amended. However, as the survivor teas of early days have shown, they can tolerate poor soil and a certain amount of drought.

But why make them suffer?

Best of all, unlike hybrid teas, they really do not require pruning. In short, think of this rose as the easy tea.

The teas I name below are both the most dependable and the most fragrant. Ive already mentioned the first cultivated tea rose Adam, which, by the way, seems the only tea prone to mildew.

First, then, the pink shrubs.

Bon Silene displays a profusion of deep rose pink flowers. Madame Bravy pink with shades of cream. She has the scent of old-fashioned facial cream. Her bell-shaped blooms have fluted edges.

Duchess de Brabant exhibits warm pink, cupped blossoms on a graceful bush, exuding a strong spice scent. A real survivor, she has often been found in old cemeteries and abandoned places.

A friend of mine found one dug up and tossed into an alley. Dragging it home, she let it sit exposed for a number of days before digging a spot to plant her. Today, the rose blooms gloriously.

Catherine Mermet, soft pink with some peach tints, is an exquisitely refined flower. Mrs. B. R. Cant, a dark pink, is a big, easy rose who will grow 6 or 8 feet high and as wide.

Among the yellow teas is Safrano, a blend of pastel yellow, coral and apricot (some consider it just creamy yellow), often grown in groups of three or more. Its considered one of the best in bud. This rose was enormously popular in Europe, especially in Italy and the French Riviera, from its 1839 introduction right up to World War I.

Le Pactole, one of my favorites, opens white then turns to a soft mellow yellow. Marie van Houtte is lemon yellow edged in rose pink, becoming paler with the heat. And little Etoile de Lyon is a strong golden yellow, about 2 feet tall.

General Schablikine parades a color somewhere between pink and yellow  a bronze red and cerise blend. It is one of the most dependable of all teas.

Francis Dubreuil is one of the very few red teas. Its a dark, dark red hinting at black. Sombreuil, a tall grower at 8 feet, is pure white with layers of lovely scalloped petals and the clean fresh scent of baby powder. This, too, is a favorite of mine.

Most of the climbing teas grow from 12 to 15 feet high. (Several of those I list are alternately classified as noisettes or tea noisettes.)

Climbing Madame Cochet shows off her pink and cream flowers. Aimee Vibert and Lamarque are both pure white and nearly thornless. The first is tolerant of some shade, the second fond of climbing against a porch or wall for shelter.

Climbing Devoniensis wears white or ivory or light yellow, depending upon the weather. Souvenir de Mme. Leonie Viennot exhibits a blend of pink and yellow with some coppery overtones. It, too, is shade tolerant.

Many climbing teas are yellow. Chromatella (also known as Cloth of Gold) is a soft shade of sulfur yellow. Jaune Desprez, is a yellow, buff, and orange blend with mottled stems.

Marechal Niel, a vigorous grower, is butter yellow, and Perle des Jardins lemon yellow with a button eye.

Alister Stella Gray shows creamy blooms blushed with lemon, the center petals being darker yellow. Climbing Lady Hillingdon, can be egg yolk yellow or apricot yellow, often with paler outer petals.

The popular Gloire de Dijon is strongly scented, vigorous, shade tolerant, and is a delicate yellow with peach shades.

Not a climber, the tea rose Alexander Hill Gray (1911), a fragrant 4- or 5-foot shrub bearing full, bright yellow blossoms that change to tawny yellow, was named for a Scottish lord who sold his cooler property and moved to southern England for the expressed purpose of growing his beloved tea roses,

He should have come to California, the perfect location. If any rose is the sunny California rose, it is the easy tea.

Darrell g.h. Schramm is a Master Gardener with the University of California Cooperative Extension office in Fairfield. If you have gardening questions, you can call the Master Gardeners office at 784-1322.