Well hello friends welcome to Gardening with Creekside today we have a very fun project we
are down here on the shrub lot but we are actually going to be planting the water trough at the barn
you remember we've we've had this water trough it's a livestock water trough that we've had for
three or four years now we've had it for quite a while I actually saw the idea on a Facebook
gardening page and I said oh my gosh I love that so we have had it filled with all sorts of
beautiful summer annuals well now that October is right here it is time to say goodbye to the
summer annuals and say hello to some fall winter early spring interest we are going to switch it up
this year and I am actually going to plant some trees and shrubs and some fall color with some
violas maybe some Kale's cabbages don't really know exactly how this design is going to turn
out we're just going to figure it out together I do know that this water trough in this winter
time gets a good amount of sun especially early in the morning so it'll get that five to six hours of
First morning daylight Sun but it gets a break in the afternoon so we are going to have fun
planting some of these fuja green Giants Lucia green Giants are gorgeous Evergreens that do
really really well here in North Carolina but they get massive I mean they can get like 20
feet wide at the bottom and 30 feet tall this is going to be a temporary planting come springtime
we will dig these out of the container the water trough move them up to a larger sized
pot right now this is a two gallon I think I mean we'll move it up to like a three gallon
um it is a three gallon Jerry says he's behind the camera he's giving me uh hand signals so this is a
three gallon so maybe we'll move it up to like a five gallon or a seven gallon or yes he's holding
up seven fingers so we're gonna go with seven I really should get him miked up on videos like this
because I think y'all would find it an absolute scream to hear his uh commentary from behind the
camera so we'll move it up I'm gonna grab three of these because I think three across the back will
be great these currently are I don't know two and a half three feet tall so it'll be really fun and
then we're gonna grab some fire chief arborvites and then we're gonna stick those in there really
fun really informal you're just going to kind of come spend some time with us as we plant up this
water trough I will say that the water trough is in full full sun right now um so we're going to
do the best we can dealing with the sun I will have my handy dandy sunglasses on so without
further Ado let's just load up some of these green Giants and we'll grab the fire cheese as we go by
foreign
so here we are standing in front of the barn next to the water trough in the full glorious sun it's
amazing to me that I can wear jeans and a sweater and not be sweating with my hair down you all
know that is rare around here now give you some specifications here on the water trough because
every time we talk about the water trough these are some common questions that always get asked
this is the largest size of the water tank that we could get Jerry just went down to our local
Feed and Seed just you know 10 minutes down the road and grabbed this it has a drain hole about
an inch or two above the bottom in the very back we left that open we did not drill holes into
the bottom of this trough because we do have that drain hole in the back and it's okay if the bottom
inch is really really saturated because the rest of the soil will soak that up let's see we filled
it completely up with potting soil the very first time we did not put pine cones or water bottles or
firewood or anything in the bottom it is filled from top to bottom with potting soil now do we
have to replace all of this every single time we plant no absolutely not but what happens is like
when the fall the summer annuals got pulled out my soil level got pulled down to here because of the
roots right so when you pull the plant out there's all that soil that is attached to it so we lose
the soil that way and then when we have soil that has lots of roots in it we take that out before
we started filming Jerry and I put about I don't know about maybe five four to five bags of potting
soil and compost back on top top dressed it so you can see we've got beautiful healthy fresh soil for
these plants to grow in typically I don't do this step but I am going to do this step because we're
going to have these plants in here um growing over the winter I am going to go ahead and throw in
some biotone I'm just going to sprinkle it on the top that way as we are planting these shrubs and
annuals it will all get mixed in biotone of course is that great starter fertilizer we use it every
time we plant trees shrubs perennials typically I won't use it a lot with my annuals not to say that
you can't it's just that sometimes I just choose not to so but I did have a viewer say that she
uses Olaf the biotone with her violas and pansies and she has noticed a massive difference in them
and that really speaks to it because the biotone is for your Healthy root growth and especially
with your annuals coming in in the fall if you can get them really well established before the
cold hits then they will do much better so I accidentally dumped some a little extra right
there so we'll just judge it around and everything will be fine now okay so what I'm thinking is with
these green Giants of course um they are nice and tough so I can just I can manhandle them
um get them in here these are going to be my height and one in the center because make sure
this door yeah the door is open all the way so I want to because I am that crazy person
my tallest one will go straight in the center of the door when it is opened and then we
will have a green giant on each side now do I expect to see a ton of growth in these trees
this you know winter this growing season no I'm doing this as a temporary to give me beautiful
green structure and height in this bed because that's the thing about this water trough is it
does sit right in front of the barn and our barn is huge therefore I need a big container
