Planting containers in a tricky sun spot

Hey everyone, Erin here. More container planting today. Today I'm doing the two planters that are by the garage. So the one that kind of sits between the two doors here and the one that is over by sort of the auxiliary door over there. First off, it's noisy today. I apologize. They're working I think on the roof or the soffits or something literally about 20 feet that direction, so I apologize for that. So ever since we cut down the trees in this area between us and the the sun exposure over here has really changed quite a bit for us. So last year I planted up this pot with really shade loving things and they mostly cooked. Some of the begonias were fine. I think begonias generally speaking and some more than others are really adaptable actually, so we're going to be using a lot of begonias. But I've been paying attention over here and I feel like we are in sun in this spot from about 11 o'clock in the morning all the way through. So you know at the long days of summer we're well into that full sun territory if you're counting full sun by hours. So I'm sort of planting these as kind of full sun veering into part sun containers and honestly I'm just going to kind of roll with it and see because I'm still figuring this area out and I'm more than happy to move things or swap things out if something's not doing well over here. But I got to plant something and so I'm just going to learn from it and see what happens. So we're going to start here with this planter. This planter was the planter that hosted a boxwood for several years and it was kind of declining and when I pulled it out it had first of all there's two problems. There was it was sopping wet at the bottom of the container. I'm going to talk to you about how we're handling that. And second of all the root ball on this probably two and a half foot tall boxwood cone was like this big. So I'm actually left wondering how is this plant alive? So let's get to planting that because I have a really fun plant for the center of that. When I went to the Cultivate show last year which is kind of a plant industry show, a lot of new plant introductions are made there and the one that I fell head over heels with, there were a couple of them, but one of them was Ruby Ruffles patio peach. And the one that was there was you know three feet wide. It was gorgeous and well because I basically lusted after it quite a lot the nice people at Star Roses and Plants sent me one. So that was really nice. So that is going to be our centerpiece over here. You know right now it's a lot of stem and not a lot of foliage on top. I think it's going to be fine. I think it's enough sun for this. We're going to see now this is an ornamental peach and it actually does have a peach on it. It came with a peach on it. I don't know if you can eat these or not. I'm sure there's nothing wrong with them. I just don't know if they taste very good but the point of this is as an ornamental. So that's our centerpiece. So I've already filled the pot with soil but let me show you something because I have found something that I wish I had found a long time ago. So first of all back when I pulled that boxwood out of there which was I think three years ago now because I've just had other annuals in here for a couple of years. I drilled a whole bunch more holes in the bottom of this planter. This is a zinc planter. It's got a lot of age on it. I bought this from Restoration Hardware many years ago. I still love this planter. I really like it a lot and that is also another zinc planter over there so they sort of match over here. So I had drilled a whole bunch more holes on it but it is metal and the bottom is getting rusty because it just there was so much water sitting there. Okay this is 100% not sponsored but I want to share this with you. This is called Drain Smart and this is what it is and it's got like I don't know if you can see this but this is sort of some sort of like plasticky mesh nubbins on the bottom. This feels like felt here and the idea behind this is that you put this in the bottom of your pots and it helps water drain through consistently. So the big thing with this is it keeps things from clogging your holes and I'm not putting these in all of my pots but there are some pots that have some hole issues and I think this is one of them and let me show you. I tested this out before I started using it. See the water goes right through it. I have been adding these to any pot with any sort of issue. This being one of them I'm going to take all the soil out of the urn put in there because the drain hole in that thing is about two inches in diameter and I always have to put something in there and I'm always worried about soil clogging that up. So anything where I'm having that issue I'm doing these. This is the 12 inch. I believe they sell another size but since I'm only using it in big pots this is the only one I've bought. They're not cheap. It's I think $16 for two. Link obviously I'll put a link here for you. I think that's a slug. I think it's $16 for two and but they're reusable so I expect this to last forever ish. I'm never gonna you know have to worry about buying new ones. I think this is kind of a mostly a one and done thing so that's my little discovery. I'm obviously very excited about it. So I filled this pot primarily with