Tropical Centerpiece Planters

Beautiful day. Absolutely beautiful outside. Hey, turbs, which I know, you're waiting for me. I'll be on in just a second. Hey, what's up, garden friends? Jeff, here's what we're doing. We're doing well, I'm great. Getting ready to do a planter. I thought I'd bring y'all along. It was a last minute video. I wasn't gonna film a pumpkin to say hi. Okay, that's nice of you, pumpkin. Hey, you got a blank. That means something. The slow blank. That's the best kind of blank you can get from the cat. I have a couple of Heliconias that came in the mail. Hey, birds, how y'all doing? They're cute and they're little. They're perfect to put in a shallow planter. Holy crap, this guy's looking good today. All right, look at them. You see them? They're so little. These are Heliconia. They look like they're Chaconianas. I would assume that's what they are. They're from Nature's Way. I ordered them through Lowe's website. They don't have them right now, but this video probably won't be out for a few weeks. Maybe they'll have them by then. Grossly overpaid for them too. They're in little pots. These are like 27 bucks a piece. I know for a fact that when you're down south, you can walk into a Lowe's or Home Depot, buy Heliconias in this size pot for anywhere from like, I mean, $8 if it's a good sale up to maybe $14.99, $19.99. All right, so went up to 27, but hey, got them shipped here and they showed up in great shape and they are blooming at a really small size, which I just think is freaking cute. Cute, I wanna put it into one of these bowls right here. I don't know which one. Probably gonna spend an unnecessary, disgustingly embarrassing amount of time tormenting myself over which one of these containers to use. We've got this guy right here, which is beautiful, taller. It'll be easier to plant everything up in it. This one right here, which is just, I think, a classic shallow blue bowl. It's nice, it's very nice. I like it a lot. And I think that these will look good in either one. Maybe I'll just plant up both of them. Well, except probably not. I had a purpose for these. One was supposed to be going in this planter right here. Then another one was supposed to be going over there. And then they showed up and they were so stinking cute and little that I was like, no, no, no, I want one right here, front and center. Right there, smack dab in the middle of the table. That's where it needs to be. I don't really have a spot to put another one. I could just do one in the middle of the table. Downside to a container this size. Heliconias, they don't respond that well to having their roots messed with. They, actually, okay, let me correct on that. If you have patience, then you can mess with their roots quite a bit. Their rhizomes regenerate fairly well as long as things are nice and warm for them. But once they have a lot of space to grow, they'll utilize that space generally until they hit about the edge of their pot and then they'll start flowering. That's not all Heliconias. I'm mostly talking about the Siderochorum types, which are these parrot beak Heliconias. The Chacoaniana is one of those parrot beak types. Probably the most common one you'll find. Andromeda is also really common. Lady Di is another popular one. There are some awesome varieties out there, but these are ones you're most likely to find. So if I mess with the roots too much, I'm probably gonna sacrifice flowering for a while. But that's just kinda standard plant stuff, right? Not necessarily. It doesn't have to be that way. If I put it in this bowl, I'm gonna have to really, really hack at these roots to bring this down low enough to fit in there. So that's probably just not a great idea. Although I think it would look really nice. I feel like this bowl is more appropriately sized for the table too. But no, that's not a good idea. You can see this one, I won't have to take as much off the roots to get them down in there. And one of these felt like it didn't have a ton going on at the bottom. Which one was it? This one over here? You can see there's an indentation here. Yeah, this one, this might be a good candidate. Cause I don't feel much going on down here. Feels like there's a lot of soil there, but you know, it only takes a few pieces of rhizome to be down there for it to not fit. I think that would be ideal. The reason this pot has this pole in the middle is because this is a homemade umbrella planter, but I can just do that. Boom, now it's a pot again. A regular pot that I should probably find a piece of screen for, cause that's a really big gaping hole. Yeah, I'll find a piece of screen to put in there. I think we give this one a try in here. First, let's take it over to the Gorilla Cart and see how much of that soil will come off. It's possible that I won't end up doing any of this. It'll be a total waste of our time here, but I'll leave it in the video. Sometimes people just enjoy the process of me torturing myself with the logistics of things. Let's see. Yeah, okay. See, it's got roots all the way