with big big impact otherwise it just looks lost and Dinky and that is not what I want
um so here we go and then my thought process is with the fire chiefs that they're going to go
here now if you're not familiar with Fire Chiefs these are really fun plants they um have in the
summertime they are a beautiful green and they will have a little bit of kind of that bronzy
coppery look on the top and as the temperatures go down this whole entire outside will turn that
beautiful burgundy coppery Brown look the plant is not dead it is very healthy it is a very soft
shrub you can easily rub your hands over it but it is a certain look for some people right um I
know I know our buddy Josh who works with us he's like I don't like this plant in the wintertime it
looks dead he loves it in the summertime but in the winter time because it has that copper look
all over it he said it looks like it's dead you know it's not dead because if it were dead this
would just be falling off into your hands and it's not that is why it's called a fire chief and that
is why I chose it to go in here because when it does have that different copper look it will
really pop against these green Giants so we're going to start with the shrubs trees get them in
the container and then once they're in then we're going to come back and we're going to pop in I've
got the violas I've got some cabbage and I've got some kale to really kind of fill in and give me
lots of fun so I'm going to get these in the in the water trough and then we'll go from there
foreign
so all of my trees and my shrubs are in and I'm telling you just like that I mean look at
that that is really fun and lots of fun colors textures Heights I love it now obviously there
are some holes in there that we are going to fill in when we were over at the nursery the greenhouse
I grabbed two different I got a kale well two different kinds of kale so the first one is an
upright really kind of the fine texture what we think of the kale and so this is peacock White
really kind of fun uh grayish bluish color to it now you'll notice that we have one of the stalks
on the bottom that's looking sad your kales your cabbages your mustards they're going to do that
so just simply go in there and pull it off you're going to do this kind of routinely throughout the
growing season because it's continually putting out new growth and the old growth kind of Fades
away and looks a little sad so just go in there and pinch It Off I'm going to use two of these
and I'm going to flank them on each side of one beside on the left with the Green Giant
and then one on the right now the other kale that we have this is Nagoya Rose kind of that typical
what we think of like in the the fall texture it's going to be nice and flat and it's going
to have with the cooler temperatures the center is going to get a beautiful kind of
that pinky color this is not going to be hot this is going to be low and wide we're going
to do something a little different now you know that typically I tend to plant
um like for longevity right and a little sparsely well because this is going to be a fall into
winter we're not going to have like massive growth so we're really going to kind of pack this in and
do this a little different I'm going to put three of these babies right here in the center between
the fire chiefs switch them around here try to put the smaller one in the center so that gives me a
lot of different kind of colored differences texture differences have that Center of that
um Nagoya rose right here in the middle then we're going to grab the other peacock white put it right
there and then I have my holes where I'm going to fill in with the violas now the violas that
I chose today are a great blend of some yellows oranges and whites this is color Max lemon Splash
so we're just going to fit do the kales first come back and fill in with these violas and
just really Jam pack it in here because this is one of those containers that I want it to
look full and nice right away so yeah without further Ado just get these babies in the soil
thank you
foreign
so we have got the water trough all planted and I have to say I am pretty proud with how this thing
has turned out again this is definitely going to go for us for fall into winter and into spring so
that way this spring when I have my summer annuals that I am ready to put in this will be doing great
everything is going like my my green Giants and my arborvitaes again we'll just repot up into a
bigger container and then use them elsewhere in the landscape so this is not a waste it is just
a different way of using some trees and shrubs in the meantime and then of course the violas
and the kale just bring a whole different kind of textures and colors to it lots of fun those
violas are going to fill in and even those these are not trailing violas they will spill over the
edge because they are so close to it but I love having that mix of the yellows and the oranges
and the creamy yellow is really really fun so you know think outside the box when you're doing your
fall containers this will really transition all the way through and even in the coldest
parts of the winter they will do great I know that my mama she doesn't buy a Christmas tree
she comes now she does have a perk because she is my mama but she borrows like our Emerald
Greens or our small green Giants and we'll use them as an outdoor Christmas tree so you could
easily like put lights on this during Christmas time or just in the wintertime in general and
it would be really fun so the whole point of this is when you get out there and you're creating you
know different containers or beds think outside the box have fun with it we'll if we put this
in the landscape would this be an arrangement that would last long term absolutely not does
it work in this container it absolutely does so remember gardening is supposed to
be fun get out there enjoy it create something beautiful that you enjoy in your garden and as
always we so appreciate you have fun out there my friends we'll see in the next video bye friends
so we need lots of good winter interest I am going to use
I have no idea who that was