Ottawa Horticultural Society

http://www.ottawahort.org

Flower Towers

Yearbook 2000 page 43

By: Ken Gullins Back to the web version

Its easy to make these colourful towers of annuals to add accents to your patio or garden. Use Impatiens or Begonias for that shady spot that needs a little something extra. Choose your favourite colour and make several towers for a group effect. Construct and plant the towers as soon as danger of frost is past, allow a few weeks for them to fill in, and youll have bright, colourful towers right through 'till frost.

<-- towers look wonderful right up 'till first frost .. then they look like this .. but you get the general idea

Materials for 1 tower:

1 large flower pot
2 tomato cages (or similar stacking wire towers)
2 or 3 large green garbage bags (or similar dark-coloured,heavy plastic)
1 large, 3 cu ft, bag of soilless mix (eg Loblaws SuperSoil)
approx 30 Impatiens, Fibrous Begonia or similar annual bedding plants using more smaller plants seems to work better than using fewer larger ones since they spread and fill in better
tools; small sharp knife, wire-cutting pliers, duct tape

Steps:

cut the bottom wires off both tomato cages just below thelast ring
wrap the garbage bags around the outside of one cage .. overlapand tape with duct tape to get complete coverage
slide the second cage over top of the first, offsetting verticalbars for maximum strength
fill flower pot to brim with garden soil, sand, soillessmix, or any fill you have handy plants will not be growing in this soil and pack firmly
place the big end of the cage unit on top of the soil inthe pot and centre it
plan where you want to locate the 30 plants around the cageeg in 4 offset rings of, say, 8, 7, 6, 6 with 3 in the open top
put a bit of soilless mix in the cage up to your first rowof plants
cut small inverted Ts in the plastic with the knife andpush the root ball of each plant through the hole setting it into the soillessmix on the inside
add soilless mix up to where you want to start the secondring of plants and repeat as above until the cage is fully planted
water well from the top and youre done!

Water periodically, and rotate ¼ turn every week or so to even out the growth. For larger cages or full sun locations where lots of watering is required, a perforated 1 to 2 inch pipe may be added to the centre ofthe cage before filling. This method might also be suitable for growing some types of vegetables if your space is very limited.

Ken Gullins

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