3 Reasons You Need a Nursery Bed No, I’m not talking about a crib. This nursery bed is a place to put plants that you will want to use later. Why later? Here are 3 good reasons: 1. Replace Worn Out Annuals If you usually swap out cool season annuals, like pansies and snapdragons, with heat lovers like zinnias and salvia, you don’t want to throw the pansies on the compost pile only to have to buy more in the fall. With a designated nursery bed, you can tuck them in an out of the way spot and not worry about what they look like or if they go dormant for the summer. You will still need to water them and watch for pests, but you can let them sleep through summer and move them back to containers or borders when they perk up in the fall. 2. Grow Plants that Have No Home, Yet By far the most useful aspect of a nursery bed for me has been housing plants that don’t yet have a permanant home. It’s much better than leaving them in pots along the drive or tucked behind the house. By moving them to the nursery I get to see when they bloom, what color they bloom and how they might be best paired with the plants already in my borders. This way I only have to move the once. (At least in theory.) Sometimes I’ll tuck plants in the nursery because they are just too small to go in the border. If I see a bargain plant in a small pot, I’ll scoop it up and let it beef up in the nursery, rather than be swallowed up by larger, established plants in the border. And I have to admit, sometimes I just don’t have time to clear a space in my garden to put new plants in. If you’re an impulse buyer, like me, you’ve probably picked up or been given plants and you know exactly where you want to place them, but something else is there and you don’t have time to move things around or you don’t know where to put the plant you are lifting out. Nursery beds take the stress out of shuffling plants about. They always have a home in there. I also use the nursery bed to hold potted divisions over the winter, for plant swaps in the spring. I sink the container and all, into the ground. They are protected, yet ready to go in the spring. I don’t even have to disturb their roots again. But the best bonus is that even if I go all season without moving the plant to a permanent spot, it’s in the ground and it will be just fine over the winter, unlike the pots that use to remain sitting along my driveway. 3. Start Seeds for Another Season. A nursery bed is the perfect place to start vegetable seeds for the fall or winter months. There is rarely any available real estate in the vegetable garden during the summer months. But in a nursery bed, you start your seeds in containers so that they are ready to when space opens up. If you start perennials from seed, they will need a season to grow before they will flower. You can grow them out of the way in the nursery bed and move them into the garden at the end of the season. They’ll be that much ahead when spring rolls around and ready to put on a show. Where to Put It This is the biggest challenge of having a nursery bed. You’re probably thinking, “If I had room, I wouldn’t need a nursery bed.”, but that’s usually not entirely true. Is there any space by your compost pile? You walk by there fairly often, so the plants wouldn’t die from neglect. A better idea is somewhere in the back of your vegetable garden or even a pathway in there that you can workaround. Or how about the back of your flower borders. Once your borders fill in, you probably can’t see back there anyway. If you really have no space to spare, at least consider a collection of containers on the patio. You could start seeds there or even cluster and protect pots over the winter. If you put them in attractive containers and mix in a few showy plants, no one will be the wiser.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 13:23:06 +0000
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