Planting up a Massive Container For Fall and Winter Appeal

Where'd it go? I don't see it. There was a bug on here and I was gonna take this cushion and put... I think it's fine. I can move it. I didn't want to smash it when I put this cushion back where it goes. Not on the back, right? I don't see anything. Delphinia Picta, the winged fly. That's all I know about it. I googled it right before I started the video. I'm not like, you know, a bug person, whatever it's called. Oh, faded quite a bit. Actually, you know what that is? That's mineral sunscreen. Yeah. Stains things. Pouring that the hard way. By the hard way, I mean this cushion. Hey, what's up, friends? Jeff here. How's everybody doing? I hope you're doing well. I'm great. What are you doing? You can't chew on those. That's very bad for you. You should know that by now. You only chew on the things I give you. What was that? There must have been a bug or something. I'm going to keep an eye on that. What's happening today? Off to a great start. Picked up the camera because I saw a bug that adds up with the ADD. Seems about right. Look at the sky. There's clouds. Finally. Finally, some clouds. That thing's piled up over here. I need to move them because I would like to get back to this planter that's over here that has this beautiful Royal Raindrops Crabapple in it. When I say beautiful, I mean, it's okay. It'll be beautiful someday. I need to get this planted up. I have all these plants sitting down underneath there. There's no good place to set this. You know, the thing with the rocking camping chairs is they don't, you can't just set them up right. They have to be against something. Can I just, how am I gonna, come on. All right. Try and stretch it out. Do one of these. Title of today's video, Jeff tries to unfold a chair. Here we go. Duh. Need to make some room so I can get back here and work on this. I have all kinds of projects going on out here right now. Don't know where things will be on the channel by the time this video comes out. Maybe there will have been a vlog where you saw that this was done. I don't know. Don't mind the panels. I'm taking them all down. They're all coming down. I'm done with them. They don't look good. So I haven't bothered to get up there and fix that one yet. So, this planter, uh, well, I have high hopes for it, but I don't know how it's going to turn out. Gosh, that's why you don't have that many subscribers. This is going to be amazing. Watch till the end. Grand transformation. Uh, nah, I don't know. I like to keep it real. Like everybody know what's going on in my head when I start something. So the idea here is that I want to have a planter that will look pretty good out here throughout the parts of the year when all the tropicals are in sight. So that's going to be November through, I don't know, April to May. It just depends. We never really know when we can bring them out or when we have to move them. And this year they're going in early because I got a bunch of stuff going on. So, uh, I have an assortment here of things that I think will provide some nice winter interest. Uh, not, there's some things that are just sitting there that don't belong in there, like this guy, this caladium. Beautiful caladium started to set itself into a dormancy. So I'm going to set that guy over there. Where's your tag? You better still have a label because it just says heart to heart. Dang it. This is one that I really, really liked and knowing the name of it would have been nice. Yeah, well, I can refer back to a video sometime if I need to bring it up. So I have a combination here of perennials, shrubs, just, you know, nice looking things. Explosion. That's the one. Looks nothing like the one on the tag. It's a really cool looking caladium. I'll just set that right there for now. I don't expect the hosta and the fern to, you know, look great throughout the entire winter, but some of these plants will be somewhat evergreen here. I am in 6b, 7a. That fountain's rumbling. I'm gonna put some water in there. Live right on the edge of those zones. Our winters are tricky and unpredictable. You can see that the aurelia did not like it in here. It's fine. I have a great spot in the landscape that I can plant this out. I'm gonna set it over here with some perennials that I'm hoping to get planted up this weekend. The begonias aren't perennials, but I have some others down here. See them? They're hiding. Right there. Kind of wondered about the sun exposure for that aurelia and now I know. So with our winters, let's just step back next to me before I dive into the plants. We can have plenty of days where it's in the 40s to mid-50s, maybe even 60s, and then within 24-48 hours it could be negative 10. You just never know. I'm talking Fahrenheit here. And that makes it sometimes tricky. Like, well, this is going to be evergreen with plants that are marginally evergreen. Autumn fern. And hookeras. Sedge grasses. Those things. Certain types of hollies. Well, they might be evergreen for a 7b and up where I live. They're usually evergreen-esque. For example, this beautiful fern back here. This is an autumn brilliance fern. It's a nice dryopteris. These generally do well in my area. These will usually hold on to a lot of their fronds here up until, I don't know, February into March and then they'll start to die back. It'll look pretty gunky and you'll go, oh