Tag Archives: garden planning

Annual Flowers that Bloom All Season + Tips for Continuous Blooms

March 26, 2025 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Annuals may only last one season, but they are an easy way to add tons of color to the garden. They are easy to grow, affordably started from seed, and are great for filling in gaps in a perennial bed or attracting pollinators to vegetable gardens. These annual flowers also offer the advantage of continuous blooms. With a bit of maintenance, you and the pollinators can enjoy them until they’re killed by frost.

Black Ball Bachelor’s Button in bloom — Black Ball Bachelor’s Button

Bachelor’s Buttons

Bachelor’s buttons are easy to grow from seed. They’re a hardy, low-maintenance option, which is why they’re often included in “wildflower” mixes. Bachelor’s buttons also make wonderful cut flowers for fresh or dried arrangements. Plus, they’re also edible and make adorable natural decorations for baked goods.

We carry three varieties of bachelor’s button:

Black Ball (maroon-black flowers)
Blue Boy (deep blue flowers)
Polka Dot Mix (mixture of red, rose, blue, and lavender flowers)

Bachelor’s buttons thrive in well-drained soil in full sun. It will tolerate partial shade but may not bloom as well. Bachelor’s buttons are also tolerant of poor soils.

Celosia

Celosia is a good flower for beginners that makes excellent borders or cut flowers. It blooms throughout summer and fall and offers a wide selection of bright colors. Celosia has unusual flower shapes that add fun texture to fresh and dried arrangements.

The variety we carry, Tall Menagerie Mix, that includes mostly “cockscomb” or “coral” type blooms with some spikes. Menagerie Mix produces sturdy, heat-resistant 3 to 4½ foot tall plants.

Celosia thrives in well-drained, moderately fertile soil in full sun.

Cosmos

Cosmos offer some of the biggest bang for your buck. They’re super easy to grow from seed and provide tons of colorful blossoms over a long season. Their large flowers look stunning on their light, feathery foliage.

Cosmos are also great for attracting butterflies and come in a range of colors like white, pink, magenta, orange, and yellow. We carry six cosmo varieties.

Cosmos grow well in full sun in well-drained, average soil.

Marigolds

Marigolds are the classic companion plants for vegetable gardens. Their bright blooms attract beneficial insects all summer long. There’s some evidence that they deter pests. One study found that a particular variety we carry, Golden Guardian, reduces the presence of nematodes more effectively than chemical insecticides.

We carry nine marigold varieties in a range of patterns and colors, including yellow, orange, golden, red, and red-purple.

Marigolds thrive in moist, well-drained soil where they receive full sun.

Petunias

Petunias are incredibly popular though most people only find the over-priced containers of petunias at big box stores. Thankfully, petunias are easy to grow from seed in the garden or containers. Homegrown petunias will offer blooms over a much longer season and are more affordable.

We carry two petunia varieties and both will bloom until frost.

Petunias like full sun and moist, well-drained soil.

Zinnias

Zinnias are among the easiest flowers to grow and offer a near rainbow of colors. They bloom from early summer until frost, especially with a little care. They also make excellent cut flowers and cutting theoccasional bouquet will encourage them to branch out and create more blooms.

We offer nine zinnia varieties with a range of shapes, sizes, and colors, including white, light pink, magenta, red, yellow, and light purple.

Zinnias thrive and offer the most blooms in well-drained soil and full sun.

Tips for Continuous Blooms

Here are a few tips to keep your garden blooming until frost.

Space your plants appropriately. Adequate space and airflow makes for healthy plants that will bloom over a longer period. Zinnias in particular are susceptible to Downey mildew. Providing good air circulation is key to reducing the risk of mildew and other fungal diseases.
Follow sunlight requirements. Unfortunately, all of these plants bloom best in full sun. If you don’t have a garden bed that receives plenty of sunlight, you can grow many of these like marigolds, petunias, and zinnias in containers on a sunny patio, balcony, or even window box.
Add compost to the bed. Flowers aren’t heavy feeders, but they benefit from moderately fertile soil. Adding finished compost is a great way to ensure you provide nutrient-rich soil without over-fertilizing.
Water consistently. These annual flowers are fairly tolerant, but for the best blooms, they’ll likely benefit from some watering, particularly during dry spells.
Regularly deadhead your flowers. Most annual flower benefits from deadheading every one to two weeks. When you deadhead flowers like zinnias, cosmos, and marigolds it encourages them to keep blooming to try to produce seed. If you want to save seed, let some blooms go to seed at the end of summer.

