A Patio Oasis

15 Aug, 2011Featured, Outdoors, Plants

So you’ve worked all summer creating that dream patio and deck and it’s finally completed….what next? After the thrill of the new space and the entertainment opportunities has worn off, you still have a blank canvas to decorate. You may think it will be easy to simply set up a few decorative pots filled with your favorite annuals, and it is, but if you want that beauty to last next year from early spring through fall, I would suggest taking a few extra measures that will pay off in the long.

The very first year that I decided I wanted to have one of those lush patio oasis scenes in my backyard, I wasn’t prepared for the trouble that heat and small containers can have on otherwise healthy plants. After there were no overflowing vines and seemingly endless blooms of petunias, I decided that the next year was going to be different. To start off, I repositioned my pots so they were in areas that got some shade during the day so the plants weren’t bone dry by noon. On a decorative note, I don’t necessarily match all of my pots together. Having a small red acrylic pot next to a tall gray imitation concrete pot really shows off the artistic style and gets me bunching my pots so they don’t appear out of place. Once I had all planters in position, I filled the bottoms of the larger containers with the aerated plastic buckets I got from the nursery. The prevented the pots from getting too heavy from all the soil but water also need to be able to flow through to prevent mold and damage to the flowers.

The next step I found to be the most critical since others who used the trick also got similar results. I discovered that it wasn’t enough to simply buy a bag of soil with some nutrients in it. I bought a premium brand and then added a plant food supplement that also controlled moisture to allow the plants in the more sensitive potting environment to retain moisture well. Also, if there was more than 6 inches to fill, I filled the bottom first with peat moss and then the soil. After the soil was in place, I made sure not to overload the pots with flowers and vines since proper care would allow them to grow greatly within the next few weeks. This is the same with hanging pots since you will want some vines and foliage to flow over the edge, but planting too many things in the pot can lead to an unsightly hole in the middle where nothing could grow. The key to tending these pots, as you can imagine, was dedication to watering every day. Every evening I sprinkled all of my pots and found it very relaxing and a great way to enjoy my patio area and the views it had to offer.