Container gardens add color and texture to your landscape, entryway, steps, patio, pool balcony, windows – anywhere you want a touch of nature’s beauty. By summer’s end, many warm weather container plants can look leggy, may have gone to seed, or fell victim to summer’s heat and drought. It’s time for a cool weather refresh that will satisfy your gardening appetite while providing beauty and interest to your landscape.
- Make sure your containers are winter hardy. Non-porous plastic, fiberglass, fiberstone, lead or iron are good options. Clay, terracotta or other porous materials absorb moisture and can crack in the freeze/thaw cycle.
- Larger containers allow for deeper roots which can protect against frost damage since they are below the frost line where temperatures typically stay from 45o-50oF degrees. It takes about 5 hours at temperatures of 28oF or below for frost to damage most plants.
- Remove spent annuals, diseased perennials and trim broken or infested branches/leaves and replenish potting soil.
- A mixture of vegetable and herbs can make fall/winter containers practical as well as pretty (see our post on Edimentals for more on edible, ornamental plants).
- Leafy greens such as lettuce, arugula, kale, spinach, collard and mustard greens thrive in cooler temps, revitalizing containers as well as your meals.
- Flowering cabbage and flowering kale look like showy blooms with their large colorful leaves and round shape. Available in shades of purple, cream, rose and green, their colors intensify as temperatures drop. While edible, they’re not as tasty as regular kale and cabbage since they are cultivated for their looks, not taste.
- Flowering cabbages have wide, flat leaves with smooth edges that form heads, while flowering kales have crinkled, frilly leaves with serrated edges that form rosettes.
- Ornamental dwarf peppers, while not edible, are tiny peppers in vibrant shades of red, yellow and orange (think real-life pepper lights!) that remain until they die back from heavy frost.
- For herbs, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme and chives do well even through early frosts.
- Herbaceous perennials that look great in fall containers include Japanese anemones, asters, sedums, liriope muscari, heuchera and Michaelmas daisies.
- For annuals, pansies, mums, violas, sweet alyssum, asters, coral bells and petunias can round out your cold weather container design.
