Summer Flowers

Image via WikipediaIf you want to plant the seeds of some easy summer flowers, plant them in late spring. The soil is warm, right for germination and the spring rain sets the seedlings growing. Some summer flowers which bloom annually are Zinnias, sunflowers, cosmos, petunias, bachelor buttons, balsam, alyssum, marigolds, vinca, poertuluca, lobelia.

If you want the summer flowers to bloom really well make sure that they get full sunshine for more than 6 hours in a day. For Southwest and desert climate zones, afternoon shade is recommended. After you have dug the soil for about six inches deep, turn it over with a shovel. This is when you are preparing the soil. Turn over the soil with a mixture of compost, some rotten manure and fertilizer, following the package advice. There is a pattern of planting the flower plants if there is a wall or fence at the back. Plant the tallest in front and the shortest right in front. This would help the taller plants to lean against the wall and would never be inclined to put the smaller plants in the shadow.

In case the flower bed is situated in the center of the yard, the pattern to be followed is the taller plants in the center followed by middle height plants. This should then be followed by the smaller plants which form the outermost ring. Put on your creative cap as you plant the flowers with a wild mixture of colors, much like what you see in meadows. You could also use some coordinated colors. Remember pastel shades look wonderful. Talking about colors, why not select two opposite and bright colors like red and blue? Fill in with lots of white or orange and purple with a lot of cream or white. Alternatively you could even various shades of blue and throw in a bit of yellow here and there.

Birds and bugs take away a lot of your seeds. So planting has to be done much closer (3 times in fact) to each other as the instruction booklet says. Water your seeds carefully. But before that cover the seeds as directed and put a later of mulch on to. Water your plants only when it is dry and not because it is a matter of routine. Your baby plants might die if there is excess water or even when there is too little water. Before spacing your plants, wait till they have shown at least 4 true leaves after sprouting. If you want to know the perfect distance which should be kept between the flowers, they are 6, 12 and 18 inches for shorter, medium and taller flowers.

Can you imagine the more you pluck them, the more they blossom and this is the most wonderful part about summer flowers. From the point of view of the plant, the purpose of flowering is to spread seeds. Soon upon completing this job, the plant would cease to bloom. When you pluck the flowers, the plant continues to bloom. You could easily make the plant bloom the second time when you cut down the flowers by half. Though the second bloom may not be as attractive as the first time, but the flowers are gorgeous still. Late spring is the right time to plant seeds for summer flowers, if you want a magnificent display throughout the summer months.