down to the bottom. It was just softer than the other pot. That's okay though. There's still enough soil in here that I think I can loosen this up. It doesn't have to come down very much. I only have to take off a little bit. I can make this work. All right, I came in and I loosened up a lot just from the inside, just very gently went at it while soil fell out. I'll grab that pot and see if that was enough. Oh, no, no, no. I don't think that's gonna be anywhere near enough, but you can see. Oh, actually, it would be good if I could take off a little bit more, but if not, I could live with that. Just need to top dress it. I think it would look better to top dress this anyways. Okay, I found some screen. That's definitely gonna be big enough. I also have these guys right here. I don't think that's going to be large enough and it's gonna get in the way, but it's the same thing. It's just a plastic cone that you put in the center. Keeps the roots up and out from going down into the hole and clogging it up. These are actually nifty, but I, for some reason, never use them. I have a whole bunch of them and I never, oh, my microphone went over there. I'm sorry. How terrible was that audio? Jeez. I will quickly repeat. This screen right here, fine. I have this guy right here, not big enough. These are nice though because they keep the roots from going down and getting into your drainage holes. At least they help slow it down. Pack that in right there. Okay. Then, as I'm doing this, let's think about gravel options. I'm gonna want to fill this in with something around the top. And here's where things get a little bit more screwy. So I talked about how, for the best flowering, these guys need to be developed into their containers. This is developed into its container. That's why it's been flowering so well at such a small size. These Chaconianas oftentimes don't flower until they're 24, 30 inches tall, but they're perfectly capable of flowering at only eight inches to a foot, as long as they've got the right amount of sun nutrition. You know, they're happy, essentially, and they're compacted. They're mature in their root system. So if I put this in here, just as is, like this, then it's gonna spread out to the sides and then bloom, and I don't want that. I have a look that I'm gonna go for here, and I can't keep this in there. It's too tall. That's not a big deal. I could trim it, but I want this to have some room to grow. This pot right here, and it's a little bit too big, but I'm thinking I'm gonna come in here and just cut this down the sides like that, and then go around it and just make a barrier for those roots like this, and I can just wrap that up around. So it doesn't have to be very deep either, just a small barrier. Once it touches up against something, then it should bloom. So I can put that in and make it a little bit smaller. So it's basically just a little bit bigger than this container. Not much, though. So we have a ring of gravel around here, and, well, it'll look dumb if that's in there, and it won't flower, it's best if. You get it, right? There we go. So you see that? So I'm giving it some room, but not so much that it'll grow all the way up to the side, and that way I can maintain those nice edges, and I could probably even just punch this down into the soil after I fill it up, but I'm right here. You know, I can just hold it in place, too, if that works. Have to shimmy it around some. I'm using one hand to pinch it, because I didn't feel like grabbing a staple or tape to hold it into the size, but that should stay put right there. I think that'll be good. Push it down some. I don't want it sticking up either. I think that'd look dumb. We don't wanna be able to see that plastic. This is an all-purpose potting mix. It's actually a combination of potting mix that have fallen out from other things I've been potting them up, and, you know, it holds on to moisture. That's all the Heliconia wants. All right, that's pretty good. You can see the plastic in there just a little bit, but not much. I think we got some gravel to top dress this, and, oh, I think that'll look really good. Okay, and then as far as top dressing it goes, I think I'm just gonna use some of these dark stones. I really kinda want to do white on top of this, but, well, I already have these. The white stones I have are huge. Although, I don't think I have enough of these. This is all they had as a Dollar Tree. I don't think that's gonna be enough. I could do half black, half white. That might be cool. I have a ton of seashells in the garden. Think I might go grab a bucket and start scavenging seashells. That'd be cute, top dress this with shells. Okay, I spent like five minutes picking through the garden. This is what I got. They'll need some rinsing, but I think it'll do the trick. This also needs to be done not just for aesthetics, but because the soil in here is mounted slightly high. Pardon that noise. That's probably obnoxious. Maybe I should just do a before and after with the shells on top. This is gonna help