WHY YOU SHOULD BUY LESS-THAN-PERFECT PLANTS

You know how annuals at nurseries can look when things start getting picked over? Generally sad. It's hard for nurseries to keep up on the watering, it's getting hotter out making that even more difficult, and they might all be bunched up growing together. 

That's how you get plants like this Supertunia Indigo Charm. It's a favorite of mine (in my opinion all the "Charm" series of Supertunias are better performers than Superbells but look similar), but when I got around to picking it up toward the end of June the plants weren't looking their best.

It was a little leggy and the leaves were not as green as they probably should have been. In short, it was stressed. 

Here's what it looked like from above.

Sometimes when a plant is already looking a bit straggly, the best thing to do is cut it back right away, and that's exactly what I did with this one. Here's what it looked like after its haircut.

Then I potted it up by itself in a 10-inch (or so) pot, gave it some water, fertilized it every so often (whenever I fertilized my other container plants, which is whenever I thought of it) and just sat back and let it do its thing.

And did it ever. Here's what it looked like last week. I put the original pot next to it for scale.

I love how the flowers fade out a little so the overall effect is a two-tone plant.

So don't be afraid to pick up a less-than-perfect annual at the nursery. It might just turn out to be a stunner.