no, that's dead. But generally, if you cut everything back, they'll spring back to life and look great come, I don't know, May to April. Somewhere in there. They do like shade. So that's something I to keep in mind. The days are much shorter during the wintertime. So, you know, that might be it saving grace. I'm just not so sure if that's going to do well over here or not. Because remember, there won't be any leaves on this crabapple up here. Which is a 4 through 9, I believe. It doesn't, it doesn't say. Well, it's a royal raindrop. So it's either a 4 through 9 or a 5 through 9. I can't remember. Really cold hardy. Everything I have in this pot can handle the cold. It's a matter of what are they going to look like throughout the months of wintertime. I think that the Everfall's Carex has become one of my favorite perennial trailers. It's not a trailer, but I just use it as a trailer. Because look at that. That's some beautiful texture and it's really full. And this one doesn't look that good. So, disclaimer, kind of backing up to talk about that Aurelia. We are just getting through, we're not really getting through, there's no rain in the forecast, but there's some clouds. So I feel like we're getting through it. A very long drought. Months and months and months of drought. And very dry air. So some of the plants are looking, well, unfortunate. Dry. Somewhat. You know, there's just, there's only so much you can do. I also have back here a beautiful yellow twig dogwood that was unbelievably overpriced. Couldn't find them for sale anywhere, so that's why I got it. Because I knew I wanted a yellow twig in here. Because that's going to provide some really nice winter interest. Anyways, I think that what I should do here is go ahead and get these guys potted up. I'm starting to be concerned that maybe I didn't put enough soil in this container to start things off when I initially got it planted. Things tend to sink in these big pots, particularly these pots. Anything I put in these pots, for some reason, I'll be like, oh, that's potted in there perfectly. And then next thing you know, the plant is like, you know, eight inches down below the top. However, that's going to be nice during the wintertime because these need to be watered during the winter. This thing got so much water yesterday. Look at the bottom of that root ball. It's a grass. That's somewhat to be expected. I don't have to go crazy. Sometimes with these, I'll just take a hoary hoary or anything, really, and just cut the bottom of that root flare off of it completely. But there's no reason I can't just come in here and loosen that up, break up the swirl, and dig my hole bigger. That was not big enough. There we go. Is that better? You're going to stay with the grasses. I don't mind if they're planted up just a smidge higher because sometimes I have issues with grasses rotting out in me and containers during the wintertime. So having it up just a little bit high, that can be okay. Look at that. Off to a great start. Which side should the fern go on? I feel like this side has the potential for more shade just because that's right there. And if it does become a problem, I at least have a ledge here that I can put something on top of, like a cookie sheet or something to shade it if it gets to be too much. I'm grossly overthinking things. Really, I wish I had two of these. I do have another one in the house. I'm really liking the spot that it's in, so I'm not all that inclined to take it out. Oh, hello, ladies. You having a good time? See? Look at it. It's just so pretty in this window. I don't want to take it out. That looks really nice, especially when you can see the pot and everything. I might like to get that raised up into something better, but it's such a nice looking fern. I don't want to take it outside and ruin it. That's my breakfast. Isn't that disgusting? Ham parts and chia seeds. Pinch of sediment. Breakfast of champions. My best to get back outside. The ADD is going to kick in as long as we're in the kitchen. It's just become a whole bunch of, hey, look at this. Isn't that cute? Had a puzzle custom made for my nephew for Christmas. Thought it would take a long time to get here. That's why I did it so soon. Turned out, it didn't. I meant to talk about the window. There's another reason to be inside. I forgot about it. The window. Oh, the view during the winter. Okay, you need oil. View during the winter time does matter. This tends to be more over here, like this. During the winter months, these are grow lights. I need to go get set up in the grow space. The yellow twig dogwood, I think, would look nice through this window. Get this over here. Maybe I'll end up pulling this planter over some more. It's just nice to look out the window and, you know, see something, anything. Winters are just so drab here. None of this is out there. You know, the gingers, they're completely dead. The heptacodium, leafless. It's just piles of mulch and a pool cover. Blech. You know, all that won't be looking like that over there. I'll probably have maybe an evergreen on the side of the hot tub, but I highly doubt it. Lots of wasted things are being priced this year. No way. $200 for like a six to seven foot arb. Nope, not happening. But I'm still focused on this spot right here. So from in the kitchen, it's winter time. Beautiful branches. I love the way crab apples look during the