CHEAP, REUSED Planters Get NEW LIFE — Ep. 318

Alright folks, so we're going to be planting up these massive planters and I have to tell you a little bit of a story, a little diversion for those of you who don't know. We went to Ithaca Reuse Center, which is a great place. We haven't done a video on them yet, but they are just basically a reuse center that people bring all their old stuff maybe from estates or new stuff. Yeah, contractors might bring some extra tiles that they didn't need or maybe they took tiles out of the house and they took the time and effort in order to bring them to the reuse center. And we walked in one day and we found three beautiful planters. Look at these massive pots. Okay, I'm going to have to help Saunder. Don't do this yourself. These are planters that are so huge. These would cost, we about found three of them, these would cost in the several hundred dollars. At least $300 probably closer to $700. And yeah, unbelievable. We got them for $30 a piece. Look at this. $30. $30. Where's the other sticker on this? $30. And I got some more pots as well. A couple more, like kind of like that one in the back. Unreal. Look, look at this. This is like past my knee. That's how high these are. And they weigh like a ton. This one, you can see how big it is. I've actually filled it up halfway with perlite, which is something that I'll talk about in a moment. And then over here is the second one. And we have a third one too, but I'm not going to plant that one up today. Again, just really beautiful planters. And we had a short discussion of, you know, where we were going to put them. We have to hoist it into this part of the bed. Oh, okay. Yeah, no problem. Okay, I'm going to have to help you. But I'm going to leave them in these gardens for right now, because I like the idea of this being a whole garden room for the Meadow House. And the terracotta, because we have a lot of terracotta on the patio here, the terracotta kind of brings it out. It mimics the terracotta that's happening in here. And eventually, this garden is going to fill out as is this one. I'm really looking forward to them filling out, because you could see the weeds here are pretty aggressive. So I have to come in here and constantly weed. If these plants were much larger, like let's say this one, and filled the whole bed out, then I would have less weed pressure. But I'm buying plants that are maybe small. Maybe I'm just putting in plugs, and it'll take a while for these perennials to billow out. But in the meantime, I wanted to plant these up just to see how it would look. And this will probably not be the final plantings, even though I'm planting mostly perennials in here, because I have my heart set on getting a smoke bush, but trained as a standard tree coming out of here. And then that way, it'll have some height in this garden, because this garden is really tall, and I would like for it to be taller. But I won't be able to ever plant a tree in this bed, because this is where our septic is. And this is probably where the leech field exists. So you could plant herbaceous perennials on a leech field, but you shouldn't be planting deeper-rooted trees. So this is a way to get around it. However, I cannot find anybody who has a standard tree smoke bush at this time, so I don't want to, you know, plant anything that I feel is going to be permanent. But I figured I would fill it up with perlite on the bottom, because I don't need that much space, and it's already a really heavy planter. So I'm just going to be adding potting mix to the top, so it'll be kind of like a false bottom. And I'm not saying that these roots won't go down all the way, because I am going to be planting this grass. Look, this is a pennisetum. I think it's called ginger something or other. What is it called? Ginger love. Look how the light is hitting this grass. You know, it's just because we're getting a sunset right now. This is the only time I wanted to work today, because I feel like, oh, I'm sweating like a beast. Today was so hot and muggy, so I was like, if we're going to do this at all, it's going to be towards the end of the day when the sun is going down. But that's kind of the essence of this garden. You could see just the backlighting on, let's say, this veronicastrum right here that you could see. This one is a cultivar by the name of fascination, and look at how it's actually having like three horns here, which is pretty interesting. And you could see the verbascum and some of the grasses and the salvia that are out currently right now. It's just giving that beautiful backlit look. So instead of a smoke bush this time around, I'm going to go for some pennisetum as like the... Are you stuck on an allium? You tried to hang my allium. So I'm just going to use some Espoma organic potting mix, and this will start to increase the weight of it. And I was thinking, you know, should I mix this in with the perlite? But no, I'm going to leave the perlite below, creating that false bottom. And there's different schools of thoughts about that, like whether you should do that or not. But in this case, I'm not planting a tree that maybe is a bit more deep-rooted, or if I had a taproot, then I would probably mix in a bit more. But I don't think much of the roots are going to go down more than six to eight inches. And these will still get height. In fact, I was debating whether I would go with a mulleinbergia grass, and I'll show you what that looks like. There's a mulleinbergia species that actually gets quite robust, like five feet wide, five feet tall. This is an example of one. You could see that backlit one in there. But the problem is the leaves are wispy, which are nice. They have a nice form, a little... They have a better form, I'd say, later in the season. But they don't start to flower, you know, these inflorescences, they don't start to flower until like late August, September. Whereas this pennisetum, you could see, is starting to flower already. And they have really beautiful form through the fall and into the winter months. This will get like a golden hue, and the inflorescences will pretty much stay on. They'll get like little seed heads. And I just think it's an... Like a lot of grasses are just attractive plants, you know, through the whole season. I just love the way that color picks up in the sun. So I went with a pennisetum instead. Let's just put some soil in. And then I'll show you what else I'll be planting in there, because this is obviously a really generous planter. I went to get some plants at some of the nurseries and the stores around here. And July and August is kind of a wacky time to get plants, because I kind of feel like a lot of nurseries shut down. Even some of the ones online, they shut down for the heat of the summer. And you don't get a lot of interesting plants. And so when I was