Production
Proper planting is essential for healthy, vigorous growth of flowers and ornamentals. Provide a favorable environment for the developing root systems and you’re assured of rapid plant establishment.
In this section, you’ll find information on choosing, planting, and maintaining ornamentals and floriculture. Find tips on pruning, diagnosing plant health, plant life cycles, container gardening, repotting, and fertilizing.
How to Plant Flowers and Ornamentals
There’s a lot more involved in planting ornamentals and flowers than simply digging a hole and sticking a plant in it. You must give careful consideration to several factors, such as preparation of the planting site, the time of year and environment for best plant establishment, handling requirements of different nursery stock, proper planting techniques, and how to maintain the plants you’ve planted.
For greenhouse operators, timing product supply and quality with peak customer demand is another consideration. Growing plants from seeds is a relatively inexpensive way to produce garden plants. In Pennsylvania, you can sow most annual seeds outdoors after the last frost date.
Planting flowers and ornamentals in the right location is crucial if you want them to survive and flourish. Here are some examples of plants that thrive in certain conditions:
- Shade to part shade/dry to moist soil: American filbert, mountain laurel, blue wood, and white wood aster
- Sun to part sun/wet to moist soil: Red and sugar maple, American holly, red and black chokeberry, silky, gray, and red osier dogwood
- Sun to part sun/dry to moist soil: Mockernut hickory, cockspur hawthorn, eastern red cedar, bush honeysuckle, and oakleaf hydrangea
How to Grow and Maintain Flowers
Whether you’re a home gardener, cut flower producer, or greenhouse grower, a certain amount of basic care is required if you want to keep your flowers growing and in the best of health. Different flowering plants have different requirements.
Care and maintenance of perennials include lifting and dividing every three to four years. Some perennials benefit from being cut down in the fall. Leave others standing for the benefit of insects and birds, and to provide additional interest in the winter.
Mulching and watering are both necessary for the growth of flowers and ornamentals. You can improve the fertility of the soil and manage pests by rotating plants based on plant families.
Deadheading also plays an important role in promoting new growth and reflowering. The best time to deadhead a flower is when its appearance begins to decline.
The successful production of nursery and greenhouse crops depends on the quality of the water you use to water your plants. Ideally, water should be balanced in pH and alkalinity, and low in suspended solids and dissolved minerals. A steady supply of good quality water can be difficult when growing a container garden. The solution is a home container irrigation system.
Pests such as insects, mites, and diseases can seriously affect the health of your flowers. Being able to recognize the symptoms and signs of plant health problems is crucial. If you can identify and diagnose plant health problems you’ll be able to solve an issue before you lose the plant. Being able to scout for fungus and bacteria means you can manage diseases once you’ve identified them.
Dividing, Pruning, and Training Perennial Flowers and Ornamentals
To keep a garden looking its best requires a certain amount of maintenance. Dividing, pruning, and training all have a crucial role to play.
Knowing how and when to prune is important for plants’ best performance. Ornamental plants require careful pruning to maintain healthy and vigorous growth. Deadheading, disbudding, pinching back, heading back, cutting back, and thinning are things you can do to encourage your herbaceous plants to bloom for longer periods. The schedule for pruning flowering shrubs depends on when they flower. For ornamental trees and shrubs, it depends on the plant's seasonal cycle.
By dividing perennials you can control the size of the plant, rejuvenate plant growth, and increase their number. Use a trellis when training perennial flowers and ornamentals because it keeps them off the ground, increases usable space, promotes healthy growth, and reduces the incidence and spread of diseases.
Landscaping with Ornamentals and Flowers
There are several reasons why you should include ornamentals and flowers in your landscaping plans, whatever your rain garden zone. The biggest advantage is that they look good, but there are lots of other reasons why you should plant ornamentals and flowers.
Pollinators in particular love them. There are plenty of other beneficial insects you can attract into your garden with the right type of flowers. Butterflies not only pollinate flowering plants, they also serve as food for other organisms and are an important link in the food chain. Carnivorous plants can be a link in the food chain too. Hedgerows and woody plants such as trees, shrubs, and vines can provide excellent wildlife habitat.
A wide variety of herbs and flowers can be used to create an edible landscape. If you’ve got children, a great way to get them involved is to help them create a miniature garden. You can also use gardening and natural landscaping practices that harmonize with nature to help change the face of residential landscapes.
