Pansies are perfect for winter color

Read on for growing instructions, the latest pansy varieties and design ideas.

If this is your first visit to this page we hope you read the entire lesson and enjoy it. If you are already a good pansy grower then skip the instructions and just look at some of the pictures. If I have time I will take more pictures and post them here.

Winter comes very gently to Southern California. In fact it is sometimes difficult to know when summer ends and winter begins. but the pretty pansy is the absolute perfect winter-blooming star. When pansies are ready you know that fall is here and winter cannot be far behind.

Plant your pansies in sun, feed them frequently, and keep on picking the pretty flowers. No other flower gives quite so much satisfaction as the versatile pansy.

At Weidners' Gardens in Encinitas, California we plant an old fashioned field of pansies and our customers come and dig their own plants. These are in bloom, great big plants. Pansies transplant very easily and because the roots are not confined to a small container they just take right off and grow super well in the garden.

New Whiskers Orange. Other whiskers are white, yellow and the newest Red and Gold Whisker. See below.

This year we are doing the Sorbet Mix so that you will have more color choices.

Matrix is a new series that is bred to give better growing and heavier flowering plant. Large flowers but not as big as the XXL series which has the largest flowers but theyhave improved it so that the flowers stand up better and don't flop over and hide. They are pictured at the top.

The Sunrise Series is so nice in shades of both sunrise and sunset.

Here's picture of a whole group

Citrus Mix is all plain faces in shades of white, yellow, orange.

Panola is another new group. That name means half pansy and half viola breeding. The viola part gives you a bigger plant and more flowers and the pansy part brings up the size of the flower Panola Violet Picotee is especially nice but I don't have a photo. Mariposa Peach is another beauty. We'll see if Mary is good enough to put a picture in here. I'm off for a week of October 17-22 and so it's Mary's job. We still have lots of your old favorites. The antique shades, The Majestic giant red and Delta pure rose. Ultima Morpho is out in the field again. So pretty.

I'm Evelyn Weidner, the owner of this nursery and I have a very special attatchment to pansies, especially what we used to call 'field grown' pansies. I grew up in a horticultural family. My father had studied in Sweden and Germany before he immigrated to America. The first crop he planted in Fresno was some pansies in the back yard. In those days pansies were dug and put into a sort of wood container that was like a peach box. It held a dozen pansy plants. My mother was selling pansies at the Farmers Market before she could even speak real fluent English. Later on when I was a little girl, maybe 8 or 9, and we had moved to the mountain village of Three Rivers...(does anyone know where that is?) We had a little native plant nursery right on the highway and if no one else was around to wait on the occasional customer I would go out and do my best! My father again planted a good size piece of ground into pansies. I can remember as though it were yesterday, eagerly watching the pansy buds devolop and my excitement when the first flower burst into bloom. I loved selling those pansies! The box was never quite big enough and the last pansy had to be squeezed into it to make a dozen. I still love pansies and it is fun to once again have a field grown pansies...only this time the customer does all the work.

Growing Instructions

How to be the best pansy grower in your neighborhood.

This is advice for temperate areas like California.

Pansies are not hard to grow, but everyone can use a few handy hints.

First of all you don't have to worry about the cold weather. Pansies are ideal winter blooming plants because they can't hardly freeze, love cool winter weather and will go on blooming until hot weather appears next summer.

Yes, you do see pansies sold all year long, even in summer, but we think you are better off planting your pansies in the fall when they will be able to shine like super stars all winter long.

Before you start to plant look at the soil first. Pansies like a really rich well drained soil. How do you know if your soil is good enough? Take your spade and dig up one or two spade fulls of soil. If you had to work like crazy to dig up those two 'spade fulls' your soil is either too hard and heavy or full of roots from nearby trees. If this is the case you need to either add more humous in the form of soil amendments or decide to grow in planters above ground. Don't expect your pansies to work for you in an unfriendly environment!!! Adding steer manure , your own compost or peat moss can help too. When your soil is ready it should be loose and easy to work with. Recently we have been selling lots of a product called Worm Gold. It is worm castings and they can do all sorts of wonderful things for your soil. You don't have to use alot but it adds some great biologicals and you should get worms too!
A customer came in this summer to talk to the Plant Doctors and she brought her [dead] plant along. The plant was gone from overwatering but the Worm Gold that she had used had produced hundreds of lovely worms in the pot. Worms do such good things for your soil so think about adding some.

Now you are ready to choose your pansies.

If you come to Weidners and dig your own from the field, your plants will be big, in full bloom and ready to keep on blooming all winter. These plants will keep right on growing bigger and bigger. Don't crowd your plants.