keep the soil from washing out when I water it. Yeah, see, so that's going to help hold that soil in place. I'm going to water this without making a huge mess all over the table. Now, earlier I said when I was piling this up about the moisture things, like they don't really ask for much more than that or that's all they, that's not, that was a gross understatement. Heliconias do want a lot more than just moisture retaining soil. They are organic hogs. So if you can give them a really organically rich mix, add some bone meal, some sea kelp, manure, whatever you want, but just keep it organically rich, moisture retentive, and while draining, the warmer your climate, the less it needs to drain. I know that sounds weird, but that's the truth. They can take boggy conditions if it's really warm. Like, you know, I'm talking like very, very, very tropical. Maybe you live in Thailand, something like that. You can grow these pond side even, but in a container may as well just have the drainage. That's cleaned up very nicely, hasn't it? I like it. With the container, it already has a marine vibe to it. So I think the shells are fitting to have on top. That's Gorilla Glue. I can't get it off. I don't know what to do. Maybe just take a flat blade, a flat edge razor, gently try and scrape that off of there. Yeah. Yeah, I like this. I like it a lot. I think that's beautiful. One thing about it though, is that it is large for a centerpiece on the table. Oh, the sun. That's just, that's great. That looks beautiful, doesn't it? There we go. You can see that better, right? Yes? So I mean, so you can't see the person across from you. Maybe this won't be staying here, but for right now, I'm good with it. And this will look good, even if I do have to set it down on the ground somewhere over there by the hot tub. My main thing is that I wanted it to just have this perfectly round clump of plants coming up out of the middle and flowering with a nice edge on it. And these will have about another inch and a half to two inches to grow. And they'll hit that piece of plastic and come on up. I tried to get the plastic as close as I could to being the right size, but there are some spots where it's up higher than others and it might push some growth over. That's okay if they do that. The main thing was just, I want them to feel restricted. I know it's a weird thing to say because you don't want our plants to feel restricted, but with the Heliconias, you get the best flowering when they've filled in their containers. I don't want this to fill in this big container, I want it to fill in a smaller space. You get it, right? All right, hey, that was fun. Let's move on. I still want to plant that one up, but I think we'll do something different with it. Not drastically different, but obviously the Heliconia is not gonna fit in one of those. I'd have to take a ton off the roots. Okay, now the next bowl should be easier. Should, you know how that goes. Sometimes you get creative and then everything just goes to hell. So with this bowl, when I decided I wasn't gonna put the Heliconia in it, I thought, you know what would look great in here would be just a Bromeliad, just a single Bromeliad. It's run by a nice dark rock. Then I went to grab the Bromeliad, it's over there behind Turbo's head. There it is. And that thing, it's absolutely covered in spiders. Everywhere, spiders all over. Tiny little baby ones. So that's good. Habitat for spiders, wonderful. It's also grown an awful lot. It's a really pretty Bromeliad. Zoom in on it right there. So I mean, Turbo's head doesn't block it. It was a little guy when I bought it several months ago, but it has grown quite a bit. So I don't, I don't think it's the best fit for this, but I'm just putting it out there that I think that a bowl, a simple bowl with one Bromeliad and just a nice gravel around the top, it just looks beautiful. A wonderful, I don't know, I guess you can call it a, yeah, use it as a centerpiece, right? Heck, why not? Call it a centerpiece. So I'm thinking I'm gonna go with this Curcuma here, which is just an awesome ornamental. This is the, whatever kind, I can't remember. The Siam Tulip, what they're usually called. Longito, Longitofolia. I can never say it right. It's one of the really easy ones. You can see they have this pretty purple inflorescence on there. Both of these are old, but they'll put up some new ones here fairly soon, sooner than later, get it repotted. And this isn't one that should spread like that Heliconia. I mean, it will eventually, like over many, many, many months, but right now in this little pot for a single growing season, I don't think that it's going to do that, but I have to figure out if, yeah, okay. So nevermind, this is not gonna work. Do you see that? That's a lot of roots. And they go all the way down to the bottom of the pot. That's not gonna work. It would just destroy the plant trying to loosen it up. If it were roots up here and not down there, different story, but I don't know. I think that I would lose a lot of the integrity of