this the organic mechanic container blend. I feel like it's a little bit lighter than the premium mix but I am going to put a little actually I want to use the premium mix to fill in and I just felt like you know I think it's gonna be a while before this peach gets down too far in this pot and so erring on the side of more drainage at the bottom of this pot with the regular container blend. This is a little the premium blend is a little bit richer mix which is great for trees like this is what I put a lot of this in the containers with the willows because those will be hungry. I like using this in the window box because that is some seriously intensive planting but not everything gets this. All right now I'm going to do a little bit of Osmocote. Any I'm sure any time release fertilizer will work in here. That's just the one that I typically use. Now I'm going to go with begonias. This is the Iconia upright blush. I thought that would be kind of a pretty combination but of course we're putting some other things in here as well so let's start with that because I think that'll be easier to start with. So this clump of grass you see laying on the lawn here is a clump of Carex bluesinger that I just dug out of the garden kind of alongside the driveway there. It is a great grower. It does very well in shade or sun. It's more aggressive in sun. If you're going to plant it in the ground you should probably not plant it in the sun because it could run quite a bit on you. I have put this in containers before and it looks great and I love that I have kind of a never-ending supply of it. So I'm just going to divide this and create three chunks to go in this planter. Okay one little clump there, one clump there, one clump there. Just trying to groom some of this brown out of here. I don't, I rarely cut this back. It just kind of dies back on its own out there and then it just comes up new and I don't really worry about it. It's an excellent ground cover but again it can be in fact some places have stopped selling it because they feel like it's a little too aggressive to responsibly sell. But perfect in this container no matter what. So I wanted something, you know, these are going to get, probably going to get about a foot tall. I probably could have gone taller. This will probably fill in because this is quite a large trunk but these leaves are going to kind of drape down a little bit eventually. So I like to put the begonias right at the edge because they'll fill in this way but I also want a little bit of drape. Again I'm not, I shouldn't say again, much like I did with the containers along the driveway if you saw that video. I don't want, I just don't want this to have a ton of trailers on it. For a little bit more texture I'm going to put in some wire vine as well. I bought a flat of this. I'm running out. I might have to go buy more because I'm just really loving how this is looking. This is not going to be, maybe I just put it kind of to the side of the grasses basically because. So did you see how I filled this container up basically all the way to the top with soil and yet there's no, well there's a little bit of spillover but that's just me being a mess. But you see how it just sort of compacts in here. Yeah I think, you know, potting soil, potting mix is so lofty that it really compresses quite a bit and if you don't fill it all the way up to basically where the top of where you want it to be then what you end up with is it too deep in the pot and that drives me nuts. I have pulled all the plants out of containers before just to re-situate them because I felt like everything was too low in the pot. Okay I have some cleanup to do on the bottom but I like it. I think it's good when this grass, this grass will, you know, it looks a little beat up right now but this grass will really start to shine once it, once it gets a little bit more acclimated. We'll have to see how this does. Again I think these leaves are going to grow down more so right now I feel like it's not proportional with the amount of trunk showing there but I think, well it's not really proportional at all with the amount of foliage on the top either but I think that will put on a good amount of growth. Okay hi everyone again. So in between the two planters I had a little camera snafu and then I had to go do something so I'm back. It's now about four o'clock in the afternoon, a little after, and the sun has just basically come on to this planter over here so now's the part where I'm going to tell you about all the shade plants that I'm putting in this planter when I'm standing here in full sun with it. I told you this area was complicated. Okay so let's start with what is already in this planter. The first thing is this guy which has actually been in here for a couple weeks already. This is Fatshidera angiostar, probably the correct pronunciation of Fatshidera. I think Fatshidera is more fun to say so that is what I say. This beauty which came from Southern Living Plant Collection was in this pot in this spot last year and I dug it out last fall, cut it off pretty aggressively, and overwintered it inside and it put on a ton of growth. It's also fairly hardy. I think it's hardy down to zone seven. I will put that up on the screen just so I'm sure. So this has actually been outside for a couple of weeks and I thought well as long