the end of summer is rapidly approaching and i have gone ahead and decided i am
going to say goodbye to the summer aquapots
and hello to the fall aquapots join me as i show you how i created these
gorgeous self-watering container planters stay tuned
hey friends welcome to gardening with creekside i am jenny and today we are
back here at the pergola with these massive
gorgeous aquapots um if you remember back in the spring
we planted these for our spring summer display
here at creekside nursery and end of summer has come upon us and we
are ready to move into more of a fallish planting
so jerry and i have already emptied the aquapots with that vertigo
grass and the diamond mountain euphorbia sweet potato vine
and the supertunia vistas as you can see that vertigo grass was absolutely
insane it is by far one of the most vigorous annual grasses that proven
winters has vertigo is a gorgeous that deep purple
color those nice wide blades but it can get four to eight
feet tall easily and then when you put it in a
self-watering container it is just an absolute heaven you could
clearly see how massive that root system was
took over the whole entire bottom of the aquapot
now you might be thinking jenny that's an aqua pot self-watering container
but those plants looked awful and they were so dry what did you do or do these
pots not work no the pots worked great i intentionally
let them run dry because i knew we were going to be
pulling out that summer planting and putting in
the new fall planting and i needed it to be as
light as possible of course wet dirt weighs a whole lot more than dry dirt
so i have intentionally not watered these aquapots probably for the last
three weeks so the dirt was nice and dry and they came out
as easy as they possibly could now what are we going to do for the fall
before i even get too far into what we're going to be planting
in this aquapot i am going to go ahead and say
we are in north carolina we are a zone 7b
our winters the last two years have been very mild however
we can have some really cold snaps during winter time
a couple years ago we had a week of like 10 degree nights
and it was extremely cold i am not going to risk
my aqua pots cracking if we have an extreme
cold snap so probably end of november going into december around that time
based on the weather we will empty these aquapots once again
for the whole duration of the winter completely empty them and then turn them
upside down here at the pergola i don't mind that
these planters will be empty we don't have a massive amount of
traffic here at the nursery in wintertime winter is a
time of rest for me it is a time of rest in the garden
and so these containers will get a rest also
so this is just know that this is going to be a temporary
planting in these aqua pots we're going to plant a tree
and three shrubs in the aqua pot now as the annuals
they're done we're tossing them they're going to compost pile end of story
these guys obviously we are not going to toss these when we are finished with
them so we'll recycle them and put them back in the landscape somewhere else
beside me this is an absolutely gorgeous emerald
green spire spiral so it is an emerald green
arborvitae tree that has been pruned and shaped into the
spiral form this is going to be our main centerpiece
of the aquapot then i am going to surround it with two
loropetalums this sweet little thing right here
is jazz hands mini from proven winners this is perhaps one of
the absolute most petite loropetalums that there is on the
market she is only going to get about one foot tall
but she's gonna get three feet wide so you can already tell with her habit
that she has kind of that spilling effect so she is going to be my
spiller in this container we're actually going to do
two of them and they will be flanking the emerald green arborvitae on each
side then for the center we are going to do and this is a fun
little wink and nod nudge to fall because if you're familiar
with this this is a spirea spireas are gorgeous
they do beautiful spring flowers but you know what the name of this is
candy corn so how appropriate that we're gonna put
candy corn into the fall container now candy corn
gets its name because it has really kind of
three colors to it that great chartreuse lime green
then the tips will be almost a have a red hue to them they will have
that great little orange tip just like the candy corn that we either
love or hate it's so funny to talk to people they
either love candy corn like the candy or they hate it now
everybody loves this candy corn spirea so
what we're going to do is go ahead and get her planted jerry and i when we
cleaned out the aqua pots this is going to be fun because you're
going to see me wrestle this tree hopefully she'll come out so this is in
just so you know this is in a this is a seven gallon container so this is
we get it from a great wholesale supplier
and i might actually have to have jerry come help me get out of the pot
maybe we'll see we'll see how root bound she is
oh she's not bad all right so she is in now we just gotta get her straight
there we go we're getting there
does that look straight got a check her
i did a good job all right so i'm going to kind of
jeuge up the root ball system here just a little bit