Garden Advice

Crop Rotation by Plant Family

December 31, 2024 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Crop rotation is an essential tool in the organic gardener’s tool box. It’s an excellent way to reduce pest and disease pressure without resorting to pesticides, fungicides, or other chemical amendments. There are many methods of crop rotation but we prefer to rotate crops on a 2 to 4-year plan by plant family. This is a simple method for small gardeners and market growers alike, whether you’re working with flowers, herbs, or vegetables.

What is Crop Rotation?

Crop rotation is a system of gardening organization and planting that ensures you don’t grow specific types of plants in the same bed for multiple years in a row. Some farmers like to rotate by nutritional needs (ex. Heavy feeders, light feeders, and givers), but we prefer to rotate by family (related groups of plants).

For a large commercial garden or home vegetable garden, we encourage growers to rotate on a four-year plan, meaning that you don’t grow a type of crop in the same bed for four years.

If this isn’t feasible, do what you’re able. A two or three-year rotation is better than none!

Keeping track of your rotation each year is essential. Keep a garden journal (graph paper is helpful for sketching beds) or a garden planner app.

Benefits of Crop Rotation

Why can’t you just keep planting crops in the same spot? When we plant the same crop in a bed year after year, it uses the same nutrients and encourages disease and pests to build up in the soil.

Crop rotation can eliminate these issues and make your garden healthier. It may:

Reduce the risk of pests and diseases.
Improve soil health and fertility.
Reduce the need for chemical amendments.
Increase yields.
Improve soil carbon sequestration.

There’s even some new evidence that crop rotation may help reduce risks of crop loss in a changing climate.

What are the Different Plant Families?

Most of the common vegetable crops and even some flowers and herbs fall into a few larger plant families. Prevalent pest and disease issues often affect specific families.

For example, some cucurbits like pumpkins, winter squash, and summer squash are all affected by vine borers, blight is a common fungal disease in the nightshades like tomatoes and potatoes, and many of the brassicas like broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage are prone to cabbage worm issues.

Rotation often helps prevent theses issues. For example, garlic rust is most prevalent in garlic, but it can also infect onions and leeks when they’re planted closely or in an infected bed.

Here are the basic crop families:

**The Nightshades (Solanaceae spp.)**

Tomatoes
Tomatillos
Ground Cherries
Peppers
Eggplants
Potatoes
Tobacco
Garden Huckleberry
Petunias

**The Pea Family (Fabaceae spp.)**

Pole beans
Bush beans
Asparagus beans
Fava beans
Soybeans (edamame)
Peas
Sweet Peas
Cowpeas

**The Beet Family (Chenopodiaceae spp. or Amaranthaceae spp.)**

Beets
Quinoa
Swiss Chard
Spinach
Amaranth

**The Cucurbits (Curcurbitaceae spp.)**

Cucumbers
Zucchini
Summer Squash
Winter Squash
Pumpkins
Gourds
Watermelon
Melons

**The Brassicas (Brassicaceae spp.)**

Cabbage
Collards
Brussels sprouts
Kale
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Radishes
Kohlrabi
Mustards
Asian greens (bok choy)
Turnips
Arugula

**The Carrot Family (Apiaceae spp.)**

Carrots
Dara
Celery
Fennel
Cilantro
Parsley
Parsnips
Dill

The Alliums (Alliacaeae)

Bulb Onions
Garlic
Leeks
Perennial Onions
Shallots
Chives

**The Daisy Family (Asteraceae spp.)**

Sunflowers
Lettuce
Endive
Radicchio
Asters

How to Crops Rotate by Family

There isn’t a one-size fits all formula for every garden. Just keep moving crops. For example, if you grow tomatoes (a nightshade) in a bed one year, you could grow broccoli (a brassica) the following year, then bulb onions (alliums), and then finally bush beans (pea family), before growing another nightshade, like peppers.

Other Considerations

Rotating by family is the basic way to get the job done, but there are some other techniques you may also want to include.

Fertility Requirements

As you plan your rotation, you may want to consider the fertility requirements of different plant families. Many growers choose to rotate crops through a bed, starting with high fertility needs to low fertility needs. Often, they will rest the bed for a year or put it in a cover crop in between cycles.

Heavy feeders are vegetables that need a good bit of nitrogen to thrive, like tomatoes, sweet corn, and broccoli. Light feeders like garlic, parsnips, and Swiss chard need less nitrogen to thrive. Givers or fixers are the last category. These are the nitrogen-fixing members of the pea family. They rarely need much supplemental nitrogen as they can convert atmospheric nitrogen into its usable form.

