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With all of that beautiful pottery, how do you keep it from splitting when weather turns cold? Do you bring all the plants in? Do you empty them all and plant only annuals?
All of the above! Some of it breaks. Some of them are annuals every year. More and more I'm trying to plant perennials in big, terra cotta pots with lots of room for expansion and freezing, etc. I'm finding that those don't break, when they're full of dirt and plant, somehow it holds itself together.
After that Mother's Day Extravaganza in 2007, here in New England we had a really heavy cold early snow, like maybe even before Thanksgiving? There were perennials I had not yet planted out into the ground that were still in decorative pots for the summer, there were empty pots I was planning to bring in for the winter for storage, alas! And when it started precipitating I started crying or chanting or something "my pots, my pots!" Now, any PLANT still out there was supposed to still be out there, but the ceramic pots, the cache pots with no drainage holes, etc., was NOT.
So picture me moaning "my pots, my pots" and my darling husband doesn't stop to ask which pots, but just rushes outside and in his manly way, picks up 2 and 3 at a time of the heaviest sturdiest ones with established perennials and sticks them in the garage. Those mostly dried totally out. The little, fragile, empty ones that I was worried about didn't occur to him to rescue. Those broke. :-(
But the heavy, expensive, stoneware pots don't break, just the cheap clay ones that are 50% off right before mother's day every year. The perennials I mind, though.
Carrie, I followed your link and found i've read most of your articles already. Had to do something when i was getting up the courage to post at first.So read a lot of articles.
I started container gardening last fall. And have a good many of my daylilies transfered to large planters plus other perennials and cukes.a pepper and tomatoes,petunias,mums,sedum and some herbs. Now i'm running into trouble. I've a limited amount of money to spend on garden,so the inexpensive supply has all ended up at my house and i'll have to wait till spring to add to my container garden.Something to look forward to.
Except for tomatoes, everyting has done better than in raised beds and i can look out my living room window a dozen times a day and enjoy them. Nothing froze last winter.My oakleaves piled up around the containers to help insulate.
vickie
I'm so happy to hear you are having success with your containers, and welcome to Dave's Garden, by the way! Your only problem will be in a few years, as the soil in your containers starts to degrade. I certainly can't afford to replace all the potting mix in all my containers every year, but the annual flowers and the veggies won't like being in the same mix year after year. Good plan with the oak leaves, though! I'm glad that worked for you.
Thanks for the tip about changing the potting soil. I can't afford to change all at once either. But now i can plan ahead and put some potting soil by each month for later.
vickie
Vickie, good plan - I wish I'd thought of it! Try also starting a compost pile now for your veggies to grow in next summer. There is tons of information on the Soil and Composting Forum.