give me some more room because all of my shrubs i'm putting three shrubs in here
and they are all three gallons we have filled
the aquapot back with brand new soil it's very important i preach this all
the time to y'all when you are putting in
a new container do not recycle your soil you want to empty your pot completely
and start with brand new soil because
we didn't have an option on these aqua pots
but because the vertigo grass to call the soil
but what you want to do is always have new soil
we're going to squeeze oh
wasn't enough dirt there
so this is the dance you do with the pot do i have too much soil
not enough you want your plants whether they're going to be annuals
perennials or you're actually putting in shrubs
you want them to be right below the lip of the container
so that way when it rains or you water it it's not a self-watering container
the water doesn't overflow so we got one in
now i'm going to need some more soil here
when you're doing your pots you always want to fill in
any little gaps around your root balls again whether
they're annuals perennials shrubs you don't want any
holes in around your roots because the roots need the soil for the
water and the nutrition
so get her in here just right work the root ball a little bit
the roots are nice and well formed at the bottom i just have loose soil on the
top so we're going to knock that back into
the aqua pot here
get everybody jeugged in here trying to get the root balls
to play nicely with one another
while jenny makes a mess because you know
it's not gardening till you make a mess and get dirty
all right so
candy corn it's gonna go in make some room for the root ball
okay so let's see what this root ball looks like
we're getting there
and you don't have to be too delicate with your
not too i mean you know you don't want to go in there and destroy them
the plants are pretty tough so you can you can manhandle them a little bit
all right you take a look at it all right so what i'm going to do is
because i know i've got some holes in here i'm going to fill in
my holes around the root balls with some good soil so they have lots of good
soil around them to soak up food and water
not bad i'm very happy with that now i know this is a completely different
planting than what i normally do because normally you know it's all about
flowers and flower power and all of that but this is a great example of how
you can use a container there's not one flower on here
if you were to leave it year round late spring the laura pedulums would put on
hot pink blooms so would the candy corn spirea but
that's all right you do not have to have flowers in order to have a gorgeous
container so i am very happy with this we're gonna
go ahead and get the other one planted and then we'll get everybody watered in
they're all planted so both aquapots are planted with
their new fall shrubs and trees so we're gonna get them watered in
obviously watering is a very important job
plays an important role so we're gonna get these watered in from
the top down first then
we will fill it up from the reservoir
okay so you notice that i watered from the top down
on these aqua pots that is a lot of dry soil that is in there
so you really need to get that nice and saturated
so that the whole wicking system with the
self-watering container part works and that these poor shrubs don't fry
in the heat of this very end of august so
when jack barnwell was designing the aqua pots
he was quite genius because the little water spout is the exact same
diameter as your hose so the hose fits perfectly down into
the water spout so we're going to do is just stick this in the water spout
we're gonna fill it up until water squirts out the little overflow
hole in the back obviously these are massive aqua pots so it's gonna take a
couple minutes to fill this bad boy up
both aqua pots are fully watered so now
we just have to sit back and enjoy the beauty you will notice
probably when i was planting these plants i did not add any kind of
fertilizer to the soil there's two reasons for that mainly one
these are trees and shrubs they are not going to be enormous
feeders they are not like your annuals where they need lots of food
to sustain themselves perennials trees shrubs really can only just go once a
year and get fertilized in the spring so that's one reason why i
didn't fertilize them two we use that espoma potting soil and it is
chocked full of all sorts of wonder wonderful nutrients so they will get
some food from that great potting soil again this is not a long-term planting
for me this is going to last maybe at the absolute max three months
and that's and i'm pushing it then because of the cold weather so that is
why i did not fertilize these if you did an
arrangement like this in a container that was going to stay
year round you could use a great slow release fertilizer like plant-tone
once a year on them to feed them and that would suffice
perfectly but everybody's watered in new home they look great the new fresh
entrance here to the pergola at creekside nursery i'm very happy with
these i hope this has been fun entertaining giving you some ideas
to think outside the box of when you are creating containers you don't always
have to use just flowers please make sure that you
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bye friends