Planting An ALL RED Fall Container Border 🌷❤️ | Tulips, Mums & Pansies

Hello, everyone. Today, I am planting all red flowers in this back border on the garage deck. And yes, I did dress for the occasion. So I usually don't love red flowers or it's not a color I'm drawn to, mostly for the rooftop deck. But for some reason, with the black and the white down here, I'm just envisioning a burst of red, both in the fall and spring. So for the spring, I'm going to be planting tulips. I have two varieties of red tulips. This will be my first time planting them in here. I do have slightly higher hopes for tulips in these containers compared to anything on my rooftop deck, just because we do have the pergola. Now, the pergola slats have to be open because they can't handle a heavy snow load. So it will be exposed a little bit. But I'm also going to be shoving a bunch of things up against these containers over the winter for storage, but also to kind of help insulate them. So we're going to see how this goes. I think as far as uncovered containers, I have the highest hope for these actually keeping the bulbs alive, but we won't know until April or May of next year. But the two varieties I got are from Colorblends. I have 100 of the red cubed tulips, and then I have 50 of the red Bono tulips or Bono. Now, I said 150 total. I did not plan for which containers I was going to fill. How many of each of the bulbs, the plants I should get, I just got them. And then I'm going to see where I can put them. And that tends to be my garden plan overall is just get the plants first and then figure out what you're going to do with them later. So this is what I'm hoping will come up in spring because I just think I mean, the hydrangeas will be bare. The boxwoods hopefully are alive and green, but I just think in the spring seeing a bunch of red tulips in these containers will be so pretty. So I'm going to put the tulips in each of the four of these longer rectangular containers. Everything back here are containers from Edgerite. I did put them on wheels so I can move them around as well. But these are going to stay in this place over winter and probably forever. Now, for color this fall, I also got pansies. I did get more than this. How many did I get? I don't know, because I just went to the garden center and grabbed everything that was red. If you are in Chicago, there is a it's a furniture store called Jason Homes. But Chalet Nursery, who is out in Wilmette, is running the nursery at their location. So this is actually really close to me, which is probably an issue, but a good issue to have. But these that I got are the Panola XP Scarlet pansies. And then there were six of these mums that are just called Fall Red. Can I easily split six between four containers? Probably not. So I might put these. Well, we'll figure out as we go along. But let me show, you know, the containers that I'm going to fill and then we'll get planting and hopefully this works out. OK, I think that has fit all of the containers that I have. So I have two on the end, which are actually not from Edgerite. These were free from Duranus, grandma's gardener. And I have an evergreen in each of those. I have four rectangular planters and then three square planters and everything in the middle. So those two that I just mentioned are from Edgerite. I am sure I'm going to put the bulbs just in the longer rectangle containers with the hydrangeas and the boxwoods. I'm not going to put any. No. OK, I'm going with this. I'm not going to put any in the square containers with the St. Landia Sweet Spire. I just don't think there's enough room. Plus, I think in spring, if the red tulips survive, I will then add more red pansies into those. But for the fall, nothing's going in there because those hopefully will have a beautiful red color. That's how I fell in love with the sweet spires last year was that during the season, they were pretty. I like them, but the fall color. Oh, I fell in love with those. So I'm hoping we get that. I've heard rumors that we're going to have a shorter fall colorful leaf season. So we'll see how that goes. But also the flowers on hydrangeas should be turning a little bit red as well. So that's kind of why I just went with, let's just throw a bunch of red flowers all together. Now, the pansies and the mums, I think pansies are going to do the same thing for the fall, probably on top of where I'm planting the tulips and then potentially the mums. Maybe I'll put those with the evergreens, because like I said, the sweet spires are a little bit too full. I'll add pansies to those in spring. But I think I think that's what I'm going to do. I think we do mums on the corner there. So what I'm going to do next is break up all the tulips into four groups since there's going to be four containers and then we'll get those planted first. So I have 50 of the bonos. I have 100, hopefully, of the red cube. So since I can easily divide 100 by four, I'm going to just put these in four separate piles. At first, I was thinking maybe I would just throw all of these together in one container, mix them up. But I don't want to have a lot more of one variety in one pot versus the other. So I do want to at least have an even-ish distribution of the two different types of tulips. So 25 in each pile for these four. Since there are 50 of these and I can't divide that evenly, I'm just going to do 12 in two of the containers and 13 in the other two containers. And this pile here has a bulb, but I'm not sure if it is rotten or not. So I'm going to do one extra of the bonos in there. We're going to fill this container up first, and I wanted to show you a few things. First, there is still irrigation in it, but my irrigation is off for the season. The hose is still connected if I do need to water something, but that's probably also going to be turned off in the next couple of weeks. Now, I had in here a bunch of impatiens. I pulled those. And what I did is that when those root balls came out, I did not replace that with soil. Maybe I should have to give these other root balls a little bit more protection. But I knew I was probably going to plant some bulbs in here. So I wanted to leave that depth. So I think this is maybe it's about five inches. So I'll probably just tuck bulbs in a little bit and then cover it with soil. So