My organizing buddy, Joan R. treated me to a day at the Proven Winners Gardening Seminar last Saturday. What a fun, interesting and informative event (thanks Joan)!

I picked up some great tips from gardening experts for creating and maintaining beautiful container gardens with annuals which I’m delighted to pass along to you.

Once you’ve selected your container (with a hole for drainage) you want to fill it with a good potting soil with enough volume for your flowers/plants to grow.

Next, choose annuals that are sterile. This way, all the energy from the plant will go into producing blossoms rather than setting seed (all PW annuals are grown from plant tissue and are sterile).

Another thing to keep in mind when selecting more than one type of annual for your container is to make sure that all your plants have the same location requirement (sun, shade etc.) and the same watering needs. A drought tolerant plant will not do as well in the same container with a plant that needs the soil to be kept moist (I learned this one the hard way).

Finally, be sure to water and feed your plants regularly. John Gaydos gave us a great formula to follow. When you are planting your annuals, add some slow release pellets into the soil as your fertilizing foundation. Then, add a liquid fertilizer to match your watering schedule as follows:

In May, when you may only have to water 2x’s a week, fertilize every 4th watering.

In June, when you are watering every other day, fertilize once/week.

In July, when you are watering daily, fertilize twice/week

In August you may want to add a little fertilizer daily .

As the fall comes in, cut back your fertilizing to match your watering schedule as in the spring.  An iron chelated fertilizer will prevent your leaves from turning yellow.  According to all the experts at Saturday’s seminar, you cannot over- fertilize your annuals.

For more great gardening tips and tricks you can check out the Proven Winners website. If you haven’t read it already, check out Cathy’s tips on growing Geraniums. And just in case you need a new container, Home Goods has some really nifty ones in store right now.

I would love to hear the secrets of your success with container gardening too. If you find a great new container for your garden at HG, be sure to post a picture (filled with bloom) for us at Customer Finds.