winter time, especially if they have flowered the year before. So they'll hold on to their crab apples if they're a determinant type, right? Wait, that's tomatoes. Persistent. Persistent type. They'll hold on to their fruit, their little crab apples. During the winter months, you have that extra contrast with the bark dangling there and the birds eat it off and snow will get on top of the branches. Oh, it's going to look so nice. I'll have evergreen or bamboo in this container right here. I'm going to pull these up. They should be up by now. By the time this video comes out, there'll be something else in that pot. So that's what I'm going off of. Just so you can get into my brain here and see what I'm trying to see. It's just a little bit of winter interest and it'll look nice all the way up until springtime. What the heck is this doing here? That's not what this is supposed to be on the door. It was, you know, to help train Turbo about using the door. That's fine. He doesn't need it. If that was on the door, he would drive me nuts. I have a larger boxwood that I was thinking about maybe putting in here. I don't know if it's going to fit. I think the boxwood to the dogwood. Do I want to see the dogwood through the window more? No, I want some green because we're going to have the deciduous crabapple, some evergreen right here, some evergreen over here, and I have a birch that I'm considering keeping. No, I need to put it in the ground. It's going to look stupid to keep it in a pot because it just sticks. It's only about this tall. It had some trunks on it maybe, but I had to get in the ground. But I would think it'd look nice over here. Oh, and roses. I have lots and lots and lots of roses that will be over there as well. Nice pokey stabby things to keep right next to the doorway. So I think you get it. You understand the gist of things. I'm playing around with things for winter interest, and you've seen some of the things that I would like to work with, like this beautiful fern right here. I have settled on thinking that this corner back here, that probably is the best spot for it, right? Because it has potential to get some shade or some filtered light right there over in that other spot. I think Dogwood's looking pretty good back here, so may as well just stick with that. It's already done some defoliating. Oh, that's unfortunate because it really shouldn't have. Nothing else is losing leaves yet, but hey, it's in a pot. Oh, this is going to be tricky. The root flare on this crab apple is really wide in this spot. Oh, but that's okay. You know what? Looking at this, I can loosen this up. There's some mold in there on a little millipede and springtails. Oh, this pot is full of life. I love seeing that. As long as nothing is going to get me. Nothing's going to get me, right? Aren't any centipedes running around in here? I know people get upset about the critters, but we are outside after all, right? And this root ball does look like I should be able to loosen it up and make it fit down in there. Since we're heading into the dormant season, temperatures are finally cooling off, which is why I haven't planted this up yet. I didn't want to go tearing apart the roots of this crab apple during the summertime, especially with that drought that was going on, which is still going on, but you know what I mean, right? Try and do the least amount of damage as possible. Man, this is a chunky, chunky bark mix. It's not a bark mix, potting mix. Look at that. Look at all the stuff that's in there. Can you see it? You can see it there. It's all over the place. What's that about? I think that should be good. Loosened it up. The level of soil in here is going to come up some now that, well, it's adding more things in there and displacing some soil. The yellow twigs, they're a four through eight, maybe even a three through eight. I can't remember. Let's see what this tag says. I know it's something very impressive. They can take a lot of cold. So hopefully a good option for a container. Minus 50 to minus 40. I don't even know what that is. I know minus 20, that's zone five. So minus 30 is zone four. Minus 40 is going to be zone three. Minus 50 will be zone two. So zone two. Wow. All right. So y'all can plant this one. If you're watching this, like that was some place where you don't have any chill during the winter time. That's impressive. Two through eight. It actually said two through eight on there. I did all that math. I didn't even have to. Something I had really wanted to do in this container is I've decided I'm just not going to do it, was to put a spruce ball in here, a nice blue spruce. I think that would look so pretty. But moisture wise, I don't know how happy they're going to be because I am going to have to be pretty on top of watering this container. I'm going to say probably every two to three weeks waiting to water it, which is one of the reasons that there is such a big lip on this. The plant has sunk down some, but I'm okay with that because, well, for one, the soil level is coming up. Now I'm adding some stuff in there. Not enough to affect the base of the tree. That should be fine. When I water, I can just take a five gallon bucket and dump it on top of here. That will speed things up because I don't have running water out here during the wintertime. So, and having that nice lip is good. I'm not going to have to be concerned