How to grow Impatiens from Weidners' Gardens Instructions. These are for Southern California mild weather locations. Regular Impatiens, New Guinea, and Double flowered Varieties.

All Impatiens are fast-growing, heavy blooming plants that give your garden lots of vibrant color in the warm summer months.

Location: Impatiens are a light shade plant; this means filtered direct sun. The hotter and dryer it is the less sun they can take. New Guinea Impatiens can take more sun than the other types. In fact, New Guinea Impatiens have to have some sun to bloom well. A couple of hours a day, early or late in the afternoon. In excessive heat they can sometimes sometimes go out of bloom.

In coastal areas you will sometimes see regular impatiens growing and blooming, planted in the ground in full sun. How do they do it? If you start your Impatiens early in the growing season and let them get hardened off to the sun they can take a surprising amount. (Compare it to your going to the beach to get a tan.) They tend to shade themselves by putting out alot of flowers and leaves on the top. Look closely though, and you'll see they are yellow underneath with very few leaves. So, if you do plant them in the sun keep them well fed, they are under alot of stress. IMPORTANT, growing in the ground in the sun does not mean the same applies to your hanging Impatiens as a basket. When you hang up a basket, the heat and the sun hit the pot and the foliage and heat them up. Stress number one. You, being the nice person you are, see your plant wilting and immediately rush out to water it. Unfortunately this doesn't help, it just drowns the plant which is unable to take up the water. Add another stress to the list. The best thing you can do is take it down and put it in the shade outdoors.

Fertilizing: Use a slow release fertilizer or feed with a liquid fertilizer every two weeks during the growing season. For us this starts in about March and goes until around the beginning of November. Of course there are exceptions to this, but you get the idea.

Over winter into spring care: When the weather gets cold in the late fall, your impatiens will start to lose its inner leaves. If it doesn't freeze during the winter, then you have a good chance of getting another year of beauty! Start to feed as soon as it gets a little bit warm. Soon you will seee some new leaves begin to grow from the bare, inner branches. After your plant is actively growing, then it is safe to prune back those " leggy stems"! Cutting back during the winter will probably kill your plant. Regular impatiens reseed easily. Sometimes what you see coming back are new seedlings.

Remember: Impatiens are not supposed to be a permanent plant; enjoy them for the color they give to you and replace them when they are worn out.