- Workshops
Western Pennsylvania Fall Greenhouse Meeting
Length 7 hoursLearn strategies for managing pests, optimizing water quality, and improving crop performance at this all-day greenhouse event. - Articles
Scheduling Disease Control In Woody Ornamentals
The scheduling of effective disease management measures is not a simple task nor can it be standardized. - Articles
Over-Fertilization of Potted Plants
Over-fertilization of commercial pot or container-grown crops results in high concentrations of soluble salts in the potting medium. - Articles
Disinfecting Tools, Equipment, Pots, Flats and Benches
Disinfectants are chemicals that kill or inactivate pathogens before plant infection occurs. Disinfectants are used to decontaminate equipment surfaces or plant surfaces. This article addresses the disinfectation of equipment. - Articles
Dahlia Diseases
Informational table showing disease name, symptoms, pathogen/cause, and management of Dahlia diseases. - Articles
Diagnosing Poor Plant Health
Many things make plants unwell and pests and diseases are only two causes of poor plant growth. - Articles
Azalea and Rhododendron Diseases
Informational table showing disease name, symptoms, pathogen/cause, and management of Azalea and Rhododendron diseases. - Articles
Extending the Garden Season with High Tunnels
High tunnels offer plants protection from wet, saturated soils and low temperatures in the spring and fall, thereby extending the gardening season. - Articles
Extendiendo la Temporada Productiva con Túneles Altos
Los túneles altos ofrecen protección a las plantas de tierras saturadas de humedad y temperaturas bajas en la primavera y el otoño con lo cual se extiende la temporada productiva. - Articles
Pruning Herbaceous Plants
A certain amount of maintenance is needed to keep a garden looking its best. This minimal effort may mean the difference between a garden that is mediocre and one that evokes many compliments. - Articles
Supporting Herbaceous Plants in a Flower Garden
Some plant varieties are compact with strong stems and do not require support to hold them upright, however, plants with heavy flowers or tall stems will require some assistance. - Articles
Repotting Houseplants
As your houseplant grows larger and the roots either begin to grow through the drainage holes or become pot bound, repotting the plant into a larger pot will become necessary. - Articles
Plant Life Cycles
Plants are classified by the number of growing seasons required to complete their life cycle. Generally, these groups are annuals, biennials, and perennials. - Articles
Information on Seed Packets
When considering starting your plants from seed, it is useful to know what information is found on the seed packet. - Articles
Ten Easy Steps to Improve Greenhouse Efficiency
Winter low temperatures and high energy prices have greenhouse operators across the state looking for ways to manage heating and power costs. - Webinars
Free
Adding Lavender to Your Farm
When Watch NowLength 1 hourRecorded Feb 21, 2023Event Format On-Demand | RecordedLearn about lavender production, marketing, and more. We will also cover different agritourism activities that can be associated with your farm’s lavender production. - Articles
Elevated Sodium in Irrigation Water and Crop Injury
Elevated sodium and chloride levels are being observed more frequently in private water supplies in rural areas. - Articles
Ethephon (Florel) Usage on Mums
Today's modern garden mum growers are benefitting greatly from improved genetics and the use of ethephon as a plant growth regulator. -
Keeping It Green: A Podcast from Penn State Extension
Join our weekly podcast in which educators talk with ornamental plant professionals and enthusiasts who add beauty and function to our landscapes. Topics will range from design, installation and maintenance, plant selection, pests, and other current horticulture topics. - Articles
Fuchsias Then and Now
Fuchsias are typically sold in hanging baskets, but are also produced as standards. - Articles
Pruning Flowering Shrubs
The correct time to prune your flowering shrubs depends on when they flower. - Articles
Tissue Culture Finishing for Greenhouse Growers: Stage III-Stage IV
In the past 25 years great development has occurred in tissue culture plant production for horticulture. - Articles
Greenhouse Production
Greenhouse production may be year-round and can provide valuable cash flow throughout the year. - Articles
The Art of Container Gardening
Constructing a container garden isn't about doing everything perfectly. In fact, there is no right way to create a container garden. - Videos
Tissue Culture Finishing
Length 8:54This video covers the basic needs for successful handling of tissue cultured plantlets to establish them in greenhouse and nursery production systems.