Planting a Benjamin Birch & Samantha Lilies, Swapping a Hose & Gathering Poppy Seeds! 🥰🌿💚

Hey guys, how's it going? So today we're going to be working on just a little bit of this and that, and it's another beautiful day. It's overcast this morning. It's supposed to get to 80, but it's just so pleasant out here. We've got a little bit of planting to do. We've got one tree and one flat of perennials, and they both have kind of a fun story that go along with them. But we're going to start right here at the raised bed garden because I want to swap the hose out in here. We've got a heavy duty, heavy pain of a hose in this area. There just isn't a good spot for a hose reel, so we're going to put a pocket hose in here. We're also going to do a little bit of rose deadheading, and I've got some flats of poppies in the high tunnel that I never planted out this spring, and I'll talk more about that, all the details, but I would like to gather seeds off of those and get them ready or get them in storage for next year, ready for next year. Okay, so first of all, the plants that we're going to be putting in today. We've got one birch tree. This is a royal frost birch. I absolutely love this variety. They get 40 feet tall by 25 foot spread, and they're hardy to zone four, but I love the depth of color that they provide. And then we've got a flat of lilies called Samantha, and I showed you these from our last plant load that we got in, and they look like they're about ready to burst open. I couldn't resist when I saw something had the variety named Samantha. I ordered them right away, and Samantha's very excited about seeing these in their her plants. So 30 to 36 inches tall, 10 to 14 inches wide, and they're hardy down to zone three, and they're beautiful double pink. I don't know, this camera's not good at close-ups, but double pink with a white edge, so I think they'll really be beautiful. They'll shine. And then the tree, we were out walking around. We walk the garden every single night as a family, and we were back toward the backside of the Dreamstream area, and Benjamin stopped, and he said, hey mama, I think this spot needs a tree. And he went over and stood in the spot where he thought it needed to be. I kind of looked around and thought, yeah, it is a great spot for a tree. That's a great idea, and you can pick it out. Let's go down to the garden center and pick it out. I did try to have him look around, though. I said, okay, but you need to study the area first. What do we have a lot of in this space? Green. There's a lot of green in this area, so maybe we look for something that has darker colored leaves, or you know, variegated leaves, or something like that. So when we got down to the garden center, he chose the Royal Frost Birch, which I don't know if you've maybe heard me talk about them a lot, because I love this tree. But he picked it out, and he said it's perfect, because they both start with a B. Benjamin and Birch. This is Benjamin's Birch. So that is what it will forever be dubbed. And we'll head back there in a minute, but I just thought that's so fun. So we've got Benjamin's Birch, and we've got Samantha Lily's today. But let's take care of this first. So I had to wait for this one, because we only had the 50 foot ones down at the warehouse. And so I asked Ken, do they have other lengths? Because this garden space is 51 feet. So I've always been able to, this is a 50 foot hose. I can get it almost to the end, but I can never reach the blueberry pots in this corner. I have to shoot water, and try to hit it, you know, hit the containers just right, so that soil doesn't like spew out everywhere. And then the fact that this is such a heavy hose, it's just gonna be so nice to have one that's lighter weight. I have noticed a couple of questions about these hoses, in that like, if you get a 75 foot hose like we've got today, if you stretched it out, just out here, without it being pressurized, it would not measure 75 feet. It only measures 75 feet once you've turned your water on, and then it kind of stretches the hose out best you want. Because if I had a 75 foot mass, it would not shrink down to this size. And that's kind of the goal, and the beauty of these hoses, is that when you unpressurize your hose, or turn the water off, it shrinks back down to this tiny little size. And it just makes it so nice in the garden. So I've been putting them all over the place, where it makes sense anyway. There's always a little baggie with extra washers. I don't even know what this weighs, but not very much, does it say? It does not say. Oh, so much better than that big old hose we've got in there. I also have got a new water wand that I'm going to put on the end. I've got a DRAM wand on the end of this hose, but at some point or other, the end got swapped out for a different diffuser, and it's it's not good. It's not a DRAM one. I don't know what brand it is, but I don't like it. So we're going to put this one on right here. But it looks like, and I didn't even, this says a bonus adjustable spray nozzle included. I've never used one of their adjustable spray nozzles. They might be good, I don't know. Oh boy, twist to turn off. I'm just going to keep that with the washers. All right, let's swap this thing out. Okay, I'm going to pull this one over and coil it up. Oh my, I need to go get a tool. Yep, be right back. Oh my gosh, I loosened it for the wrench. Hallelujah, this hose is leaving. Oh, look at that. You can just sit there in the pile, I love it. But watch what it does. So right now this valve is off. I'm going to turn that on and turn the water off at the thumb, the thumb valve right there on my wand. So watch what it does. It will expand when I turn the water on. I probably should have untwisted it first. I just took it out of that package. It's kind of a gob. Okay, let's pull it out. Oh, it said it was kink free on the packaging and I was able just to like pull on it and it just all unraveled. Oh, I'm making it all the way to the end. I love it. Look at this. I can reach right to my blueberry pots. These are hooked up on drip, but sometimes they need a little bit of extra on the really hot days. So now I have an easy way to pull my hose out and water them. I love it. Yeah, look at this. I'm all the way out the other side and I can keep pulling it. Oh my word, is that ever nice? Okay. I also water these boxwoods when it's really hot because I don't feel like the drip that we have run off of the drip system and the raised beds is really efficient to these containers. And I think they need a repot. They're looking a little, a little