Potted plants plainly more than a pleasantry

Jill Severn

Photo by Anna Schlecht

JILL SEVERN'S GARDENING COLUMN

Dishing on dirt

Potted geraniums on a front porch are a pleasant greeting when you come home from work, and a visual treat for neighbors walking by.

But plants in pots are more than a pleasantry. For people who garden on decks, patios or balconies, and for those who have a hard time kneeling and bending, gardening in pots is a necessity.

It’s a happy necessity though, because plants in pots make artists of their owners. The choice of pots, the combination of plants, and the way they are grouped offer endless choices and a constant learning curve about color, composition, proportion, and cultural requirements.

Plants in pots can also perform what scientists call “ecosystem services.” A friend has two Northwest native ninebark shrubs planted in big pots on her deck that screen it from the street during all the months of the year when the deck is in use.

Another friend with an already large and glorious garden has a zillion pots on her deck and her patio, and waist-high planters along the east and south sides of her house. She has so many potted plants she’s had a watering system installed for them.

I used to be skeptical about plants in pots. One day downtown I saw planters on either side of a business entrance with baby western red cedars in them, and it made me sad. Those poor little cedars, I thought; they really wanted to grow up to be magnificent, enormous trees. Confinement to pots would spell their doom within a couple of years, if they survived that long. I briefly thought about starting an anti-pot Plant Liberation Movement.

Then I remembered bonsai, the art of purposely preventing plants from reaching their normal size by growing them in pots and pruning them to be miniature versions of themselves. To each her own, I said to myself. Maybe those cedars are somebody’s art project.

So just in case you’ve thought about the art of plants in pots, here are some basics:

1. With pots, size matters. Generally speaking, get bigger pots than you think you need, both because plants need plenty of room for their roots and because smaller pots tend to look like clutter unless they are grouped with some much larger ones. If you intend to grow big hungry plants like cucumbers or tomatoes, five-gallon pots are about right. My friend with the ninebark shrubs has even bigger ones, and so does a friend who has a pot-friendly Japanese maple on his deck. And a warning: it’s hard to find pots that aren’t crazy expensive, so if you can repurpose something to use as a pot, you get points for being both thrifty and clever.
2. Since big pots are hard to move, it’s best to put them on rollers if you can. And because they need to drain, they need pot feet to raise them a couple of inches off the ground.  You can sometimes find pot feet at a nursery, but if you can’t, there’s probably something in your garage, basement or recycling bin that would work.
3. Drainage is critical. Pots or pot substitutes must have holes in the bottom.
4. Don’t use garden soil alone; it packs down and sinks over time and your plants sink with it. Garden soil needs a generous addition of either vermiculite or perlite, which lighten the soil and absorb and hold moisture. You can find them in a garden department or nursery. Mixing one or the other with your own soil – if you have good, compost-enriched soil – is cheaper than buying potting mix. If you don’t have good soil, you really do need to buy potting mix. Before you buy fertilizer, you might want to read this: https://www.thejoltnews.com/stories/dishing-on-dirt,2248?

Auntie Google has endless advice about growing plants in pots, and YouTube does too. It’s entertaining to see how wildly various sites and videos contradict each other, but worth spending half an hour clicking around just to collect ideas. In no time at all, you’ll become a master of potted plants, and possibly the next YouTube star.

Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at jill@theJOLTnews.com