Guide for annual flowers
Introduction
Annual flowers are showy and charming, and their life cycle spans a long season. Their seeds germinate, grow, flower, seed themselves and die back over the course of the year. They will do your garden a lot of good by keeping it populated and incredibly colourful. These flowers come in different colours, sizes and shapes. Best of all, you can place them on patios and terraces and enjoy them throughout the seasons.
Planting annual flowers is a very simple task. It all depends on your patience, perseverance and attention to get a spectacular garden that will enliven your home!
How to sow?
Planting flowers is quite easy, it just requires patience and attention and you can get good results by following these four simple steps:
Step 1:Finding the right place
You need to choose the place where the pot with your flowers will be placed. It should be a place with a lot of direct sunlight, because shade makes it difficult for these plants to grow.
Step 2 : The soil
To plant your annual flowers, you need good soil, because they need it to grow big and strong.
Step 3: Planting
Dig a hole 2.5 to 5 cm deep and place the seeds in it. You do not need to cover the seeds with soil, so you do not need to bury them deep.
Step 4: Care after sowing
You should water your plants immediately after sowing and then daily until they are established.
When to sow?
Annual flowers are ideal when sown in spring to flower in summer and autumn. In warmer regions they can be sown in autumn to flower in the spring of the following year. Avoid planting in winter or frost, as this poses a risk to the plants.
Care
Annual flowers do not need much care, they can be quite healthy and beautiful with very little care. This can be very simple, but necessary. The flowers will smell and bloom much longer if they are properly watered, fertilised and pruned.
Irrigation
Like all plants, they first need water to grow and flower properly. If your plant is thirsty, it will not look beautiful. This type of annual plant needs plenty of watering for two important reasons:
- Their roots are shallow and have little ability to forage for water.
- They are grown mainly for their flowers and a flowering plant needs a lot of water.
They need frequent and deep watering, especially during the flowering and growing phase. Ample watering means that the soil must be constantly moist. If your plant suffers from a lack of water, it will get into a stress situation. The ideal time to water your plants is in the afternoon or evening during a light rain shower.
Fertilisation
Fertilising your plants is important to keep them in top shape. When the plant's vitamins and nutrients are depleted, it is time to fertilise it, otherwise the plant will no longer be able to feed itself. We recommend that you fertilise your flowers when the plant is in the growth phase to give it strength and health. When it is in the flowering phase, it will be very healthy if fertilised correctly. It is enough to fertilise the soil when you plant it.
Tighten
The main reason for pinching is so that your plant does not waste its energy on seed formation and produces many more new flowers. It consists of lightly pruning the shoot tips to provoke the development of stems and get a more branched plant. You can do the pinching with a sweeping motion, cutting the end of a flexible stem between the nails of your thumb and forefinger.
Flowering is delayed with each pinch, so if you do more than two pinches in a row it may take a while to enjoy your flowers, but once they have formed they will be much more profuse and produce more consistently throughout the season.
Diseases
There are a variety of diseases that can attack your plant and they can be extremely harmful. It is necessary to avoid all possible attacks from pests such as: Insects, mites, slugs or diseases such as: Fungi, bacteria or viruses, so that you can give your flowers the necessary treatment. From these symptoms you can successfully identify if your plant is affected by a disease or a virus:
- Eaten or curled leaves.
- Change in the colour of the leaves.
- White powder on the leaves and stems.
- White insects on the leaves of the plants.
- Spider webs.