10 Reasons to Love Annuals

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Annuals are plants that complete their entire life cycle in one year, from seed to full grown plant, to making new seeds before they die. This means that they have great impetus to grow quickly, bloom profusely, attract pollinators, and create as much seed as possible in their short lifetime. With proper care most of them can be full and flowering through the entire growing season! Some might find annuals less desirable, since they will need to be replanted each year, but there are many benefits to utilizing these fabulous plants appropriately in our gardens!

  1. Hanging Baskets – A beautiful basket, hanging near a patio, overflowing with flowers blooming all summer long is something anyone can enjoy! Apartment dwellers, renters, store fronts and homeowners alike can appreciate the ability to add floral goodness to just about any spot. Annuals are a natural fit since they bloom through almost the entire growing season, grow quickly, and they come in a huge variety of colors and growth habits. These make wonderful gifts as well!
  2. Seasonal containers – Much like hanging baskets, pots and other containers can be enjoyed by just about anyone in any space, but with good sturdy containers one can use them repeatedly by simply swapping out plants. Annuals are a shoe in for this, giving us options for seasonal themes and the ability to combine them into any style we wish. This also allows us to start very early in the growing season with cold loving annuals like Pansies, Primroses and Petunias, then as it gets too warm for them, changing them out for heat lovers like Geraniums, Osteospermum or Begonias, and on through the seasons.
  3. Filling in new plantings – If you’ve ever landscaped an area from a blank slate, you know that planting new shrubs, trees and perennials leaves a lot of empty space to allow for them to mature. This can leave things a bit sparse looking. For the years that it can take for plants to mature, annuals can fill those gaps with their colorful goodness! Since they won’t be in the garden longer than a year, they make great placeholders, and will hold weeds at bay by occupying the open ground.
  4. Adding color to landscape – In established landscapes, unless they are densely planted, there are often gaps between plants and hardscape features. These lend us the opportunity to add some extra pops of color to what can often end up being a uniform background of greens and browns much of the time. Perennials may only bloom for one or two months of the year each, while many annuals will bloom from spring all the way through autumn.
  5. Changing color palette – The wide array of colors available in annual plants makes them an easy way to update our colors, varying them strategically throughout a space for a specific look, or changing the color palette completely every year if we wish. Annuals are very much the gardener’s paintbrush, adding highlights, shading, and color wherever needed.
  6. Updating a theme – There are many styles of gardens that folks like to emulate, from Japanese to Mediterranean, Cottage to Modern. Each style has a “theme”, gangly pastels for Cottage style, bright warm tones with shiny green foliage for Tropical style, silver foliage and drought tolerant types for Mediterranean style, and so on. With annuals you can have foundation plants that are somewhat generic, and then change your theme or style every year if you like! For those with an ever-changing decorative style, annuals are a great choice, allowing for flexibility from year to year, season to season.
  7. Pollinators – Flowering annuals are extremely motivated to draw in pollinators since they’ve got just one growing season to create their seed. Their bright colors, varying shapes and sizes, and array of scents make them must-haves for any garden wishing to attract hummingbirds, bees, butterflies, and other beneficial insects. Companion planting annual flowers with a vegetable garden will boost production by attracting pollinators to the neighborhood from afar.
  8. Edibles – Many of our favorite vegetables are annual plants – tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, peppers, melons, and more are treasured for their quick and abundant production. Beyond even these well-known annuals, there are tons of edible annual flowers like cornflower, nasturtiums, calendula, borage, marigolds and many more. Adding edible flowers to a salad or fruit dish can be elegant or whimsical and will certainly impress diners. Encourage kids to eat more fresh foods by adding flowers to their meals or get them interested in foraging by starting in the home garden.
  9. Kids – With their short lifespan, annuals are a wonderful way to teach children about the life cycle of plants! Kids can start their own seeds, watch them sprout and grow, then follow along as they flower, develop seeds, and eventually die, leaving little plant babies of their own to grow again next spring. It’s a science lesson and intro to gardening in one fun, easy experience.
  10. Cut flowers – A cutting flower garden would be incomplete without the numerous annual flowers that are wonderful in vases and bouquets or dried. From towering treasures like Sunflowers, Nicotiana and Statice, to more diminutive darlings like Cornflowers, Celosia and Verbena, there are perfect cutting flowers for every niche in the garden.

These are just 10 reasons to love gardening with annuals, there are certainly more that we haven’t thought of! So, get out there, experiment with adding some annuals to your space, and let us know your favorite new reason to garden with annuals. Happy Planting!

Orchard Mason Bee Basics

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Mason Bees have created quite a buzz these past few years, becoming popular with gardeners, farmers, orchardists, and stewards of our native habitats – with good reason! They are excellent pollinators, pollinating 95% of flowers they visit vs. honeybees’ 5%. This means more pollination from fewer bees, in fact it’s been found that 250 female mason bees can pollinate apples as effectively as about 50,000 honey bees! They are active starting in about late March or so here in Western WA, continuing for about 6-8 weeks until the adults die, leaving the cocoons to mature until the next spring. Their active time coincides with the bloom time of many fruit bearing plants, so they are a great addition to any home orchard or fruit garden. If you’re struggling with fruit production in your garden, adding mason bees is an excellent idea.

These native bees are solitary, nesting each to their own holes, and therefore do not have a hive or make honey. With no reason to be aggressive or protective, orchard mason bees are extremely gentle, and rarely sting. There have been zero reported cases of severe allergic reaction to mason bee stings. Kids love to watch the bees emerge from their cocoons and fill up their nest holes, they are a great way to teach about life cycles as well as develop a love for nature. Native bees are on the decline, so raising your own native bees is a great way to contribute to biodiversity and make sure the plants around you get pollinated.