as it's outside I might as well just plant it up here so it's actually been here for a little bit. And then earlier today I actually divided some and put that in the two corners. Now listen this is variegation upon variegation and I'm not sure it works but this is all about experimenting and so why not. I do think the foliage texture contrast works for sure. So next up we're going to do more foliage. In fact this whole planter is going to end up being almost all foliage. There's just one flowering, three of one flowering plant that's going in here. So the next thing we're going to do here is put in Plectranthus Silver Shield. This is a favorite plant of mine. The nice thing about Plectranthus is that the nice thing about Silver Shield is that first of all it gets pretty big but you can pinch it and keep it into a certain shape. It's also, coleus is a type of Plectranthus so it behaves very much like that. So you know how you can keep pinching coleus if you want to. So you can really size control these guys. And I'm going to plunk that right smack dab in the middle here because that is going to fill in this area so we won't see these these bare bits here. So now we're going to go to our flower layer because that is the next as we step forward here that is the next step. And I have two types of begonias here. The first one I have is Tweety Pie which is a beautiful, well it's a beautiful yellow begonia, kind of a very soft yellow. This is part of the Iconia series and all of these are part sun to shade. And that's going to go in the middle because it's the odd ball out from all the ones that I'm planting and the other two sort of go along with it. So then the other two are bossa nova begonias. I love these bossa nova begonias and I planted them in this area several times. This year I'm going with bossa nova yellow just to change it up. Last year I did the salmon and it was absolutely just glorious. And I'm going to put that guy over here to fill up this area. And then this one is going to go over here. Those should get, oh gosh, those are probably 14 inches tall or so. So that should fill in this area quite well. Now unlike the other containers that I've been doing, I do want some trailers in here. And I'm going to mix it up with two different trailers. And the first is Proven Accents Sweet Caroline Sweetheart Mahogany. This is, I believe, new on the market this year. A new Proven Winners variety. Maybe my favorite sweet potato vine that I've ever grown. Very much in control. It doesn't give us a trailing height on it, a trailing distance on this, but this does not go nuts and eat your container like some sweet potato vines. And that color is so good. And obviously it works with the stormanthi. It's going to work with the leaves of the begonia. And then we're going to go with an absolute classic, and that is Dicondra Silver Falls. Everybody knows and loves this trailer. I like it particularly here for two reasons. One, it basically matches or very similar to the color of the container. So it adds almost like a textural element when you're looking at the container. Also, we're bringing in that gray here, which I think is good. And I think that certainly goes with the purple and certainly goes with the yellow as well. Now that's the whole planter. Now I do have more, you can see one down there, of the mahogany colored sweet potato vine. And I could put those, you know, over here and over here, coming out the edges. I'm going to hold off on that and just see. I don't know that I need that all full. I do want to see some of the container. So we'll hold off. We can always add those in. So these two containers are watered almost exclusively from water from the rain barrel, as well as the garden to the north of the garage, just because it's easier. That's where the rain barrel is. So it's easier to water from there than it is to actually drag a hose over here. And I am telling you, plants that are watered with rainwater grow so much better. It is amazing what a difference rainwater makes. All right, two more planters planted, more experimentation, which is kind of what everything is about this year. I am trying a lot of different things just to see how things work. And the thing is, is that a container is far from permanent. So if anything goes wrong, I'll just swap it out. I will just make a note though, that I think because I live in a northern zone, I'm able to blur these lines a little bit more between part shade to part sun simply because our sun is just not that hot here. It's nothing like the power that the sun in a southern area has, where I don't think you could get away with blurring these lines as much. Here I'm able to do it without a lot of problem. The main factor usually comes into how much water I provide. As long as I've got enough water on board, things seem to do fine. Okay, thank you for watching. Make sure you subscribe so that you can see how these containers are going to do throughout the year. Because we all know that when you plant up a container, it's just, you got to squint your eyes to kind of get an idea of what it's going to look like because it's got a lot of growing in to do. And that's how it works with containers. And that's why they're sort of fun, I think. So stay tuned, and we'll see what happens with these. Thank you for watching. Have a great day in your garden.