looking for certain plants to get for these planters, it was really hard to find them. You know, the smokebush standard tree is, you know, probably an exception, because that's a bit more of an unusual thing. But it's really hard to even get, you know, a salvia or anything that looks good. I mean, even if we go to the big box stores, I mean, everything is really picked through and it looks tired and sad. So I actually got most of these online. But look at that pennisetum. That looks really nice. So one of the things that I did get, this is related to our, oh, I'm kind of blanking on morning glories. Sorry, I couldn't think. But this has this kind of nice farina on the leaf. And it has this blue leaf and it kind of hangs over the edge and it seems to flower. It's an annual, so this would be one of the only annuals that I'm planting in here. But I figured that would look nice kind of spilling over the edge. So I got four of these and I did get these at our big box store because it was the only thing really that was looking good. But I love the color of it. This is the first time I'm planting this, actually. So and really, I'd like the planter to look good from all angles, but I think more people are going to be viewing the garden from the front. I want the spilling over the edge happening here. Like that. And then this was so hard to get. So I have a number of these actually planted in the garden. This is a verbena bonariensis. And this is the long verbena that gets the tall stock and it gets a little, these little flowers on top. And it is a pollinator magnet. Really, I mean, most bees and especially butterflies absolutely love this one. And I could not find it. Well, this is really well rooted. This one is a cultivar is called meteor shower. And you can see it looks like it gets a much more floriferous head. And then you could see that it's a, it's a pretty tall plant. So two to three feet, the species one will get, you know, up to here on me. I figured these four could sit in the back and it'll be reflective of what's already planted in this garden. Oh man. Now I really wanted sneezeweed. I've started planting sneezeweed in the pollinator garden up there. And the species variety of sneezeweed, we have two of are extremely tall. They're like six to seven feet tall. It's, it's too tall, but there's so many different cool cultivars of sneezeweed. And this one is called Morheim beauty. And a lot of them are, you know, shades of orange and red. This one is a bit orangey. And I figured this is going to look good with the blue flowers. Those are really true blue flowers. If you could see them on there, they kind of close up towards the evening hours, but in the morning, they tend to open like a number of morning glories. And these are pretty small. So I don't think they get more than 18 inches. So I'm going to kind of dot them throughout here. And I think they would look really beautiful with the blues and the purples. And it will also give, give a different flower shape. So between the verbena and the morning glories and the inflorescence of the grass, and then this one is more of an asteraceae. So again, very, very different flowers for different animals that like to pollinate. Let's just stand back and take a look at that. I broke it. That actually looks really good. So you imagine that pennisetum right now, it's like perfect hour that we're filming this. I'm really glad that is going to be covered with those little fuzzy bunny inflorescences. And every night those antennae are going to look with the backlight. It's just going to look so very good. I think I probably move the grass a little bit this way. This kind of gives you an idea of what this looks like. Let's go on to the next one. Now, I was kind of going back and forth with what I wanted to plant in here. I got in this elderberry black lace, because one of the things that we have is that beautiful birch that you could see in the light right there. This morning, it was looking so beautiful with the eastern light. And we have some dark-leaved visocarpus. And I planted some dark-leaved cirsus. So we have these dark-leaved varieties everywhere, including this crepe myrtle, which I'm actually really surprised came up again this year. Because it is for a zone six, but it seemed to die back to the roots. And it just shot up like crazy this year. So I thought it had died. And look, sometimes you just need to give the plant some time. That calycanthus right there to your left, that other big shrub in the other garden, that has dark leaves. And I even have geraniums with dark leaves. And so I wanted to play on that theme throughout the garden, just kind of pops of this dark color. This is not quite as dark, but it's such a cool plant. This is called beautyberry pearl glam. And part of the reason why I wanted to plant this here, and over the, you know, black lace elderberry is because there's a black lace elderberry. I think it would look great. It has these really beautiful pink flowers. But the problem is, I can't find a big one. And I don't want to plant a little teeny bitty thing in here already. I'd rather get something that's a little bit larger, and has three season interest at the very least. This has three season interest because you can see it gets these little whitish, kind of tinged with pink flowers. It has beautiful, strong purple stems with this kind of purplish red leaf. And then in the fall months, it gets an incredible, unbelievable, jewel-like amethyst purple berry. It seems so otherworldly. And just that little pop of color, I think brings a lot of interest to the garden. Now, if I were at a nursery, I would have maybe looked for a plant with a better form than this. And they get bushy. But, you know, I don't think this is the best form. But could I have gotten something with a better form if I shopped for it myself? Probably. But again, it's really hard to get plants in July and August. Now, the only other plants that I'm planting here are these Oregonum Kent Beauties. And these are pretty well established. The other ones I had planted around are quite small. And this is basically one of the oreganos that is ornamental. And it smells like oregano, but it's not really the ones that people use from a culinary standpoint. And again, because this is like forward facing towards the road, I think I'd rather face it a bit more this way. Oh, that looks so beautiful too. Look at that backlight. So I'm going to leave it like this. But when I go next time to like a nursery or something, I might find some small little things that I could plug in there. That's the beauty of these, you know, you could change them throughout the season. But wow, that that looks delightful. I almost wish I got like two more of those oreganos. There's still time in the summer to get them though. All right, so I'm going to fill in the planters now.