You can also take this a step further with cover crops.

Adding Cover Crops to Your Rotation

Adding cover crops to your rotation can also make a tremendous difference in the health of your soil and productivity of your garden. In large gardens, you may decide to leave beds or sections in a cover crop for an entire year to rest the soil.

In smaller gardens, this may not be possible. Don’t fret, you can use the off-seasons and “in-between times” for cover crops.

Winter cover crops are a great way to improve soil health during the slow season. You can also plant a cover crop as soon as a crop is finished. For example, if you grow a bed of early cabbages, you can sow the bed in a cover crop like buckwheat during the summer. In late summer or fall, cut the buckwheat and use the bed for a fall crop.

Crop rotation is a simple way to improve the health of your soil and garden. As your planning next season’s garden, think about incorporating crop rotation by family for a more productive year.

Garden Advice

6 Tips for Planting a Fall Garden in Hot Weather

August 8, 2024 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been preparing beds and sowing many of our fall crops, such as lettuce, radishes, and cabbages, here at Southern Exposure. Unfortunately, temperatures in our zone 7a and gardens farther south rarely cooperate. The 90°+ days we’ve been experiencing are far from ideal for these cool-season plants. Unfortunately, we can’t always wait until the temperatures start to dip. We need these plants to mature before cold temperatures and the dwindling light of late fall and winter set in. That’s why this week, we’re sharing our favorite tips to help you start your fall garden in hot weather.

Use Your Refrigerator or Other Cool Spaces

One of the biggest struggles with high temperatures is getting sensitive seeds like lettuce to germinate. Most lettuce germinates best around 75°F but will germinate at temperatures as low as 40°F. Rather than direct sow them or sow them in flats outdoors, we start our fall lettuces indoors and place the flats into the refrigerator for 4 to 6 days. If you don’t have space in your fridge, you could try another area that stays cool, like a root cellar. Just keep an eye on them; they need light once they germinate!

Keep Soil Cool and Moist with Boards, Burlap, or Cardboard

While our previous method works well for crops like lettuce or broccoli sown in flats, some crops like carrots don’t thrive as transplants. For these crops, we direct seed them into moist soil and then immediately cover the soil with boards, thick cardboard, or burlap. This ensures the soil stays cool and moist while the seeds germinate. However, you must check them and remove the covering as soon as they germinate. They’ll be leggy, pale, and weak if left covered too long.

Use Row Cover

We use row cover at Southern Exposure during every season, but in August, it’s handy for providing cool-season crops with some relief from the heat. Light row cover or shade cloth offers some protection from the sun’s harsh rays, keeping your plants and the soil they’re growing in cooler. It also keeps insects off young plants.

Select Appropriate Varieties for the Fall Garden

Some varieties do better in this season than others. You’ll notice that many crops that are good for the fall garden, say so in their name. Some of our favorites like this include Black Spanish Round Fall Radish, Snowball Y Fall Cauliflower, and Winter Bloomsdale Spinach. However, for some, you’ll need to dig through the description. For those in the Deep South, it can be helpful to look for heat-resistant crops like Jericho Romaine Lettuce this time of year.

Find Your Exact Sowing Window

Depending on your zone, you may also be able to wait until later to plant certain crops. We recommend using our garden planner or a similar app for exact planting windows for your zip code.

You can also do things the old-fashioned way. To calculate your last possible sowing date, you must find your estimated first frost date and your variety’s estimated days to maturity.

If you’re direct sowing a crop, add 14 days to the days to maturity; if you’re transplanting, add 14 to 28 days. Take this number and count backward from your first frost date to get your last possible sowing date, ensuring your crop reaches maturity before frost.

Note that many crops will tolerate light frosts or can be protected with row cover or a hoop house. However, even in hoop houses that are kept warm, production dwindles in the fall as the days get shorter and shorter.

Maintenance is Essential for the Fall Garden

Maintenance is crucial during hot weather, which can stress plants. Keep up with consistent watering and weeding. Place mulch around plants as soon as possible to keep the soil cool and moist and to suppress weeds. You can use wood chips, straw, grass clippings, or old leaves.

Getting started on a fall garden can be challenging when temperatures are still high, but getting crops in on time is essential. Using these tried and true methods can help you succeed with a fall garden, no matter what the weather looks like outside.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange