Last Updated on April 8, 2024 by Real Men Sow
The perennial pansies are short-lived, colourful and attractive choices for border and pot displays. The flowers of pansies are beautiful and often marked in the center. Sometimes they look like faces, sometimes with darker blotches or plain. There are many flower colors and variations, including blue, mauve and pink, purple and red, yellow and white. They can also be bicolored with a mix of shades. The pansies are useful all year, but they bloom best in winter when it isn’t much else in bloom. Therefore it is important to know when to plant pansies and find the best time to grow these beautiful flowers.
How To Grow Pansies
Easy to grow, pansies make great garden borders, pots, hanging baskets, and window boxes. They thrive in fertile soil, in sun or partial shade. In pots, you can use a multi-purpose, peat-free potting compost. In the ground, add well-rotted organic material before planting.
You can keep your pansies happy by regularly watering, feeding and deadheading them. This will encourage more flowers.
Where to Plant Pansies
Pansies are versatile and can be grown in any type of container just like peas. You can either grow them in a single pot or in combination with other plants. They thrive in full sun to partial shading.
Pansies are great for borders. They can be used alone or in combination with other bedding plants to create a display. Pansies are also great for filling in bare spots. They are great partners for spring bulbs like tulips because they grow between and through the flowering pansies.
When To Plant Pansies
To bloom from winter to spring, plant pansies in late summer to mid/late fall. You can also plant them in the spring or early summer to ensure that they bloom throughout the growing season.
What month should pansies be planted?
The planting time and variety size will affect the spacing. It is best to plant in the late summer or early autumn, as pansies will have time to establish before winter. For bush varieties and spring-planted pansies, space them between 15 cm and 25 cm for trailing varieties.
Planting pansies in the middle of autumn is a good idea. They should be planted closer together (10 cm for bush pansies and 15 cm for trailing varieties), as they will not grow as fast as temperatures drop.
For planting pansies in pots, use a high-quality multi-purpose potting soil. To improve the soil, you can add well-rotted gardening compost or a planting compound to the borders.
Care for Pansies
Keep the Pansies watered during dry spells, pouring the water onto the soil rather than spraying the foliage, which helps avoid spreading fungal diseases. From spring to autumn, feed fortnightly with a liquid fertilizer or make a single application of controlled release fertilizer.
Remove the faded and dead flowers regularly which encourages the plant to keep producing new blooms. Either pinch them off with your finger and thumb or use a pair of garden snips or secateurs to cut off the dead heads.
Propagating Pansies
You can also grow pansies from seeds. To make them bloom from autumn to spring, cover the seed with plastic in February to April. Sow the seed in May to July for pansies that will bloom in autumn or winter.
