I always face that same dilemma every year too. What I do is to start some marigold seeds in a bunch of spare pots and then transplant them when I pull the pansies up sometime in May. You can pull a full-grown marigold out of the ground and plant it somewhere else and it'll do fine. They're virtually indestructable. If I want anything else in there, I just go to Lowe's or Home Depot and get something that's already pretty good sized. So I guess you could say that I cheat. What I've thought about doing is starting a full blown "transplant gargen" somewhere else, kinda out of sight, and use it to get stuff started so that I can move it to the patio garden later.
Hey, I don’t think going to a store and buying stuff started is cheating:) I didn’t realize the pansies would be done by May, I thought they lasted longer. I’ve pulled a few up, to put a few things back in. Of course I have to hope that Lowes will still have some good stuff by May...The freeze around here seems to have wiped even the flowers in the stores out. Pretty slim pickens right now. I actually saw azealeas on sell yesterday for $1.59 for a galleon size bush....of course the bushes looked really sick. The tops of them had freeze damage. I don’t know if you could get them healthy. I’ve trid them before with no luck, so even at the price I passed.
Some of the New Guinea Impatients I put is was damaged, I’m going to replace with just regular impatients, but haven’t been able to find any.
Becky