hi everybody this is Noelle for Petitti Garden Centers and we're here in Oakwood
village and it's spring and that's wonderful and there's lots to be done at
this time of year but I thought I would offer some spring container garden ideas
for you and options so you can mix and match and you know fill your container
gardens out on the front porch or what have you with some really pretty spring
color so like any container gardening you're gonna start with your pot we'd
really like it if your pot had drainage holes in the bottom if it doesn't you
can always put about an inch or two of gravel or pebbles or styrofoam peanuts
or what have you as filler and drainage material down at the bottom the other
thing that I do with some of our deeper containers is I take the plant pots and
I actually take them off the plants so I put them upside down I put them down at
the base of the container also to fill up some of that air space
if you will that space that you would normally be pouring soil into you don't
have to worry about it so those containers take up that space and still
provide drainage for you so that's really nice lightweight filler down at
the bottom as well then you're gonna use potting soil on larger containers you
can use a planting mix as well so Petitti planting mix works nicely
however just keep in mind it does stay moister longer so if you were an
overwaterer I'd probably stick to the potting soil just because it drains a
little bit quicker and really ensures that these plants will not have any root
rot problems anything like that the other thing that I did is I did add
Osmocote to this container Osmocote asset you kind of scrape it into the
upper level of the soil so I added about five tablespoons of Osmocote to this
container this containers about fourteen inches wide okay so the soil is ready to
go the fertilizers there drainage material in the bottom no problem
whatsoever and now you get to pick your spring plants so at this time of year
there are trees and shrubs that are out on the nursery floor
they're not showing a lot of color just yet so they're just kind of bare sticks
and what-have-you but the perennial area there's a lot of color and those plant
materials have been grown in cold greenhouses
so they're basically ready to go as far as going outside and you can make color
colorful combinations that was hard to
say out of these plant materials and then later on when maybe they're not
blooming as well or that they look a little peaked because it does get warmer
in the season and they tend to kind of die back a little bit you can plant them
out in your garden so there's plenty to see out there we have everything from
our thriller plant that we're going to use today so our thriller or our focal
point this is a Lenten rose called Merlin and Merlin's got this beautiful
sort of burgundy and rose coloring to it you can tell a lot of root systems
it's very established in that pot so just make sure that you're always
scouring the roots before you plant them in the ground or in a container garden
so I'm gonna place Merlin in that thriller spot I always suggest just
picking one thriller that's gonna be your upright focus if you will the other
thing with container gardening that I like to mention is that give yourself
some water in space give yourself about an inch or so from the top lip of the
container so when you do water the waters going into the container it's not
rolling over the sides of the container and pulling in some of the soil with it
what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pick my Spiller which is right in front of me
this is Lysimachia or sometimes it's called creeping Jenny it is a perennial
ground cover but we use it in a lot of different containers and landscapes it's
a great prostrate ground cover but it will also spill over the sides of
containers so we like creeping Jenny it's really it has a beautiful sort of
chartreuse e gold color I'm just gonna take one of the sections of this
creeping Jenny ground cover and I'm gonna kind of put it in the front and
let that kind of tilt it if you will when you're planting so the gravity will
start pulling those stems right over the side
the next thing that you want to use are some fillers I always like to use really
pretty foliage plants and I'm going to tell you this is one of my favorite
tulips when you use variegated leaves you're you know obviously contrasting
with the other foliage that's in the pot with bulbs spring bulbs you can pop them
out and then you can divide them by each bulb okay so they'll come apart pretty
easily you can see a lot of roots here in that system I'm gonna take just a
cluster on the side here put the rest back in this pot I can plant them in a
container I can plant them outside right now I can actually bring them inside if
I want to and enjoy them inside the home at this time of year as well just know
the more heat that they receive the faster they are gonna bloom and bloom
out so what I normally recommend is that you keep your bulbs actually in a cool
spot at night when you're not enjoying them so if you can take them back out to
the garage or take them um you can actually put them in the refrigerator
too if you have a spot and keep them nice and cool another plant that I love
is the forget-me-nots they come in white they come in blue they come in pink this
is a really neat kind of perennial plant but they tend to reseed themselves as
well so once you get forget-me-nots and you let them go to seed you pretty much
have forget-me-nots for a long time so again separate that root system get them
installed as a filler around the tulips and the Lenten rose I kind of like them
right in the middle that frothy white flower really really nice okay the other
thing that I like are the violas at this time of year so your violas or pansies
the violas are the smaller flower the pansies are the larger flower lots of
different colors and faces if you will and shapes and sizes I feel like the
violas have a really stronger fragrance versus the pansies and I just love their
little cheerful faces so I'm going to kind of squeeze them up front here I
want to put the coral bell in and I'm going to shift
a little bit over to the side because the Coral Bell is a great perennial
that we can use in Sun or shade I would say they're happiest in like the park
shade condition but you can stick them in both and again with this big root
system I'm gonna have to break up the soil a little bit and feel free to
rearrange you know as you're going through and container gardening you can
of course kind of rearrange foliage so you've got some spring perennials you
have some wonderful spring annuals of course if it should snow guess what
these guys have no problems whatsoever so they can be covered by snow if it is
a really really cold evening and we go into freezing temperatures it's now to
be an idea to kind of pull them under cover bring them in the garage bring
them under a porch overhang and they will do fine you might have to clip off
a few flowers here and there or maybe some foliage but other than that they
will look great okay so spring container for your front and
enjoy