Planting Summer Container Pots | How I Get Pansies to Return || Budget Gardening

Together we refresh some spring container pots by first taking out pansies and planting those in the landscape. Then, we plant three zonal geraniums / pelargoniums as well as three trailing annual lobelia plants. I just love how these patriotic red white and blue summer flower pots look on my front porch!

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Hey budget gardeners, Vita Loki here. Join me today as we plant up some beautiful pots. So, let’s [Music] go. I live in New Hampshire. I garden in USDA zone 5B. Based on my zip code, my average last frost date is May 15th. That date just barely passed, but let me tell you, it doesn’t feel it. It’s been pretty cold and pretty rainy and I’m hearing that the same has been true for many of you as well. Well, the time has come nevertheless for me to start planting out a lot of my tender plants. And I thought, why not start with some beautiful deraniums? These are daniums that I overwintered last year using the bare root method. In case you missed that video, I’ll put a link to it down in the description below. These deraniums have been hardening off for a few days, so they’re ready to be planted outside. But before we do that, there’s some maintenance that needs to be done. I’m going to go ahead and I’m going to bring you in for a closer look to show you what I mean. Many of these blooms have gone by. They’re spent and they really need to be deadheaded. In order to deadhead a deranium plant, what you want to do is follow it down all the way to the bottom of the stem and you want to cut it off. You can either use your fingers and pinch it off or you can use something like hand pruners. So, in this example here, I’m following it all the way down and I’m going to cut it right there. And then I can put this in my compost pile. Usually, if you have deraniums like this, it’s really a good idea to keep up with deadheading your deraniums. The reason is the plant will put more energy into creating new buds and it will keep blooming for you. And even though I fell behind on deadheading my deranium, it is still starting to put out some buds for me. But it’s always a good idea to keep your plant nice and tidy just so it looks clean in your garden. The other thing that needs to be done is I just need to come in here and remove any of the leaves that have gone by that don’t look very good. I can easily just pull those off. Just like that. And again, this is all maintenance that needs to happen during the entire growing season when it comes to your pelargoniums or zonal deraniums. I’m just looking around to see if there’s anything else that I can pull, but otherwise the deranium has been cleaned up and it’s ready to be planted. Since I have a number of different colors of deraniums, I’m going to remember that this one is red because we’re going to be planting up all the red deraniums today. So, what I’m going to do is go through the rest of my deraniums and I’m going to focus only on the red ones. I’m going to clean them up, pull them aside, and I’ll show you what’s next. The red deraniums have been cleaned up. And I also looked for any of the leaves that maybe didn’t look so great in terms of yellowing. So, even if the leaves were not brown, but they just didn’t look great, I pulled those off as well. And that’s always a good idea to do. You really just want nice looking green leaves on your deraniums. There are a few other deraniums that have kind of this wonky piece sticking out of them. What I’m planning to do is I’m going to take cutings. I might as well because when you have a piece that’s like that and it’s just kind of coming out of the plant, it doesn’t look good. I am preferring a more upright looking plant. And I don’t foresee that like a piece like this is going to become upright. It’s too heavy. It’s too just leggy. So, it makes sense to turn that into a cutting. The same applies with this deranium here. It looks great, but then when you come down to the base, there’s this one rogue piece that’s just kind of coming out from the bottom. So, I’ll take a cutting from that one as well, and the rest of the plant will just be fine. In fact, this right here is a cutting that rooted itself. It’s not blooming. It’s still very small, but I did make a video showing you my process for taking deranium cutings and how to get them to root. I’ll put a link to that video down in the description as well. I mean, who doesn’t love free plants? Early in the spring, we put together two pots, and this was one of them. We basically just used pansies that selfseeded themselves from last year. And even though these are still providing some color, it is really time to empty out the pansies and put in some more summer blooming flowers in here. And yes, even though I could take the pansies out and put them in my compost pile, I’m actually going to dig them up and I’m going to put them in what I call my pansy holding bed. My pansy holding bed is basically an area where there are bunch of pansies that have dropped their seeds and every single year the pansies come back for me. And there’s one area of that bed that doesn’t have many pansies in it. So, I figured I might as well dig these out, plant them in that area, and what’s going to happen is these pansies are going to start going to seed. When they go to seed, the seeds will drop, and then the plants will germinate sometime during the middle of summer. The plants will get bigger, fall will come, winter will come, snow will cover those little baby plants, and then next year I’ll have a whole bunch more pansies growing in the pansy holding bed. I’m just going to use a small hand shovel or a small hand triel, and we’re going to go ahead and dig the pansies out. When it comes to a potting mix, I like to make my own potting mix. And I’ll link a video down to that in the description below. And I’ll also link the video where we put this arrangement together in case you want to check those out. You can see that these pansies are already starting to go to seed. That’s what those are, little seed pods. The seed pods will turn brown and then they’ll eventually open up and have little seeds in them. And I also have a video that shows my process for collecting pansy seeds. I’ll link it down below as well. In fact, this seed pod right here, if you look