Impatiens Grow And Care Tips
How To Grow Impatiens Plants – Busy Lilies The Shade Lovers
If you are looking for some eye-catching colours in your shade gardens, then you need to invest in the Impatiens annuals. These colourful flowers, bloom plentifully to brighten and cheer up the dark and shady gardens all season. They are very easy to grow and they are a type of balsam. These annual flowering plants belong to the Impatiens Genus and belong to the Balsaminaceae family. The Impatiens Walleriana is the most popular among the Impatiens and one of the common names of this plant is busy lilies. I know for a fact that these plants are top draw plants, an excellent option to be grown as bedding plants or as border plants and they can also be grown in containers, you can select regular single varieties or double impatiens for the shaded parts of your garden.
Description of Impatiens
Most of the varieties of Impatiens are annuals and they will grow fast to produce flowers from early summer until the first frost. This means these plants will flower all around the year. The Impatiens can grow to a height of 2 metres. But, most of them grow less than half this size and the typical size of an Impatiens is just more than one foot. They flower in a wide variety of colours and some of the attractive colours are pink, violet, lavender, purple, red, white, coral, etc. The long lasting flowers are 2 to 3 cm in width and one inch long. The leaves are shiny, entire and green in colour. The upper side of the leaves is thick and has water repelling cuticle and the leaves look greasy and shiny. There are tiny air-bubbles trapped on the underside of the leaves that give the leaf a silvery shine.
Impatiens do have many new bicoloured selections on the market for you, including
New Guinea Impatiens Bicolour is one, it’s a compact series which has superior bicolours and larger vibrant flowers of orange and white, cerise, maroon and magenta, some with bronze foliage are new to the impatiens world.
Planting Impatiens
The Impatiens is normally bought as rooted plants in punnets from nurseries. These plants can also be propagated from cuttings and seeds. It is important to keep the Impatiens Plant well watered till you transplant it to the pot or ground. It can wilt away soon if it does not get the necessary water. These flowering annuals love well-draining soil but do not like to be kept in full sun. They will tolerate partial shade, but deeply enjoy and love to be grown in deep shade conditions.
- The Impatiens Plants can be planted in the garden after the frost or harsh winter conditions are gone.
- All you need to do is to remove the plant from the pot and if you see any excess root to be growing out the soil, then just cut it off.
- Dig a hole, deep enough to hold the root ball of the Impatiens Plant either in the soil or the pot. Add organic compost or manure into the soil while planting.
- Once you place the plant in the hole, you should fill the hole with soil and then ensure that the plant is fixed firmly in the soil. Now water the plant.
- You can plant Impatiens Plants close to each other. It is better to keep a distance of about 12 to 15 inches between the plants.
Caring for Impatiens
Once the new plant is placed in the pot or the ground, keep up the annual care it needs, to be watered regularly. You should see flowers blooming on a regular basis if the Impatiens are fed with the top selling organic seaweed fertiliser regularly. There is no need to deadhead these plants to clean up withered blooms. The spent blooms are self-cleaned. Make sure that the soil is kept moist at all times, but do not keep it too wet.
