Add color to your landscape this month with the planting of summer flowers.
The best heat-tolerant annuals for desert gardeners include zinnia, portulaca, Madagascar periwinkle, celosia, red and blue salvia, dusty miller and cosmos. Some other choices for morning sun only are geranium, gomphrena, dahlias and red salvia.
Probably the best group of perennial flowers to plant in the Desert Southwest are penstemons. There are several native desert species that love the heat and grow well in our hard, rocky soil. All have flower spikes lined with bright, tubular flowers, set high above clusters of attractive foliage.
Penstemon eatonii (the Firecracker penstemon) has fiery scarlet-red flower spikes 3 feet high.
P. parryi (Parry's penstemon) has deep-pink flowers with spikes reaching 4 feet high. P. pseudospectabilis (the Canyon penstemon) has rose-pink to purple flowers on 2- to 3-foot flower spikes. And P. superbus (the Superb penstemon) has large, deep-red-to-scarlet flowers set on 4-foot spikes.
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All flower in the spring.
Before planting your flowers, prepare the bed by mixing in lots of organic matter. Compost, peat moss and aged manure are great sources of organic matter available in bags at local garden centers and nurseries. After planting, mulch the flower bed with shredded cedar mulch to conserve moisture and prevent weeds.
Plant potted flowers in a mix of four parts potting soil and one part perlite. Tease the roots on the outer edge of the root balls before planting. Daily watering is a must until the flowers become established, and then water them often enough to keep the soil evenly moist.
April is also a good time to plant warm-season vegetables, including tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cucumber, summer squash, melon and sweet corn.
Young tomatoes, peppers and eggplants are available at local garden centers. It's best to start other types of warm-season vegetables directly from seed planted out in the garden. These include cucumber, squash, melon and sweet corn.
To be successful, vegetables must be grown in soil improved by adding generous amounts of organic matter such as bagged compost, peat moss or composted manures. They also need to be watered uniformly and often — daily during hot weather. If you don't want to go to the trouble of preparing beds, most vegetables can be grown successfully in containers on the patio. The same potting-soil mix for flowers can be used to grow your vegetables.
It's time to fertilize both newly planted and existing potted patio plants. You can choose between water-soluble liquid fertilizers and granular timed-release fertilizers for potted plants.
Water-soluble fertilizers, such as Miracle Gro, Peters and Shultz, can be mixed with water and used weekly during the spring growth spurt. In the summer, apply these fertilizers every other week.
For a more convenient way to provide plant nutrients, try timed-release fertilizers. They feed plants over a set period, because each fertilizer bead is coated with a polymer that allows for a slow release of nutrients. Popular brands include Osmocote, Vigoro and Dynamite.
Topic: container plants
"Container Plants for Your Garden and Patio" will be the topic of this week's gardening demonstrations. Presentations will be at 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Wilmot Library, 530 N. Wilmot Road; and 1 p.m. Friday at the Oro Valley Public Library, 1305 W. Naranja Drive.