very carefully, it has little white seeds inside the middle of it. Pretty soon, those seeds will turn brown. Many people have asked me before, “How do I get my pansies to come back for me every year?” That seems to be the trick is letting these pansies just drop their seeds and then not disturbing the space and then letting those little plants germinate during the summer months. [Music] [Music] I I’ve gone ahead and dug up all the pansies. I am going to leave behind this trailing Vinka vine, which I was able to successfully overwinter in my garage since it’s not hardy here where I live. I have one more pot to empty out and then I’ll show you what’s next. [Music] here at the front of the house. There is my pansy holding bed. And I really don’t mind it. The first year that the pansies dropped their seeds, I felt like, oh my goodness, what a weedy mess. But I have to tell you, in the spring, as they start popping up, it is so nice to be able to come here, dig up pansies, and put them in pots and containers. And what’s even better is I don’t have to start any pansies indoors under my grow lights. I can just let mother nature do her thing, drop its seeds, and then give me more pansies each year. It really is a beautiful thing. And there’s the blank spot where we’re going to plant our pansies. In the past, I would come in here and deadhead my pansies because they are getting leggy and I would normally want them to put out a second flush of blooms for me. But what I’ve come to realize is many times that doesn’t happen because it ends up getting too hot out. So instead, what I’ve decided to do this year is just let the pansies go to seed. Let them drop their seeds. And I can always help the plants out by collecting the seeds and scattering them in this area just to ensure that I have pansies all throughout this part of my garden. I want to make sure I have plenty on this side as well as that side of the bed. And then after I’ve seen that the pansies have dropped their seeds, at that time I can come in here and go ahead and just shear or or prune back all of these pansies. They will get to a point where they’re going to look very ratty. They’re not going to look good. They’re almost at that point, but I need to wait until they start dropping their seeds. We’ve had so much rain the last many days. The soil is saturated. For that reason, I don’t need to water these. The ground is very wet. All I need to do is just dig a hole and get the pansies planted. And then later today, as things start to dry out a little bit, I can come in here and give all these pansies a little drink of water just to make sure that they are good to go. I really do love this area of my garden. It’s just such a nice surprise in the springtime to see all the little pansies waking up and coming to life. And what’s really nice is then the plants are naturally hardened off. I don’t need to do anything special, but wait until they put on a little bit of size, shop my garden, and then I can go ahead and dig from here. And I really love all the different colors that are in this area. The mix of purples as well as yellows. And every so often I’ve seen there’s there are even some white pansies tucked in here. [Music] [Music] la. Hello honey. [Music] [Music] [Music] We still have some really cool days happening here in New Hampshire. The temperature has been in the 40 50° Fahrenheit range. It’s been actually pretty cold. So, the pansies still look very good. But now, I’m hopeful that in the area where we just planted them, they will drop their seeds and then next spring you will see the whole entire bed covered with pansies. Isn’t that just such a pretty sight? In another video, I’ll show you what I plan on doing here in the center. I like to put pots here and I typically put dwarfsiz dalas in those pots. So, we’ll do that on a separate day. Also, on a separate day, I’ll bring you in and show you all of these plants. There are a lot of things happening here. I just wanted to give you a sneak peek. There are still some beonas to be planted, lots of snapdragons, and I showed you in previous videos my process for overwintering my dalia tubers. Well, they are all putting on some great growth. And not only that, some of them are even buted up. So, we’re going to have a lot of fun planting das this year. And the canalillies that we started from seed, look how big they are. I can’t wait to get those planted around my pond. And then there are so many annuals that we started from seed. I started the hardening off process and I still have more inside. But I wanted to show you look at these Vinka. Look how pretty they are. I collected the seeds from all of these plants actually from most of them if not all of them. But that’s why we have a variation in color with the Vinka. It’s like a pastel colored theme going on there. Very pretty. And I adopted a spot about 30 minutes from my house. I need to get all these planted. That’s what I’m going to be doing tomorrow. The first thing I want to do is just place these plants here. I could just keep one in the center, but I really want these to be high impact. So, I’m thinking I’m going to be putting two in each of the pots. And I’m stepping back and I’m looking at it and I’m thinking I actually may put three in. And if I find later in the season three is too many, I can always take out one. So, I’m looking and it looks good. I think I’m going for a very full effect with these containers. And I want it to be simple. I don’t want it to be too extravagant. The Vinka vine will take off. Again, it’s been cold, so it’s a little stunted right now, but just imagine that that’s going to be trailing. And then we’re going to have the three geraniums in the center here. In each of the planting holes, I’m going to be putting osmmaote, which is a slowrelease fertilizer. And I’m only going to be putting a small pinch of it in each of the planting holes. In order to minimize the amount of shock that these plants are going to go through right now, I made sure to give them a good drink of water. And also, today is a little bit of a cloudy day, and they’re going to be placed into soil that’s already wet because it’s rained a lot. So, I’m just squeezing the pot just to loosen the soil. And even though these plants have a good amount of soil around their roots, I’m going to keep a lot of the soil in this container. And the reason