June 9, 2021

Flowers in Pots

I had kind of been debating if I was even going to fill these big flowerpots this year, but in the end, I decided to do it. I did check with our landlord first, to make sure he would be okay with where I wanted to put them. We have the 2 tall plant stands, so that works well for their new position by the mailbox.

This one has Japanese forest grass, sweet potato vine, and salvia.

In the smaller pot, we planted violas, veronica, and sweet potato vine. (The 3 v's.)

I'm glad I went to the effort after all. It has brightened my day to see these pretty flowers whenever I pull into our driveway.

Meanwhile, over at the community gardens, there are planters and pots lining the edges of the garden.
These are all supposed to be free for harvesting for anyone with a garden box rented.
They are a total mess! Full of weeds and half-dead plants, every one of them!

So we decided to help out a little bit with that situation.
There are 4 pots in particular right next to our beds. 
We emptied out 3 of them completely, and refilled with dirt (provided.)
The fourth has an enormous fennel plant in it, and my kids want to harvest some fennel seeds, apparently. So we are letting that one go to seed, but then later we will yank it out and probably replant it--maybe with some spring or summer blooming bulbs.

Anyway, in the first one we planted 3 kinds of mint: pineapple mint, spearmint, and orange mint.
The second one we filled with flowers--mostly petunias, with an African daisy and sweet potato vine to round things out.
The third had some chives planted in it that flowered this spring, but when I looked closer, some of them were still in 2" pots sitting on the surface, and there were dead plants and weeds galore.
For this one I did petunias and verbena in pink and peach tones, and replanted the chives in the middle.

There is a 5th pot that someone else weeded out then just left empty for a month. 
I didn't want to take over if they had plans, but after a month I figured it was up for grabs.
We had a big bunch of volunteer calendula coming up in our vegetable box that were starting to crowd out our tomatoes, so we dug those up and plopped them into the pot.
They are bright orange and yellow and quite cheerful-looking over in the pot.
Recovered very nicely from the transplant. 

Planter 1: all the mints.

Planter 2: petunias and African daisy

Planter 3: petunias, verbena, and chives

There are several more to go.
I'm kind of working my way around the perimeter.
There are two big planters with grapes in them. 
The one just needs to be filled up with fresh soil--it's only about halfway full and you can see some of the roots poking out. The other is chock full of weeds.
I have been watering all the pots that we have planted, and the grapes, at the same time we water our beds. (I really want to harvest some grapes this year! That would be awesome!)
I guess I feel a bit protective of them now.
We don't mind a bit if everyone else harvests the mint.
For the others, even though they're not really harvestable, I figured flowers were at least better than weeds. Maybe they'll increase the pollinators in the garden.  

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