did you know that fall is actually the best time to plant your shrubs
join me as I plant some of these gorgeous new french vanilla perennial hibiscus stay tuned
hey, friends welcome to gardening with creekside I am jenny, and today I am excited to share with you
a brand new shrub that is going to be introduced by proven winners in the spring of 2021. our
friends at walters gardens were kind enough to share these gorgeous shrubs with us so that we
could trial them this summer and see how we liked them well guess what we love them they have turned
out fantastic what am i talking about i am talking about the newest addition to the summerific
hibiscus series french vanilla french vanilla is going to be a new color introduction to the lime
because it is actually in the yellow family it is a nice creamy buttery yellow that has a nice red
center now neat little fact about french vanilla for you folks who are in the colder climates
it is going to be a more yellow flower for you than for us folks in the south in the hotter
climates it is going to be more of a white now who can grow this french vanilla just about anybody
because they are hardy in zones four to nine i know that we have talked about this summerific
series of hibiscus before and i have had lots of people say ginny really can they survive north
carolina winters i've never had a hibiscus survive the winter well the difference is is because they
have been planting tropical hibiscus those are not going to survive their winters here but
these hearty hibiscus absolutely will survive in our zone 7b climate again they are hardy to zone
4 which is extremely cold we're talking about getting close to canada so they have no problem
surviving here i love french vanilla first and foremost because it's just a beautiful flower
they are non-stop bloomers beginning in mid-summer all the way through the fall they are gonna be
about three and a half to four feet tall and about three feet wide so what we're doing here is we
have five of them and we are going to plant them interspersed between our formosa azaleas so this
area has been a little i wouldn't say problematic but it's been a little bit of a slow grower
because we didn't always have this space on irrigation so these azaleas have been kind of slow
and jerry in fact was like if these azaleas don't start performing they're out of here well we got
them on irrigation and they are covered in new growth so i have high hopes for them this spring
but these french vanillas will work perfectly in here because french vanilla hibiscus along with
all the summeristic hibiscus are going to be some of the last things to emerge from your garden so
don't freak out if you know they're not going to even come out of dormancy until for us here
in the south late april into may my azaleas are going to be blooming before that so the
azaleas will be putting on their show all their glory you know typically around easter time
once they start to be done then the french vanillas are going to come out of dormancy
they are rapid growers they can easily grow at least like an inch a day then they're going to
start blooming again like i said from midsummer into fall my azaleas will give them a gorgeous
background because they're going to be that nice dark green and then you have these full blooms of
the french vanilla so they are just a fantastic new addition new color to the summer vic series
so what we're going to do is we're going to get these guys planted and in the ground because
actually the fall is one of the perfect times to plant your perennials and your shrubs and
your trees in the ground because their roots will have plenty of time to get established
before the real heat of the summer hits so if you think is it too late for me to plant
no it's not too late we're finally getting into like the optimal time for you to plant
these great perennials shrubs and trees so don't fret you have still got plenty of time to get
these guys in the ground so we're going to show you exactly what to do and how to plant a shrub
do
so a little bit of how to plant a perennial shrub 101 when you're planting these guys
you want to make sure that your hole is wider than your container but not really a whole lot
deeper and you will notice that we are here with our gorgeous lovely north carolina red clay
the first hibiscus whole dug great the other one it's like digging in concrete this guy down here
not so bad so i stuck jerry with the problem hole but what we're going to do is we are going to use
the espoma biotone fertilizer we love biotone because it is a fertilizer specifically
to enhance the root growth of your plants so it has the mycorrhizae fungi in it which is a great
great um natural occurring substance fungus that really opens up the roots and allows
them to bring in more oxygen more water and more nutrients so we're going to use that
in the hole now i will tell you it does have a lovely smell it's all right just imagine it
being the smell of your plants being happy and growing now again you do not want your hole too
deep especially for us and with this red clay the red clay is great because it holds the nutrients
but it can also hold a lot of water so you do not want to put your shrubs in too
low because one of the fastest ways to kill your perennials trees and shrubs is planting them too
deep too much water and they actually drown so for our red clay we actually recommend you plant them
