Gardening: Pots provide some thrills on a deck or in the garden

And now for the finishing touches in the garden. Deck pots filled with colorful annuals, grasses, vegetables, herbs and even fruit. Even the smallest garden or apartment deck can be brightened up with a few well-chosen pots. Best of all, it’s easy to create and maintain them.

Let’s start with the pot. They can be any size and made of any material though small pots might be harder to keep watered in the heat. Porous clay terra cotta pots will also be harder to keep watered because water will wick through the clay. Terra cotta pots will also need to be brought in during the winter to prevent them from freezing and cracking.

All pots will need drainage holes in the bottom to allow excess water to drain away. If a pot doesn’t have a drain hole, it’s not hard to add a few with a drill. Plastic pots are simple to drill out with an ordinary household drill and a large bit. Drill several holes in the bottom. Ceramic pots are more of a challenge and will require a bit designed to go through concrete. Your pot retailer may be able to drill the pot for you.

The most important investment for your pots is the soil that goes into them. In general, potting mixes for containers are composed of peat or coir fiber, compost and coarse perlite or vermiculite. The perlite and vermiculate help with drainage. Stay away from material labeled “garden bed soil” as this mix is intended for raised beds or gardens.

Don’t put filler materials like packing peanuts, rocks, pine cones or wood chips in the bottom of the pot to save on the soil expense. When water reaches the contact edge between the soil and the filler material, it pools until there is enough surface tension to carry the water over the contact point. This pooling can drown roots and kill plants.

Planting pots can follow a simple formula. You need a mix of thrillers, spillers and fillers. Thriller plants are the bold, showy, often tall plants that go in the center of the pot to give it height. Spiller plants are the ones that flow over the edge of the pot and trail to the ground covering the edges. Some of my favorites for this are dichondra, lobelia and chartreuse or black sweet potato vines. The fillers are the plants that tie the trillers and spillers together. They can be any kind of annual, herb or low growing mini vegetable plant that get about half the height of your thriller plants.

Fertilize the containers with a balanced fertilizers about once a month. If you use time release pellets like Osmocote, remember they need to have soil temperature hotter than 70 degrees to activate.

Put your containers on a drip system with a timer that can keep the pots watered for you. Drip systems can be tubing or small spray heads set in the pots. With this, you can still go to the lake or on vacation.