about water gushing all over the place and then freezing up the patio. Try and position that properly. The fern is not one that I want to be breaking up the root ball on. Not if I don't have to. There are some ferns where I wouldn't be all that concerned about tearing out the root ball, but the dryopteris isn't one of them. Um, ostrich ferns, they'll throw a fit about it, but as long as you hold on to enough of the base of its rhizome, they'll look fine come springtime. Same thing with that dogwood. It's a good time of year if you're gonna mess with the roots. Do it now, right? Um, what else? Rabbit's foot ferns, you can see the rhizome, so it's easy to get around there to just keep a piece of that alive and end up having a nice, big, healthy looking plant in the long run. Here we go. Okay. I am enjoying this. So typically with containers, it's hard to put larger plants in them like this because, well, there's so much root in the container from whatever big plant you have growing in it. But, you know, this is its first year, this crabapple in here, so I actually have some space to work with things. Not used to that. And now for some evergreen interest. It's pretty impossible in this spot to get the camera in a good angle here, so I'll just cut back and we'll have a better look at it. All right, so this one right here is a boxwood. I have been somewhat loose with the planting depth on a few of these. Not the boxwood. Do not want any of that root flora exposed during the wintertime because they will struggle. So we have our stalker back there. This is one of the, the label says independence, but I'm nearly positive that I had ordered the freedoms, but I'll just say it's one of the independents. New gen boxwoods. Look at how glossy that foliage is. Isn't that lovely? It's so pretty. Pardon the jittery camera work. Tripods. Seen better days. It's getting old. Yeah, really nice, glossy foliage. Don't think it's a stinky one. Hopefully it'll hold up okay out here during the wintertime. Boxwoods can be tricky in containers in my area just because, well, they dry out easily. So that was something that I did want tucked further back into this container so that it'll hopefully have a little bit more shelter from the really strong winter winds. Okay, now I had the hosta, had mentioned the hosta, and I am having second thoughts about it just because they don't do anything during the winter, but they are typically early risers in the spring, so that might be good. This one is the June. It has some hard water on it. There's its tag. You can't see that. June. J-U-N-E. Really pretty hosta. I like the stiff growth on it, and the variegation is soft. The leaves aren't all that big. I think that that will look good with a heuchera over here. I have some barberries that I've been debating putting in this container. Having second thoughts just because, well, you know, ouch. They're all spiny. I don't know if I want to deal with that, but it is why I got them. So, I don't know. I'm going to play around with this. We'll come back and see how it looks. All right, last one. I'm sure you saw this coming, right? It's just too nice looking to not squeeze into this planter. It has all of the perfect colors for the various seasons, for fall and winter, spring. This will be cut back, so it won't really matter. This is the primo. No, it's not a primo. Okay, just a dulce wild berry heuchera. There's its info. Sun to shade. That's why I like them. This one goes 16 inches apart by 10 to 14 inches high, and it's a zone four through nine. It's just pretty. I like them. Okay, now just to water it, and you can see I ended up going with the June hosta over here. I just, I really like this growth habit. The heuchera, this was very dry despite having been watered yesterday. It's just the nature of things this time of year. Not a lot of humidity. That's not the nature of things this time of year. We're in a drought. Usually October, we get a good amount of moisture. At least the second half, but yeah, not this year. So, I'm really going to stay on top of keeping things watered in, which is something I'm trying to do regardless because, well, it's fall. I want to make sure everything is very, very, very nicely hydrated moving into the winter months. You can't see it all that well, but the Barbary is back there. I had two different ones here. I had the Sunjoy Neo and then the Sunjoy Neo Fast, which is going to be a new one for 2026. It's the same thing as the Sunjoy Neo Barbary. Really pretty reddish foliage, right? Well, you know, in spring and parts of summer, new growth comes out nice and red. They need a good amount of light to make sure they get their most vibrant coloring. Well, that can go both ways, actually. Too much light can bleach them out. Temperatures are an influence, too, with that. The Fast one, the Barbary Sunjoy Neo Fast, it's just supposed to grow very quickly, which I thought made the most sense for a container. Not something we're going to want in the yard. You might have to check your state and city websites to find out if Barbaries are invasive where you live. They are listed here. So this is one where I didn't know that when I bought it, by the way, but I am going to have to stay on top of making sure that it can't drop berries all over the place. And it shouldn't really be an issue because a lot of these newer types of Barbaries don't flower