is that I want to top off the container a little bit because we just removed the pansies. So, we can use the extra soil here. So, I’m just going to slightly loosen up the roots. And then, in terms of a planting depth, I just want to make sure that I make it deep enough to accommodate the roots. I’ll take a small pinch of my fertilizer, put it in the planting hole. And then I’m just going to place my plant in the hole and then back fill. And what’s nice about this pot is actually I can spin the top. It just makes planting these a little bit easier for me. I love being able to overwinter these deraniums. And even though I could have overwintered them in pots indoors all winter long, for me personally, it’s just easier to overwinter them bare root in my basement. I basically can just forget about them during the winter months. And I did check on them on a monthly basis and gave them a small spritz of water, but that was it. And even though they were bare root, you can see they put on a really good root system. Now, if you were doing the same thing and your soil was dry, you definitely want to make sure you’re putting water in the planting hole and that you’re also watering your plants after you plant them in your pottery container or you might even be putting your deraniums out in your landscape. I’ve always enjoyed looking at other people’s containers where they have the vinka vine coupled with a red deranium. I feel like it’s such a classic look and that’s why I chose to go with a very simple container this year. And the best part is it really didn’t cost me much money. The potting mix I made myself so I saved money that way. These deraniums I actually got for free from a friend of mine. I dug them up from an area where she had a local community garden and we did it in the fall time. She dug some up and I dug some up. And then the Vinka vine I bought probably three or four years ago and I only bought one and then I was able to propagate it and turn it into a whole bunch more plants. And I love being able to show you that you can have a really pretty container pot without spending a lot of money on it. So here’s the deranium that has that wonky piece coming out the back of it. I’m going to plant it right now the whole plant the way it is, but then I’ll come back in later and I’ll take a cutting from it just to create another plant from it. We will start simple and slow with these pots. I do have many other annuals I started from seed. And if I wanted to add a little bit more color, I could do that. Some options that would look nice along with this arrangement here would be the lobularia or alysum that I started from seed. I have that in white and I also have it in like a lilac or a purple color. Another option would be loilia. I have that in a blue color as well as a white color. So I could do like a red, white, and blue container. I’m also going to add just a little bit of slowrelease fertilizer on the top here so that when it rains it also gets a little additional fertilizer. That’s optional. You don’t have to do that, but I like to do that many times in my pots and my containers. The next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to pop in some of this white trailing loilia. I don’t have many of the white ones, and I thought the white would look really pretty in this container. I wasn’t planning to add anything else to this container, but since I don’t have many of the white lobilia, I just thought that would look really pretty along with the red of the deranium. I am planning to add drip irrigation to this pot. Plants such as loilia do not like to get dried out. So, if you’ve ever had loilia and you wonder why it just basically dies to a crisp, a lot of times it’s because the plant has dried out. And especially if you’re going to have this in a pottery container out in the full sun, make sure you’re putting drip irrigation directly to a plant like this one. I’m so glad that we added this loilia. It’s going to end up being a very nice spiller in this container along with the spiller right here. We’ll go ahead and we’ll tuck this one over on this side here. We’ll turn this back around. And I think I’m going to go with the red, white, and blue. I don’t know what you think, but I think that would look so pretty. We have the white or on either side we have the red. And let’s just tuck in a small blue one in the front here. I mean, why not, right? Normally, I would not put two spillers next to each other like that, but I think this will spill a lot more. The loilia won’t spill as much, and it almost will not only act as a spiller, but also as a filler. So, we’re going to tuck in this baby blue right here. And there she is. I love it. I really did want a simple looking pot. And I think it is simple. We have three classic red geraniums, two of the trailing white loilia, one of the blue trailing white loilia, and then we have the vinka vine. And I think it came out really, really nice. I’m really pleased with it. So, I’m going to do the same exact thing to this pot here. And I’ll show you what it looks like when I’m all done. The two side porch pots are complete. There really is no use in me cleaning up here because it’s just so wet. But I’m really pleased with how these came out. I think they just look so classic. And I can’t wait for them to really fill in. Although I do feel already they are quite full, but they’re just going to really pop once the weather warms up here in New Hampshire. I love the color combination and I’m just really pleased with how these came out. Let’s go look at the first one with that we put together and it’s nice that they are symmetrical. They match and I just think that they’re going to look really pretty and I do plan on adding more pots and containers on my porch area. But even if I didn’t, I think that these would look really nice the way that they are. And I do still have some really pretty pink deraniums that I’m planning to put in another potter container on a different day. So, be on the lookout for that video. I really hope you enjoyed this video. I hope it gave you a lot of great ideas. Remember, you can definitely create your own pots and containers and make them look beautiful without spending a lot of money on them. If you have any questions or comments, please drop them down below. And until the next video, make it a great day with gardening.