Hello friends welcome to Gardening with Creekside today Brynna and I are going to be doing a little
bit of the facelift to this flower bed behind me we have been in this bed I think twice this year
already and this was not uh a great success this year you know that I am all about just keeping it
real with you and showing you my successes and as one of you said in your country you call it
successes and messes which I love that so this bed was definitely a mess especially
in the sense of the annuals this flower bed is right alongside our driveway so it really is
the first bed that you're going to see when you're coming to the house it has a mixture of some great
shrubs in there and then this year we added more a lot more annuals so i had caladiums in here
they are still in here the purple fountain grass i had supertunia vista jazzberry gumprina
and then the new purple queen that will be out next year in 2023 we are struggling with this
bed to try to figure out the exact growing conditions on it because it seems to be ever
changing every single year this bed is right alongside the wood line and these obviously the
trees are going to grow and have continued to grow and get nice and tall and thick and full
and they are providing probably more shade in this flower bed than what we originally thought or what
we originally had which was three or four years ago so you have that trees are getting bigger
providing more shade and their surface roots are coming out when we planted with the annuals we
found a lot of the surface roots even though we have really good irrigation in here it just
something's just not right either the plants aren't getting enough water
i don't know what's going on so we got to do we've got to do a little problem solving and thinking
and really kind of re-evaluating this whole entire flower bed i do know that this winter jerry and i
want to come in here and thin out some trees and just because there's a beautiful section of woods
behind this that have some huge mature oak trees and pine trees so we want to kind of get all the
understory out get the little scraggly trees out so that the big trees can grow and then plant that
area back there as a woodland forest so there's a lot going on all that to say is i couldn't
handle it i ripped all the annuals out minus the caladiums i left the caladiums in they're doing so
so they're not on irrigation just because when i planted them the irrigation was already in place
so they're not necessarily on irrigation so what we're going to do is come in and add some
gorgeous bright coleus that's going to take us from summer into fall if you have seen our any
of our recent videos when i've done like a nursery tour you will know that we had some coleus left
over from our spring summer spring early summer sales and jerry went through with the uh hedge
trimmer and just whacked them all off because they had gotten really tall they had flushed out
fantastically well and when we were in the nursery uh the greenhouse just the other day i said man
i am tempted to use these babies somewhere in a container or something in the garden
well i just went through and took all of the fantastic color blaze royale pineapple brandy
this is one of my fav i can't say that i love this coleus because it has uh really gorgeous
lime green chartreuse colors on it has a gorgeous kind of a red edge to it and even the stems
will have a little bit of red to them this will take me from the end of summer here we are
end of august middle end of august and it will go all the way through a hard freeze i also
like the pineapple because of its color this will bring some brightness to this bed because
the woods are right here obviously the woods are darker we need something that really pops
i was going to use wicked witch and then put some lemon coral sedum underneath it when i went to go
grab the wicked witch i saw the pineapple randy and i was like yep that is what we're going to do
so i have 28 plants they are the grande containers they are ready to get out of these pots brenna is
sitting here beside of me anxiously awaiting 28 pots coming her way if you're familiar with
brenda she does know that she gets the empty pots and has the best time playing with them
i'm gonna fill in really this area right here i'm gonna concentrate my color here i'm not gonna
go all the way down the bed that's just just a little bit more than i want to do and just to give
me a nice big solid pop of color in this pocket right here and then the rest of it will be fine
then come this winter really we will seriously reevaluate this bed do we put perennials in here
do we put more shrubs do we want to put annuals in here if so we've got to figure out exactly what's
the best method for making sure that they flourish in this space i've got my power planter auger and
since i am using all of the same plant i'm not going to place them out i'm just going to use my
power planter and aug my holes they are i've got this is the five inch con drill bit on it will be
perfect for these grande containers and then i've got the proven winter's time release fertilizer
that's what i'll use so i'll shake it down in the bottom of the hole and then come in and put all
the pineapple brandies in there so i am going to start grabbing the drill and drilling some holes
all right my friends so i have got all of the holes dug and while i was digging the holes i
