Hi friends! Are your potted plants struggling near the middle or end of summer? Here are some of my favorite tips to push them through to the end of the season! I usually don’t bother buying fall flowers, because my spring and summer flowers make it all the way through until frost hits.
Toward the middle/end of summer, many of my potted flowers start to get a yellow tinge to them, like these. This is called chlorosis and is easily remedied with iron, but if left untreated, the plant will die.
Toward the middle/end of summer, many of my potted flowers start to get a yellow tinge to them, like these. This is called chlorosis and is easily remedied with iron, but if left untreated, the plant will die.
Here are a couple of the iron supplements I have used. The granule is a slow release that you sprinkle around the base of the plant, so the liquid is often best if your plant already has yellowing leaves. The liquid iron does stain rocks and masonry though, so I usually move my pots to the grass before adding the liquid iron to my watering can and watering my plants with it. If I can’t move a pot from my concrete or rocks, I just make sure to rinse the surrounding area with the hose really well afterwards.
Here are the same plants just a few weeks later. They are a nice deep green and are thriving!
I don’t run into this problem often, but I bought these flowers late into the season and they are looking pretty leggy.
You can tell the plant you want it to stop growing longer and to be bushier by snipping a bit off the end of each branch it has!
Within a couple weeks, you should start to see some new growth.
Alaska fish plant food linked HERE.
In addition to watering my plants regularly (for me, that means daily during 80 degrees + days and every other day to every 2-3 days for lower temps), I make sure all of my flowerpots have drainage holes and I feed my plants often. I use my DIY GARDEN FERTILIZER FROM KITCHEN SCRAPS whenever I have it available and I use the fish plant food pictured once a month. This jug lasts me all season. I don’t worry about it being too late in the season to feed my plants because liquid fertilizer gets washed out of the soil much quicker than a slow-release granule type of food.
Here are the same plants looking so great on September 18, when most people are ditching their summer flowers!
My last tip is to deadhead spent blooms often. Deadheading spent blooms tells your plant to reproduce more, whereas dead blooms left on the plant tell the plant it’s done its job by already reproducing. I find the easiest way to do this is to carry a garbage bucket with me while watering, so I can just snip anything ugly I see while watering in my bucket instead of having to stop what I am doing or remember to come back later.
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