02 April . 2019
Guide to Florida Annuals
“To Plant Flowers Is To Believe In Tomorrow.”
It’s very exciting to see all of the fresh flowers throughout our beautiful Bexley community. Spring is a great time to freshen up your lawns with color. Check out the following tips to help make your lawn pop!
#1: How long do Annuals last in Florida?
Usually just one season………not one year, they must be planted at the right time.
#2: Some of the best flowers and plants for full sun in Florida:
Blanket Flower- Florida native and drought resistant. It is a cool season, slender, short-lived perennial, with fuzzy light green leaves. Its flowers are typically bright red with yellow tips
Firebrush- The name says it all! The plant shows colors that would make any blaze proud. Honeybees can't reach all the way down into a firebush bloom so they feed in the split made by another bee at the base of the bloom.
Saw Palmetto- It grows wild in Florida's natural areas, but it's also a useful plant for home landscapes. It is a small palm, growing to a maximum height around 7–10 ft.
Seagrape- It is a native plant found in coastal areas of Central and South Florida. Its bold, evergreen foliage and colorful fruit also make it a fun choice for home gardens. The fruits of the sea grape may be eaten raw, cooked into jellies and jams, or fermented into sea grape wine.
#3: Easily maintained annual flowers to plant in Florida are:
Pentas – They are a low maintenance plant. Imagine flocks of colorful butterflies and hummingbirds visiting your garden all summer long! That's what you'll get when you add pentas.
Evoluulus or Blue Daze – They are gorgeous bright blue flowers amid attractive gray foliage, perfect for sunny spots. Makes a great ground cover or container plant!
Beautyberry- It is an easy-care plant known for its bright fuschia-purple berry clusters during the cooler months of the year.
Spiderwort- It is a clump-forming, upright perennial that's native to Florida. It blooms in spring with one-inch flowers that have three petals and come in either white, pink, blue, or violet.
Flowering annual plants have a life cycle that lasts only one growing season. In Florida, we can have flowers twelve months of the year, and annuals are an easy way to add color to the landscape. Annuals are typically split into two categories—warm season and cool season.
In containers they add a splash of color to a deck, porch, or patio. In beds and as borders they provide bright accents. Limit your selection to as few kinds as possible to prevent visual confusion.
Success with annuals depends largely on adequate preparation of the planting bed. Clear a section of your landscape for the bed, removing grass and weeds. A few weeks before planting, till at least six inches down, to loosen and aerate the soil, and add organic materials like compost to enrich and add moisture. Thoroughly mix organic materials like compost or composted animal manure to help the soil retain nutrients and moisture that plants need.
Flower beds should be fertilized prior to planting or at planting time, with a controlled-release, complete fertilizer. Most of these products last for months, so you shouldn’t have to fertilize very often.
Before planting, make sure you gently loosen and spread the roots of your annuals. After planting, add mulch to beds to keep weeds down, and water regularly. A border around the bed will help keep grass from invading.
Keep in mind that annuals require some maintenance such as weeding and removing spent flowers (also called "deadheading"), and applications of water and fertilizer.
Be sure to check out additional gardening tips for Florida annuals to learn more.
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