realized that this soil was absolutely bone dry even though we have got the extensive amount
of drip tube in here i mean just this is red clay and look how dry it is just crazy so we have
a new member of the creekside family josh and josh has years and years experience running his
own business landscape jobs company lawn care is super familiar knows irrigation inside and
out and he had already done a little bit of the diagnostic on the whole irrigation system and
he knew that this bed was not working correctly so when i realized how extremely dry this was
i ran up and got him and to show him so for now for this season the rest of this season
we're simply just going to bump up the amount of time that this zone runs and then come this
winter he's got a whole new plan where we're going to completely revamp this bed and the irrigation
so that it has more pressure because this one zone currently is this bed all the way down the
tree line and including hydrangea hill so the water comes it's just not at a nice forceful
rate and flow so there's not enough pressure he's got the whole thing figured out whenever
we do that of course we'll take you along for that ride but it's not going to be anytime soon
so for now that is what we're going to do now all i need to do is the holes are all drilled
somebody got onto me one time and they're like og is not a word and i was like well
it is in my vocabulary i'm using an auger to do a hole therefore i just made up a new word
yes technically i am drilling a hole brenda's very excited i don't know if she's in the shot here
we go you ready one two three and she's gone um the holes are there i tell you when i was
after i did it it looked like i had been attacked by a gopher because i had all these little mounds
these pineapple brandies are very root bound because they have been in those grande pots for
quite a long time not a problem that's i'm just going to use my hori hori to break them up
really simple just probably love annuals plop them in bring back the soil and boom
you can throw some annuals in the ground super fast when you are um just knocking it out bruno
is going to be an extremely happy dog because i've got 28 i've got 28 grande pots for her to come
and attack and destroy i just need to teach her how to uh pick up her all her mini little pieces
that she's going to have so that i don't have to go clean up after her one thing at a time though
so i'm just going to sit here break up these rope roots get them out of their pots get them
into the ground make sure if i can move the irrigation so that they are getting their
water i will do that and otherwise i think we'll be done with this project for today
today's project is now complete and i know maybe right now it's not so impressive
uh because well the plants you know they're not gorgeous and huge and it's not full it's
not a ta-da moment it's not like the big reveal i fully expect in the next couple of weeks that we
will have that big ta-dah factor with these pineapple brandy coleus i am an optimist at
heart i think most gardeners are i think that's part of the culture of gardening right i mean
you have to be an optimist when you're a gardener because whether you plant seeds in the ground and
you have that hope that they're going to come forth and give you great beauty or you plant
a an annual or some sort of plant that is less than perfect but you know what it can be and so
in this little area it's going to bring me a nice big pop of color the pineapple brandy too
is sun to shade right now we're almost at noon in the day clearly it is still in the shade
because the sun does come up and we as i said before these trees are getting bigger and their
their branches are overhanging and keeping the sun from hitting these plants earlier in
the day however as soon as it gets past this tree line then it will be in the full sun for
the rest of the day i know right now it's in the shade but that's the great thing about the
these coleuses is that they can do sun or shade when i was in there digging my holes the
irrigation clearly was working because i looked down and i have like mud splattered on me i have
no idea where that came from i tend to get quite filthy when i am gardening i did try to check my
face to make sure i didn't have mud all over my face i think i'm okay but again pineapple brandy
in here i expect it to get nice and full will it reach its full potential by you know october no
it won't will it be nice and healthy and bushy that is the goal with the water running an hour
per day because we need to have it nice and clearly i think it was set for like 30 minutes and
that was not enough whatsoever the time release fertilizer in the hole and then i can come back
through and use the water soluble fertilizer once a week on that on these guys and that will
certainly help give everybody a nice jump start and they should do just fine so don't be afraid
to go in there and if something's not working rip it out try something new uh these coleuses
were like i said left over from the spring they've been sitting there nobody's bought them
and so i was like you know what i am not going to let them go to waste i am going to use them
plop them in the ground and enjoy them we still have other coleuses left so if you're interested
in it come see us and they're still on that buy one get one free special all that to say
thank you so much for joining the creekside y'all have a great day see in the next video bye friends