The middle of summer is a great time to take advantage of bargains. Nurseries and garden centers mark down plants to get rid of excess inventory and to make room for fall deliveries. If you shop around, chances are you may find some good plants at significant discounts.
But the middle of summer may not seem like such a great time to buy plants, because ensuring a successful planting can be difficult. "I usually discourage gardeners from planting in the middle of summer, especially where summers are especially brutal," says master gardener Paul James. "But there's one very compelling reason for buying them this time of year: they're usually on sale."
Here's how to treat the plants you bring home:
Method 1: A temporary staging area
- Put the plants--still in their containers--in a "staging" area which offers mostly shade. The ideal location is a spot that gets no more than one or two hours of morning sun or that receives dappled light throughout the day, even if your plant is a sun-loving plant such as coreopsis.
- Pull back the mulch in the bed, lightly scrape the soil, place the container on the ground, then pile the mulch up and around the container. Water the plant and surrounding mulch well.
- Under these conditions, the plant should do just fine for several weeks or until temperatures moderate enough to allow for permanent planting in a sunny spot. Just make sure that you water it routinely, but don't allow the soil to remain soggy or you'll wind up with root rot. When it's time to move the plant, chances are that tender roots will have grow into the surrounding soil, so take care not to damage them.
Method 2: Pot-in-a-Pot Technique
- Find a clay pot that's at least two inches wider in diameter than the container the plant is growing in, and add a few inches of soil to the bottom of the pot.
- Place the containered plant in the pot and fill the space remaining with more soil, up to within an inch of the top of the pot.
- Place the pot in a shady spot--ideally, close to a hose so that the pot gets watered on a regular basis.
- Within six weeks or so, you can safely remove the plant both from the pot and its container, and plant in a normal spot.
Method 3: Nursery bed
Create a nursery bed to serve as a temporary homes for plants you haven't decided where to plant. Find a spot that offers a substantial amount of shade. James has filled such a bed with coarse, homemade compost, which is perfect for temporarily storing plants in their containers.
- Simply prepare a hole large enough to accommodate each plant, place the container in the hole, and tuck the compost around the sides as well as up and over the top of each container.
- Water regularly--every day or every other day as needed.
- These plants too will likely grow roots through the bottom of their containers and into the surrounding compost, so when it's time to plant them, remove them from the containers carefully.
"Given the high heat and drought here lately, if I had put these plants directly into the ground, the odds of their surviving wouldn't have been very good," says Paul James. "But by placing them in various protected spots and by giving them plenty of attention and TLC, they'll be fine when it comes time to plant them this fall."
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