in fruit with the same abundance as the older varieties do. So I'm not anticipating there being a problem there, but if I ever see one sprout up, then I'll rip it out, no problem. Just figure I should go ahead and plant it out. I've had Barbaries growing in my yard for as long as I can remember. I have never had them sprout up before, but that doesn't mean birds aren't picking up the berries and flying away with them and having them pop up in other places. I do a good, do a good, I spend a good amount of time out in the nature in my area. I don't really see them. I see a ton of wild honeysuckle, not wild, Japanese honeysuckle and the Bradford pears are just taking over. But Barbaries, not so much. Not that I've been able to find locally anyways. The boxwood, as I mentioned, that one is probably going to be the most difficult. The fern, I expect to have a dieback in the right location. They can be evergreen. This isn't a pot, but this side of the pot is going to be more sheltered. It's just what they do. They're not fully evergreen here, unless we have a very mild winter, which I do not think this is going to be from all of the predictions I've seen for what's going to come up this year. So I expect that to die back. The yellow twig dogwood, that's just going to be some nice yellowish sticks in there. The hosta, that's going to die back, but will emerge nicely in the springtime. I, at first, wanted this hosta closer to the edge of the container, and I decided to go ahead and just plop it further back into the pot, mostly because it's going to be more sheltered there. This container is insulated, so it has space between the outside and the inside, but still, just going to have better survivability. Not having the root mass of really any of these planted right against the edge of the pot. Having them in a smidge will help with that, and then I'm pretty sure I already mentioned in the wintertime, about every three weeks or so, going to need to dump a bucket of water on this guy, whether there's snow on it or not, going to water. I suppose the only time I won't do that would be if it's frozen solid, like if there's a layer of ice on top of it, I can't get the water to go through there. That's a different story, but that doesn't happen all that often here, so shouldn't be something we have to worry about. Overall, I really like it. I think that this is a beautiful arrangement of plants, especially considering I had to really limp them through the hardest drought that I have been through in St. Louis before, that I can remember. Surprise, more people aren't talking about the severity of it. There's just dead trees all over the place, and everything's brown, but I don't know. Other things more important going on in the news these days, I suppose. That's debatable. This is going to be beautiful. A lot of this color won't last through the winter. That was the point I was trying to get to earlier, but a lot of it will. Yeah. Oh, I love that. And then, you know, I'll have the furniture put back in place, and I have this Alberta spruce right here that I'm probably going to tuck back into that corner and do something that contrasts nicely up there. It's just a step in the right direction to get things looking good out here for the second half of the year, what I call the off-season. The off-season's not outside planting as much. I have another crabapple over here that's under-planted with one of those everfalls, a supervista supertunia vista cool jazz, a vermilionaire kufia new gen, that's the independence right there, and a shadowstorm ipomoea. There's also an anemone in there. I wasn't really able to get these to match because with them being, a lot of these actually being plants that don't come out until 2026, I was only able to get a few of those, and I think that's fine having some contrast. This has the evergreen, it has the carix, this has the evergreen, and has the carix, the sedge, in the front. That's what I was going for. Happy to have finally done this. I've wanted to pot up this planter ever since I bought this crabapple and brought it home. I got these for 50% off back in, what, maybe it was July? July? August, maybe? And I said, I'm going to take all those panels down. That might be done by the time this video comes out, I don't know. But, yeah. Oh, oh, okay. Oh, that's so much better. This is going to look so great, especially once I get everything put back together and get the drop holes moved out, and yeah. You get, you get it now, maybe? The nice, just, place to sit that has some stuff out here. It'll look shriveled, it'll look sad, but it's just better than just patio and nothingness. All right, hey, thanks for hanging out. Wasn't intended to be, like, a quick how to plant things video. This is a vlog, so for those of you who want to complain about length, just, I don't know, stop it. Shut up, go away. You can see how long videos are when you click on them. Yeah, hey, what are you doing for your winter containers? Experience with some of these plants? How do they hold up in your climates during the wintertime? Do you ever try them potted? Let us all know. Hey, I hope everybody's doing well. Have a great day, a great night, everything's going absolutely beautifully for you, and of course, as always, and most importantly, everybody, keep on growing. Gosh, look at the shine when everything's all wet. Oh, that looks good.