with your root ball just slightly above the soil level so you can tell me look at this this is red
hard clay we actually got three inches of rain last night so this ground is nice and damp
so it's nice and clotty also when you're planting your shrubs again especially with this clay soil
you do not want to amend the hole with compost you want to use as much of your native soil
as possible because it can happen it's called the bathtub effect and essentially what it is
is that when you amend the soil let's say we put a bunch of compost or a bunch of
potting soil in this hole that is going to soak up the water a whole lot faster
than what the surrounding red clay can absorb so that water is going to pull and be in that hole
and just soak up and hold all of that water we don't want that we want to have a nice even
distribution of our water because if it holds the water and it sits in water your roots are
going to rot and we don't want roti roots because if we have rotting roots we have a dead plant
so i'm just backfilling here with some mulch you will see right here
this is not my friend blackie this is actually an irrigation tube so we do have irrigation
in this bed because in the summertime this area absolutely bakes in the late afternoon sun so
right now i'm not going to put this on irrigation because we're going into fall winter really rainy
months in the spring i can come back tap in an irrigation line put it right here on the roots
and so in this hot of the summer she'll have water but right now i'm not going to worry about it
because he's hot we're ready to get these babies in the ground so
they're nice and snuggled in moving on jerry is not a gardener to mess around
he likes to get the job done and get out so he's a great help in the garden
do
i don't know if you've ever heard the saying that southern women they don't sweat
they just glisten and sparkle while i'm glistening and sparkling right now
it may be september but it's hotter than the heck and the humidity is higher than
i don't know what okay so what jerry's going to do behind me is we recently got some bags of the
espoma land and sea compost and there was a bag that was busted it's like oh what to do
so this is fantastic to top dress around your shrubs and perennials so what he is doing
is simply taking that compost and like remember like i said you don't want to mix it in just to
the hole because that could create that bathtub effect so what he's doing is what we call top
dressing he is just simply going around the top of the shrub in where the mulch is and putting
that compost down because it has all those great minerals and nutrients and all that fantastic
stuff in there that is really just food for these plants so even just by top dressing
mixing it into the mulch it will leach down to those roots and they will become very happy
so you don't have to amend just the hole that don't do that if you have the clay soil
just top dress your whole bed and you can work it into those first couple inches of your native soil
and you'll see just amazing fantastic results and if you do that on a continual basis like
twice a year spring and then late fall you will be amazed at how fast you see your soil improving its
conditions how many earthworms you get and just how happy your plants are going to be in general
but here we have these five french vanilla summeric hibiscus that are in the ground
they are clearly still just going strong and it is september we're going to enjoy this space so
much i know for the rest of this fall and then for years to come because this bed is in the front of
our house and we sit on our front porch all the time and we will be able to see these beauties
whenever we are sitting there and whenever we drive up so remember it's never too early or too
late to be thinking about next year's garden so hopefully you have found this informative a little
inspirational maybe hopefully you've learned some things you all have a great day if you've enjoyed
this video found it helpful please subscribe to gardening with creekside join our family we'll
see y'all next time have a great day bye friends all right little side note here you saw me use
two different types of fertilizer one was the biotone that is because we are just now planting
these shrubs so this is a brand new planting whenever you plant your perennials your shrubs
and your trees you want to use biotone because remember that is a fertilizer for the roots
that will help your roots grow nice and strong not the top foliage of your plant so number one
you can use that anytime you plant your perennials trees and shrubs year round two the compost so
this was just an extra additive to help amend our soil it is not necessarily a fertilizer per se
in the fall is not when you want to fertilize your perennials shrubs trees because all those
traditional fertilizers that you would be adding are going to encourage new top growth and we are
getting ready to go into these cooler months of the season pretty soon we'll have a frost
then we're going to have a freeze we don't want a whole lot of new top growth we want root growth
so fall is not the time to add traditional fertilizers to these plants that is for the
springtime because in the spring when they're waking up from their winter slumber that's when
we want all the new top growth so just keep that in mind fertilizing the spring not in the fall
you