My Window Boxes: I Must Be Doing Something Right!

We will have lived in our house for four years this August. Coming from apartment dwelling, I didn’t know the first thing about maintaining a garden. Luckily I have two great resources – my Mom and my Mother-in-Law who are both avid gardeners. Much of our first summers here were spent asking “is this a weed?” because they are incredibly clever! If only the actual flowers were as genius as the weeds that mimic them.

Last summer, we started to take more risks with our gardens after completely digging two of them up to repair a parging problem that turned out to be much bigger than it looked.  After adding our own flower and shrub choices, it started to feel more like our garden instead of whatever the previous owners had thrown together.

In addition to multiple gardens, our house originally had 7 wrought iron window box frames mounted on the concrete sills. For the first two summers I filled them all up with an assortment of annuals that were on clearance, paying little attention to their sunlight and/or watering needs. It only took one year to learn that me and Lobelia do not get along!

Last year we took down the window boxes across the front of the house because they made it look too cluttered.  The two remaining window boxes sit underneath the garage and guest room windows. In June 2011 they looked like this:

(This would be the year that I discovered my go-to combination of chartreuse green sweet potato vine and purple heart)

I love the look of dark purple flowers against our red brick.

For my 2011 planters, I used store-bought liners from Canadian Tire. They weren’t a perfect fit, but they did the job. However, as the summer went on, squirrels started to dig in the soil and pull pieces of the coconut liner out at the ends. They looked really pathetic by the fall!

I ran into a problem when I was getting ready to plant this year’s window boxes. I could not find any liners to fit a 30 inch window box. The 24 inch liners were too small (obviously) and the others I found were way too big.

What did I do?  I had to get creative!

I bought a 2 meter long piece of replacement coconut liner from Home Hardware that I cut in half to make the trough shape but then I had to find something to finish the ends. I had purchased one hanging wall planter from Dollarama to test whether it could be used to replace baskets on the other side of the garage. It came with a liner and looked like a much less glamorous version of this:

It was too small to use for its original purpose, but that’s alright! Mr. Mechanic took one look at it and suggested that we cut the liner in half to create caps for the ends of each window box. He’s so smart!

After buying a second wall planter I was able to finally finish assembling the liners for my window boxes. I wrapped each half around the trough shaped piece to make a cap and then set the whole thing into the wrought iron holder.

It ended up making the window box planter look much more finished than any of the replacement liners that I could have purchased.

I had one more trick up my sleeve to improve upon last year’s planters.

I read on a few gardening sites that coconut liners make your planters dry up very quickly. Not only that, but when you water them, the soil drains out the bottom. To combat this, I cut the bottom off of two heavy duty garbage bags (love these for renovation garbage) and cut several holes in them for drainage. Once the planter was filled, I trimmed any excess that showed above the soil.

I planted these beauties on May 28th. Take a look at how much they have grown and filled out in just one month!

Here’s the window on the left (the garage) . . .

. . . and the window on the right (the guest room).

When we came home after our week up North we couldn’t believe how much they had grown!

I have not used any fertilizer on these planters, but I’m starting to think that the fancy potting soil I used this year was worth every penny. There is some sort of fertilizer additive in the soil that lasts 6 weeks. I am watering these about every 2 to 3 days and there is very little water that drains out (thanks to the garbage bag liner) yet they are not waterlogged, either. Last year I had to water daily!

So, what did I plant for 2012?

Being frugal, I searched around for the best deals but did end paying quite a bit for this year’s flowers (in comparison to my clearance window boxes of 2009 and 2010). They were far from inexpensive, but the curb appeal that they have added to the side of our house (which is what you see from the road – we’re on a corner lot) justified the price. That, and they make me so happy when I pull into the driveway!

I originally bought purple petunias but at the last minute I decided that they would be competing with the planters we have on either side of the garage door as well as the purple heart. You can barely even see the petunias in last year’s window boxes.

The bacopa is meant to have little white flowers on it. So far, it is the only plant that has been a bit of a disappointment.

They were blooming in May . . .

but disappeared in June!

Here’s what both window boxes look like together:

(The rest of the garden is still a work in progress)

I still have a few more garden projects to share with you including a planter that I assembled using a great blog tip.

It is officially summer vacation for me now which means that I can blog whenever I want! I wouldn’t normally post twice in one day, but when I discovered that I planted my window boxes on May 28th, I just had to post about them today.

I hope your first week of summer has been wonderful!

P.S. Check out my other great gardening success – rain boot planters! Soon I’ll have to pick a new flower for the summer.

P.P.S. Remember to enter my giveaway before July 5th!

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