I have to dig down the full six inches, at least in this container. This is one of the varieties. I'm just dumping it in here and then I'm just going to move them around. And again, sticking them just a little bit further down. Because I think this is slightly under six inches, I'm just tucking them in the soil a little bit, because I'm going to top it with fresh soil. So I'm going to do one variety first, and then I will put in the bonnets, which I have fewer of and just kind of tuck them around. So it's like kind of evenly distributed, but not worrying too, too much about even distribution. Honestly, you know what? I might just lift the irrigation up for now, since it is off just to get it out of the way for now. And then I have to remember to put it back on in spring. I'm thinking I will probably leave the bulbs in here. So tulips can be perennials. Some varieties are better at coming back each year than others. In containers, though, I typically treat them as annuals because either they rot before they bloom anyway, or I need to put different plants in the pot. But here, first, I'm tucking them around the root balls of the perennials. And two, if I do put annuals in here, I mean, having six inches above the bulb should be just fine. I'm going to put a slightly smaller annuals in here next year since the annuals I did have completely covered up the hydrangeas and killed them, which is why I had to replace them with new hydrangeas. All the first varieties in. So I'm going to add the 12 from the other variety. And again, not being too precise, but just placing them around where I see an empty space throughout the ones that are in there. I am also avoiding the root balls of the hydrangeas and the boxwoods are not very large right now, especially the boxwoods. But hopefully if they don't die over winter, they will get larger over time. So I might not be able to fit as many things in there as the years go by. So this looks good for the bulbs. I'm going to go grab some fresh potting soil and put it on top. I could add plant tone, but I think I'm almost out of it. And I would rather save that for some other perennials that I plan to pot up this fall. So that's one container of bulbs down. I'm going to finish up with bulbs in the other three rectangular containers. And then I will catch up with you to plant the pansies and figure out where exactly I'm going to put the mums. All of the bulbs are planted. So now I'm going to add the pansies to the rectangle containers. The bulbs I put all over the pansies. I'm going to stick mostly to the front because that's really what I'm going to be able to see anyway. And also, I don't know how cold is getting, how soon, how much time I have left with these. Now, one winter, I actually did have pansies on my rooftop deck that survived. And I don't mean that the pansy that I planted died and then reseeded. I mean, the pansy stayed green the entire winter and then rebloomed the following spring so I didn't have to replant any pansies. So that would be nice if that could happen. I don't know if that's going to happen, but I can at least hope. And I don't have any worries about the tulips not being able to come up around the pansies. One, the root balls are small right now anyway. And two, if they do die, well, they'll be dead. And it'll be easy for the tulips to pop through. I do get a couple larger ones, not enough for all four containers, of course. But I will at least tuck these in here for a little bit more color. Oh, I think that looks pretty. All right. That one's done. I'm going to do the same thing again to the other four pansies are in. Not all evenly spaced, but I did favor more of the pansies towards the containers that I can see the best. Just like I do with my Christmas tree when I put it up, because why would I decorate the back of the Christmas tree? No one is going to see. But I do like how the red turned out. I will be trying to trying to keep up on deadheading them because that will encourage more blooms. So I'll probably go through and do that at the very, very end here. But now I want to put the mums, I think, in the containers with the evergreens. So I have six total, which means I can put three in each of these end caps. And actually, I think that will fit perfectly. They're basically going to sit right next to each other, which is fine. They're not going to get that much larger. I think that looks cute. All right. Here's how it's looking. I do wish that the pansies had a bit more color on them, but I do really like the mums over by the evergreens. And I feel like once the sweet spire turns red, this is going to be so pretty. I just really hope that it happens based on the weather this fall. When it does happen, I will definitely take some photos or videos so that you can see how it looks. I'm hoping what I have in my head actually becomes reality. That's not always the case, though. All right. I'm done. Like I said, as the colors change, I will make sure to show you guys, but I at first was just going to leave them as is. But then once I got the idea of just making everything red, I just got too excited and had to do it. So this is how it's looking right now. Hopefully in spring, we see a bunch of red tulips. Speaking of which, I at least now I'm not planning to water these unless I really, really have to with the bulbs already in the soil. The soil was wet from all the perennials that were in there and those were being watered. Irrigation is off now, so they won't be watered unless I do it with a hose or Mother Nature does it. So I'm hoping that Mother Nature rains enough that the pansies can stay happy that I just planted until they go dormant or die, but not too much that it then rots the bulbs. So we'll see. We'll see how this goes and what happens if in case the bulbs do rot. My plan always then is to go to the garden center in spring and get the pre-sprouted tulip bulbs. I think I would really like to see some tulips in here, so I would probably do that. But I would also love if these just didn't die. So we'll see. We'll see how this turns out and how it goes. But I really this was the first year of this quarter. I really loved how it turns out. So now it's just seeing how all these plants do over the winter. So let me know if you have any questions and I will see you in the next video. Bye.