How to grow scarlet sage plants in garden

The Scarlet Sage Plants can form a striking accent when massed together as bedding plants or lined up in a row as edging plants. The Scarlet Sage Plants are also popular in container gardens, where they can serve as a vertical accent (surrounded, e.g. with the lower-growing white sweet alyssum and silvery dusty miller). The scarlet sage plants will serve as a great addition to the garden in summer and early fall if you actually follow a few simple rules about locating and caring for them.  

Taxonomy and Botanical Type for Scarlet Sage Plants

Plant taxonomy classifies scarlet sage plants as Salvia splendens. Regardless of the official common name of "scarlet sage," a lot of people refer to the plants simply as "red salvia." The plants are members of the mint family.

The scarlet sage plants is indigenous to Brazil, where they are grown as perennial plant due to the hot climate, scarlet sage flowers are treated as if they were annual plants in temperate zones: The scarlet sage plants are damaged by hard frosts and will not survive through cold winters.

How to grow and care for scarlet sage plants

Growing scarlet sage plants in full sun will give you the biggest flower output. Make sure you select a location with a loamy, well-drained soil. You can amend the soil with compost.

If you want to improve their looks and encourage better flowering, you can deadhead the plants. Just do this by pinching off the flower spikes with spent blooms. Make sure you make your pinch fairly far down on their stems.

Keep an eye and take action against snails, slugs, and whitefly, all these may bother the scarlet sage plants. If you want to shop for the plants at the garden center carefully inspect the undersides of the leaves for whitefly in other to avoid bringing any home with you. These whiteflies are notorious greenhouse pests, and, occasionally, they will make the trip from greenhouse to garden center, undiscovered.

Some gardeners fertilize the scarlet sage plants with the same balanced fertilizer that they use to fertilize their other annuals, often applying it with a hose-end sprayer while watering.

Some of the cultivars to choose from

Some of the cultivars that are sold at the garden centers and in online catalogs give you options in different colors and maximum heights. Examples of them are:

     1. Salvia Splendens Alba: It has white flowers and the height is about 24 inches.

     2. Ablazin' Purple Scarlet Sage: It has purple flowers and the height is about 26 inches.

     3. Bonfire Scarlet Sage: It has red flowers and the height is about 26 inches.

     4. Salvia splendens 'Carabiniere': It has red flowers and the height is about 14 inches.

     5. The Salsa Scarlet Bi-color: Bicolored flowers (which are red and white) and the height are about 18 inches.