the plant. It'll just become a big floppy thing. These plants, they grow from bulb, corn really. And then they put out little objects. Oh, there we go. See, there's some babies right there. They'll pluck those and move them up and they will grow. But in a container this shallow, I just don't think that's gonna work. I do have another one of these bromeliads over here that's in a spot where it's getting some more sun. So it doesn't look quite as nice, but I bet it doesn't have all the spiders on it. Oh yeah, you know what? This'll be fine. It doesn't look quite as nice as the other one because it's gotten some sun. So it's a lighter green, but it's much cleaner and tighter than the other one. Gross is more compact and it's not covered in spiders. So that's good. See, there we go. Isn't that nice? I like that. If I had a type that was more upright with a really pretty inflorescence, I think that'd be nice. This is, I think it's some sort of neoregelia. They hold their flowers down in the center. So they're not really gonna grow as far as, although you can see the inflorescence in the middle and it's nice, some little purple flowers. But you know what I'm saying? There are some that maybe if that's your thing, you want bigger flowers and that's what I would go for. Me, I'm just using what I have here. I'm filling in with big black stones. Yeah, look at that. It doesn't get much easier than this. I didn't film the potting because I just stuck it in here and backfilled it with all-purpose potting mix, one that's extremely porous. And that's it. So you didn't miss anything there. There's a drainage hole in the bottom and then capped it off with some nice, smooth, shiny stones. I didn't even use the ones that I had from the dollar store because I had these in my garage. I was like, hey, these are fine. Yeah, moss, I think also would look absolutely beautiful in here. You can do the different tones of moss for the big balls of moss, big moss clumps. I need to stop punching my camera while I'm talking. Lots of options, very easy. And now living centerpiece. Next thing with the bromeliad is this thing right here. This is going to live for a very long time and be pretty low fuss. Bromeliads tend to last a really long time. Now to the Heliconia planter, it has actually been about a week and a half since I planted that one up. And I've had some moments to reflect on some things, really just one main thing that I didn't mention that I probably should have. If you're making a barrier, like I did where I cut that pot so that there's something for its roots to hit up against the sides of, pay close attention to making sure that barrier does go to the bottom of the container depending on the size of your pot. This pot is maybe, I don't know, what is that, four inches probably? Four and a half, maybe five inches high. So that's plenty shallow enough for the roots of this to go right underneath that piece of plastic that I cut to go in there. So there are some spots where I was pretty sloppy with that cut, so there might be some growths that end up popping up outside of that barrier. Hopefully not, but I can see it happening. And just so you can see how quickly these guys do spread. See that? It's only been, what, about a week and a half. We've got a new growth coming up right there, and another one back over there. There's probably some more that are gonna pop up over there. But the good news is they're right at the edge of that plastic barrier. I don't think they're gonna jump through it, but they might, and if they do, I'll just prune them back. Not that big a deal. So just, you know, do better than me and make sure that you actually fit that to the size of your container, as if you were trying to do something like this, then that would be a way to do it, because heliconias, they want to fill in their containers. That was the whole point of all of that, is that heliconias like to fill the space that they're in. So if you wanna have something with a nice edge on it, or you wanna have trailers and things like that, I've learned to keep the heliconia in a separate pot. And just plant that inside the pot with your other annuals or trailers, whatever else it is that you have in the mix. Keep it separate. That way, the heliconias get that nice growth, because they hit the edges of containers, they go, boop, they grow up, and they flower, and everything else isn't gonna get smothered by the heliconia just crawling all over it and smothering it out. Not something you have to worry about with that bromeliad over there. Hey, thanks for hanging out. It was a, you know, big old nothing burger, but I just felt like putting together a couple little planters. Thought I'd bring y'all along, hope everybody's doing well. What are some activities, some things you like to do in your gardens if you do little centerpieces, you just like to have little accent planters around? Let us know. Comment down below. Say hi, I love talking to everybody. And of course, as always, and most importantly, everybody, keep on growing. Bye, bye.