If you buy your pansies in pony paks or in 4" pots then here are some tips. Any time you are buying bedding plants try to buy plants that are smaller rather than too big. As soon as a small plants' roots begin to be squeezed by the sides of the pot their growth is checked or temporarily stopped. When you buy a field grown pansy those roots never hit that brick wall of the pot. When you take them home and plant them...if.....you have done your part to make the soil soft and yummy then the roots just keep on going.

Don't plant your pansies too deep. Plants almost never like that. Those nasty fungal soil diseases are always lurking around the corner waiting for an opportune moment to strike. Poor drainage, planting too deep, planting too close together, any or all of these can cause botrytis or other unmentionable bad diseases to make your plants die. At the end of this piece I'll write something about the most common problems you may have.

After you plant your pansies water them in well. DON'T FERTILIZE AT THAT TIME!!! Common common mistake. You want everything to grow immediately....what makes plants grow???? Fertilizer....so you give it a good strong dose of Miracle Gro or Weidners Good Stuff and bingo....the next day your plants are all wilting and going bye bye. Always wait a week or so to allow the roots to settle in and heal. Then you can start to feed.

Pansies respond to being picked. When a flower dies and a seed forms the plant begins to feel that she(we'll call her a Mama) has done her job by making seeds for more plants. After all as far as the plant and Mother Nature are concerned that is the ONLY reason for being here. Procreation! When the plant breeders work with plants to make them as sterile as possible this is like plant birth control. The plants will bloom longer and with more flowers in an effort to keep trying to make seeds(babies). You can help your pansy by picking the flowers so that they don't go to seed. If you can't pick them fast enough then you do some 'dead heading'. That is the common term for picking off the stems that already have started to form seeds.

You might as well enjoy the flowers inside as well as outside so make it a practice to spend a few minutes picking pansies. Pick them with a stem only most of the time. Some of the time go further in and cut the bigger stem that has both leaves and a flower. This makes the plant branch more and keeps it from getting leggy.

Use any little vases you have to put pansy bouquets in the kitchen, the bath, where ever. Bring some to the office, little bouquets make great subtle bribes. Not that you would stoop so low!!!

Of course Weidners has some cute inexpensive pansy vases for you to buy. Most of them are made by Evelyn's son Bill and his better half Peggy Steffes in Montana. The blue glaze is unique and pretty. They are also used for cream and sugar. Take a look in the gift shop. Your purchase helps everyone. Me and the rest of the family and gives you something personal to have.

If your pansies get a little leggy later on in the season, just cut them back, give them some fertilizer again and they'll come right out!

When it gets hot in the summer your pansies should come out and spring summer blooming plants replace them.

So what can go wrong?

Uneven or forgetting to water.

I think more problems come from poor watering than anything else. Every time a plant gets dried out to the point of really wilting you put that plant into stress. Too many episodes of stress and plants have nervous breakdowns...just like people. You can't make up for not watering when needed by giving extra water later. It doesn't work that way.

If watering is one of your problems, spend the money...get a good automatic water system put in. You'll more than save the cost in less loss and more time for yourself.

Slugs, snails, sowbugs, whiteflies and other critters.

Put out your snail bait right away when you plant. Sluggo is the non-poisonous one. Good air circulation helps deter whiteflies. Some areas have Wire Worms, Cut worms, or other grubs in the soil. Beneficial nematodes will take care of them without harming anything else. Ground Squirrels and Rabbits all like pansy salad

For Rabbits we recommend a product called Rabbit Scram. It is totally non-toxic and seems to work better than anything else. Not cheap but certainly cheaper than feeding the Rabbits. .

Soil diseases

Botrytis is a fairly common problem in all bedding plants and a little description of the symptoms might help.

Botrytis usually shows itself by brown areas on the stem right at the base of the plant. The botrytis is attacking the cell tissues and destroying them. On woody plants the stems can often survive and get along, but on little plants like pansies, petunias, or small seedlings, the rot goes right on through and your little plant just topples over and dies. We used to call this 'damping off'. The best cure is prevention so keep the air circulation going by giving space, don't plant deeper than the plant is used to and provide good drainage. A good fungicide can be used if necessary but you probably won't have a problem.

Hint: If you often loose young bedding plants soon after you plant them you may have any of the other soil diseases just sitting in the soil waiting to strike. Best plan is to switch to another area of the garden for awhile. Try to drench the soil with a fungicide or pay a visit to your friendly farm advisors office for the latest treatments.

Your county Farm and Home Advisor office is a wonderful resource for all sorts of problems. You'll find them listed in the government white pages under the 'County' section.

Well, have I told you enough? I try to write so that the most beginning gardener will understand and be helped. Forgive all the rambling sentences and errors. I write like a talk. Let me know by e-mail if you like this lesson and want more. our e-mail address is staff@weidners.com.

Come by and see us. Evelyn Weidner