If you’d like to learn more about mason bees, our bee supplier Knox Cellars Mason Bees has lots of great information HERE.

What you need to get started with Mason Bees:

Early nectar sources – dandelions, Forsythia, Pieris, witch hazel, Maple trees and fruit trees or shrubs are all great early blooming plants.

Clayey mud – if you’ve got clay in your soil naturally, you can just dig a small hole for them to access it, otherwise provide a small dish of moist clay for them nearby.

NO chemical or pesticide use – if your property is small, talk with your neighbors as well to see if they are pesticide free to keep your bees healthy.

Nesting holes – these can be paper tubes, reeds, bamboo tubes or special wooden blocks which can be cleaned. Avoid drilled wood blocks, as they can’t be cleaned, and if using reeds, paper or bamboo they’ll need to be replaced each year. These will need to be kept in a small housing of some kind that is sturdy, protective and water resistant and attached to a house, shed or sturdy post. We have several options for nesting holes and shelters available at the nursery.

Bees! – we have live bees available as loose cocoons or filled tubes as part of an easy starter kit. We keep them refrigerated so ask any nursery employee, we’re happy to get them for you.

How Can You Help Your Plants Thrive During the Winter?

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Landscaping in the Pacific Northwest comes with plenty of challenges: from deer and rabbits decimating garden beds, to clay soil rotting roots, and summers without natural irrigation. Another challenge often not considered in our NW climate are the freezing temperatures in the winter. While we do have milder temperatures than much of the US, the past few years have shown a colder side to winter. Most gardeners on the island will have a hard time forgetting the snowmageddon of last February, and many are still dealing the damages caused by that late winter storm. While not everything is preventable, there are offseason tasks that help limit the damages from a sub-freezing blast.

The post-season clean up: While most people are finding more excuses to be indoors, pests and pathogens are also trying to avoid the cold. Leaf litter, cluttered branches, and fallen debris are the perfect habitat for unwanted garden visitors. Air circulation is crucial for limiting diseases. Pruning to encourage air flow between individual trees—as well as in the plant itself—is a method of prevention. Crossing and clustered branches should be pruned out in the early fall so the plant has time to seal the pruning cuts before going dormant. Leaf litter and debris should be collected out of the garden to limit the pathogens overwintering.

Mulch: Now that the garden has been cleaned, it’s time to put down a protective layer of mulch. Aged bark and compost blends add the most nutrients and provide organic material to improve the soil. Apply the mulch thickly to the beds, but take care not to suffocate the trees and shrubs by covering their crowns. The area where the trunk meets the roots demands oxygen flow, so be sure to leave a 1-2’ circumference around the base of trees and shrubs. Dormant perennials, however, can benefit from extra mulch on top of the crown. Plants that die all the way back to the ground, like agapanthus, artichokes, and joe pie weed, can have mulch added on top to protect the crown from the frost.

Sub-freezing protection: Most winters in the Pacific Northwest have sporadic freezing and thawing periods throughout the season, but hardy plants will survive without extra protection. There are times, however, when the weather forecast can show below freezing for more than a week. If this is the case, the first thing gardeners should do is water. While it might seem counter intuitive to water in the part of the country known best for its excessive rainfall in the winter, once the water freezes it will be unavailable for the plant to use. Garden beds have usually stored up enough rainfall by this time of year to not bother watering, however containers and any plants under a cover will need to be checked. If the soil is dry before the freeze, it will remain that way until the temperatures thaw it again. Be careful not to get any water on the leaves as frozen water droplets will damage evergreen foliage.

Once the containers have the proper water level, some of them might need to be protected if the freezing reaches less than 25 degrees. Containers do not protect roots as well as in garden beds, because the roots are essentially above ground. If the plants are in a ceramic container, make sure the walls of the pot are thick enough to block the frost from damaging the roots. If you have frost-proof pottery, then the walls will be thick enough. Terra Cotta and plastic are often not thick enough to protect roots in severe weather.

To help a plant’s survival, wrap the plant base in blankets, thick plastic, or surround them with mulch to add an extra layer of protection. Plastic and blankets can also be used to cover tender foliage and buds from the freeze. Some winters we have warm weather before a hard frost, so the plant is tricked into beginning to wake up for spring before getting blasted by the freeze. If new growth or flower buds are forming before the hard freeze is predicted, the plastic or blankets can help reduce the damage.

Snow: The best scenario for a week of sub-freezing temperatures is to start the week off with a snowstorm. Snow acts as an insulator that can save cold damage from occurring if it’s left in place. Restrain the urge to uncover your plants from the snow and let nature’s insulation work its magic. The only exception is heavy snow that can sometimes break off limbs. If any tree or shrub looks as if the whole limb is bent past its limit, removing the snow to release the pressure can help save the limb. Know that by doing this, you are exposing the foliage to the freeze, but potentially saving the branch from breaking under the weight of the snow.

While the tasks listed above can help prevent the damage and loss of plants in the winter, the best prevention is always plant selection. While some winters are safe for higher-zoned plants, the best insurance is still to select plants for lower zones. The Pacific Northwest is usually a USDA Zone 8, which means plants can survive around 20 degrees Fahrenheit. There are still wind chill and microclimates on the island to account for, so plants zoned for 7 or lower have the best chance of surviving extreme sub-freezing temperatures.

Like most of gardening, there is a trial and error aspect to finding the right plant selection for your particular garden. Our aim with this post is to help you give plants enduring winter the best chance to thrive in the coming spring.  

-Your friends at Venture Out