Container Gardening

Coleus Containers: A Durable Addition to Your Patio

By Jean Starr

3. Hummingbirds and more:

This 12-inch pot for full sun packs a punch—in color, scent and as a lure to hummingbirds and butterflies. The four plants look great all summer long, with only the Helenium requiring a shearing to promote more flowers. The pot holds one of each of the following:

  • Pentas Graffiti Red Lace: Flowers on this hummingbird candy couldn’t be a brighter shade of red, and with its white centers, it’s obvious where the “lace” reference was chosen. At around 14 inches, it’s one of the taller varieties available. In my mind, it’s more graceful than the real shorties.
  • Helenium ‘Dakota Gold’ (annual): I’ve never grown the annual cousin of perennial sneezeweed, or Helen’s flower, as it is sometimes called. To keep this plant compact and in bloom, it should be grown in full sun, and occasionally clipped back. But for most of the summer, expect tiny rays of sunshine with stems that are somewhat relaxed, providing a good contrast for the other upright plants in this mix.
  • Heliotrope ‘Scentropia’ Dark Blue: This bushy 18” plant is rich in color and scent. And compared with the old-fashioned cherry pie plants that melted in the humidity, ‘Scentropia’ Dark Blue came through the worst of the weather in bud and ready to pop into bloom, providing deep blue flowers on healthy dark green leaves.
  • Abutilon savitzii: This flowering maple doesn’t have a fancy cultivar name, but this bi-colored beauty is impossible to forget. It will even flower if it’s happy, with drooping, coral-colored blossoms.

Best tips

Here are a few suggestions on how to keep your containers in the best condition possible to get through the whole summer, and even improving through mid-October.

  1. Keep your Coleus plants happy, strong and colorful by removing flowers as they form. It also helps to cut stems back a couple of inches while you’re pinching out the flower buds.
  2. Feed after a heavy rain: even if you feed with a water soluble fertilizer, be sure to fertilize after those downpours, especially those that leave an inch or more in their wake. All of that rain water serves to flush out your containers. It’s not a bad thing, be it’s a good idea to replace the nutrients.
  3. Cut back the bullies: check your containers to make sure they don’t encourage bullies. Check your sweet potato vines and mints or anything that looks like it’s ready to swallow up its neighbors.
  4. Move them: Sun angles change, and plants grow huge by August. Make sure your plants are getting enough light and aren’t overshadowed by one another, by moving them if you need to. At the other end of the spectrum, make sure shade-lovers aren’t being scorched in the mid-summer heat.
  5. Deadhead: Removing flowers that are past their prime accomplishes at least two things—encourages more flowers and keeps the plant’s vigor from needlessly forming seeds. It will, in general, keep your plants from looking bedraggled.

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