Annuals

The Homestead Gardens Annuals Department offers the region’s finest selection of flowers, herbs, and vegetables. If you can’t find it here, odds are that you won’t find it anywhere else! Fresh, flowering plants are being delivered daily from our nearby farm, ready to enhance your beds and containers. Our Annuals sales associates are always ready and willing to help you choose the right plant for the right place.

Month-by-Month Countdown to Spring

January: 
Check indoor herbs weekly through winter for insects and powdery mildew. Keep herbs in a sunny, fairly cool spot, and on the dry side. Don’t let basil sit on a cold, drafty windowsill! Purchase a grow light to supplement the less intense winter sun. If herbs are actively growing, fertilize with a water soluble fertilizer at half strength once a month.

February: 
Great time to bring a bit of spring indoors with potted flowering bulbs and primrose, which can be planted outside later in spring. 

March:  

When ground is workable, begin planting cold-hardy vegetables like cabbage, lettuce, and broccoli, under row covers to ward off frost. Begin planting pansies and violas for the spring season, in the ground and in containers.

April:

Repot and cut back over-wintered  tropicals, such as hibiscus. Last frost date for Annapolis is April 15, according to the Cooperative Extension Service. Date is later the farther you are from the Bay. Begin to plant cool-weather annuals like ranunculus, osteospermum, nemesia, and also the primrose and potted flowering bulbs as night temperatures remain around 45 degrees. 

May:

During first few weeks, begin to acclimate over-wintered tropicals by placing outside in successively less and less shade, for longer and longer periods each day, before moving to their proper sunny spot permanently later in the month. Begin to plant annuals & most tropicals by mid-May. Tomatoes, peppers, and basil should be planted when soil temperatures have reached 80 degrees, usually a little later in the month, but may be planted earlier with adequate protection. Pinch mums halfway when 6 inches tall. Cut back perennial herbs like thyme, lavender and sage to keep them from becoming too woody. If spring weather is cool and rainy, keep annuals like petunias and pansies cleaned of dead foliage and flowers to discourage botrytis (gray mold).