I'm Kim with Shiplap and Shells, and welcome to the Pacific Northwest!
Today I'm going to talk to you about container gardening.
But first, make sure you hit the subscribe button and the notification bell so you can be alerted anytime Kellogg has a garden video like this for you!
So this is the time of year where everything is really filling out, but we still don't have a lot of blooms.
So, container is one of the things that I do to bring more color into the yard and add some interest.
So, I'm going to show you how I do that!
When it comes to container options, there's so many to choose from.
I mix a lot of old and new; I have a lot of galvanized buckets, whiskey barrels, wine barrels.
And, it's really important to make sure that you have holes for drainage at the bottom.
These are all going to be re-done in just a little bit.
When it comes to container gardening, the first thing I do is pick out which plants I'm going to be using for the containers.
So, the rule of thumb is to use a thriller, a filler, and a spiller.
So, the thriller is going to be my geraniums.
And, these are all from last year. In the greenhouse they were overwintering. And so, I'm going to be using those.
All right so, as you can see, I'm going to use the geraniums for the thriller.
As far as my spiller and my filler, I did go to the local nursery, and I got a lot of plants. I'll show you what I'm using.
Some of the fillers I would get would be something like a creeping zinnia like this one, or a verbena.
I wanted to do lantana but it's not available in the nurseries right now.
And then you could use a salvia for either a filler or a thriller, because they do get taller than a lot of the other plants.
Some of the spillers you could use would be a bacopa, or a lobelia or even a creeping charlie or a creeping jenny.
Petunias make really good fillers or spillers.
So, if you're starting from scratch, you're going to obviously put the potting soil in.
What we did with this one is we filled it up, we actually made this little wooden base, and so the soil fills about a foot.
But, the more soil you have, the better you drainage is going to be, so keep that in mind.
The other thing to remember is that everything needs drainage holes.
So everything here, the base and the bottom of this barrel, everything has drainage holes.
Now, there's a myth out there, and they say that you should have gravel or something like that at the bottom before you put your dirt in.
Everything I read says it's just a myth and that it actually could be a disadvantage because the water could get blocked by the rocks and the gravel.
So, I'm taking the violas out just because they do really well in the fall and the spring.
But, they do not do well with the heat. We have direct sun here, it gets very, very hot.
So, we're going to take these out and I'm going to try to transplant them and save them, and then put them back in the pots in the fall.
But, for right now, we're going to take these out.
A thriller is the plant that has the height, and it's basically the attention-getter of the entire container.
It serves as the framework for the entire arrangement.
Once you've chosen a thriller, we're going to go to the fillers, and this is just to add mass.
The fillers tend to be more rounded, and they generally are placed in front of the thriller.
As you can see, they're generally put in the back of the container, or if you're going to have a container that you can see all sides,
it's going to go mostly, more in the center, and these will be around it.
But for these purposes right here, nobody is going to see the back of it, so we're going to put it in the back, and then we're going to fill it in the front.
Okay, so these are the ones I've chosen. I've chosen a creeping zinnia, and a dianthus, and a verbena.
And again, I have a lot of other stuff. So, I'm going to play with it and see how it goes.
This is just, kind of to decide at first, what I want to do.
Now I'm looking at the colors and I feel like I have too much of the fuchsia, maybe I need more of the yellow or the purples.
I think I'm going to put some whites for the spiller.
So, I've decided this is a little too much pink.
I like that one, I'm going to take this out and use it for something else.
So maybe I'll put it over here, we'll see when we get started.
I like the white kind of mixed in.
And again, I'm just placing these. I'll kind of make more of a decision when I'm done here.
And then, I'm using a bacopa and a creeping charlie for the spiller.
Especially with a barrel like this, you really want height, and you really want the trailing.
I'm also noticing that grasses, ornamental grasses are great for a thriller.
And, I'll probably go back to the nursery and get some grasses.
Maybe some things that are a little bit taller, for something like this. This is a pretty big container so it needs some wow factor.
So, a spiller is basically the anchor for the container. It's the last thing you'll plant.
It basically can be anything that tumbles or flows out of the pot.
And, they're placed really closely to the edge.
But again, if you're only on one side, like this is, you can just focus in the front.
But, if you have something you can see on all sides, you're going to want to put the spillers all the way around.
Okay, so I'm working on my first one.
I'm going to take all of the excess dirt out,
I'm going to dig,
and I am going to put water in the hole.
Make sure, if it's a new plant, that you break up the roots.
You don't want it to become root bound.
Press really hard, get all of the air bubbles out.
So, what I would do, onceI have this all done I would probably do is I'm going to add some grasses or things like that when they're available at the nursery.
They actually are not right now, so I'll make due with this.
And then, I'm just adding a little bit of a fish compost for nutrients and to look prettier.
And then, even though I put a lot of water in the holes when I was planting them,
I am just going to drench them.
And then, I'll probably come back and water them again in a couple hours just to make sure.
They're kind of in shock right now, they were a little wilted.
There you go!
It looks a lot better than it did.
I would probably put another something here, another something here, but again they fill out really quickly.
Don't be deceived, make sure that you check your heights, how tall they're going to go,
because you might be surprised and you might have overdone it.
But, I tend to go a little bit on the heavy side, I don't really follow the spacing measurements.
When it comes to containers, I can always take something out and transplant it.
If you'd like to see more gardening videos like this, make sure you hit the subscribe button and the notification bell.