sad. Okay. And we'll go back to the other side. Just pull it right here. I don't use this hose. Like we use the hose in the high tunnel or the greenhouse. I mean, it's every day. Um, sometimes multiple times a day, if it's really, really hot. So time will tell how this does across the gravel. It's my first time having one in this space, but it's not going to be, I don't know. I think it's going to be really good. And we put all of our hoses away for winter. So it'll stay inside for the winter time. Look how long it is. That's crazy. Okay. So what happens when we turn off our hose? I'll give this little pot of chives the extra water, but it's just going to shrink up. Here it comes. It's kind of like a hose reel in and of itself. So that's about how much it retracts on its own. So then I just pick it up and pile it. Boom. I'm going to grab this before I forget. Oh, so nice. Oh, I've been wanting to make that swap for weeks. I had to wait a while for this to be in stock. Okay. So that's the first thing I wanted to get done. Now let's head out and get our tree planted and our lilies in the ground. Okay. So this is the spot right here. And he even made us a little, a little divot in the mulch. So we know exactly where it needs to go, but I just was so thrilled that it even registered that there should be a tree right here and it will be perfect because it will help to shade this, um, you know, the little fountain back in here. And it'll add some vertical interest in this space. And we've got, so he was looking around, we were looking at the heritage birches green, a lot of this stuff's green. We do have a black lace elderberry right here. So we've got some purple, but then we've got a green sensation box elder, and there's quite a lot of green. The closest screen on this side will be our Hawthorne. So having some purple right here will be great. Sometimes you wonder, you know, how much are the kids soaking in? Are they soaking in a lot or are they, you know, just kind of doing their thing. And I think it's a mixture of both, but I do think that they soak in a lot more than I think sometimes. So the fact that he was even thinking that and was interested in it and so excited to go pick out the tree was really fun. Okay. Positioning it right on his divot. Oh, oh, I love it. What a good eye he has. So fun. Maybe if I move you this way, you can see that canopy a little bit better. There we go. Isn't that perfect? Oh, I love it. So I'm going to use my nine inch auger and I'm going to dig three holes right next to each other to get this in the ground. I'm only going a little bit at a time, and then I'm going to clear the hole because I know there's a waterline somewhere in this area. I think it's closer to the edge of the basketball court, but I just want to go slow just in case. Do not relish the idea of a waterline break today or really any day. Okay. Things are looking good. I'm going to keep going. All right. No water pipe in this area. Perfect. Starter fertilizer. Oh, look at that. Perfect. Maybe even a tiny bit deep. It looks beautiful right here. I love it. We've got it from this angle and eventually it'll create a really beautiful kind of canopy with this other birch right here. And I'll show you from this angle as well. Right here. It's just exactly what this spot needed, I think. Bravo, Benjamin. Okay. Let's go grab our smaller auger and we can plant our Samantha lilies. All right. Out here in the south garden, which is actually perfect because I wanted to get these roses deadheaded right here, as well as we've got some of the reminiscent coral. Look at these. Look at the color. There's a fresh one right there. They're so pretty and vibrant. But I need to clearly do some deadheading. So we'll get that done here in a second. But I think I would like to plant the Samantha lilies right in here. I've got a Kodiak Black Dervella. There's a Blue Muffin, which is looking a little scraggly this year. I might have to do a rejuvenation prune on that one. But that's a Viburnum. We've got a Triple Tier Juniper Topiary that I haven't touched yet this year. I usually let it go until you can't tell it's a topiary anymore before I trim it. There's a Gingerwine Ninebark. I had planted some Heirloom Mums back in here and it looks like just one of them survived. So this is perfect for the lilies. And the whole situation we have going on here, you can see the grass. And let me just give you a lay of the land here. I'll back up. I've been keeping this open because I want there to be a walkway that starts here and that cruises around this side of the Scotch Pine that we've got right here. So this area I want to have filled. I'll probably put some kind of maybe put a bench right in here, but I would like some taller things back in here. So I think those lilies would be really pretty. So let's get those planted. And then there are the six roses in this area. We'll get those deadheaded and then we'll take a look at the area when we're done with those couple of things. Okay. It's not breezy, but I don't know how well these are going to stand up on their own if I try to lay them out. 10 to 14 inch spread. So I don't want to put too much space between them. One here. All right. I think that'll look pretty. Okay. Lilies have been planted, roses deadheaded, plus a few bonus plants we got cleaned up because I had extra room in my bag. And my goal for today again was just to fill up the bag one time in addition to our other project. So these are the flavorette, is it spiced pear or flavorette pear roses? I love the color of them. They're so delicate looking, but they look a lot better right now having been tidied up a bit. And then our lilies just tucked in beautifully right here. So I left a little gap right here for that heirloom mom to kind of fill in, but I think that's just a really pretty texture right there. And because they get 36 inches tall, that will allow for maybe like a two foot tall sort of situation, some kind of perennial in here before we either do a shorter border than that or put a bench in here. It's kind of a perfect little nook for a bench. But you can see from the backside here how much better the rose looks. Oh my gosh. So much better having been cleaned up. And once that stock right there, that branch is done, we'll clean it up to the height of the rest of the canopy. You can see one kind of tucked in there, but I love that. I love that things are now like starting just to tuck in and intermingle and they're doing exactly what I want them to be doing. And then around the front side here, you can see the roses looking a lot better. Oh my gosh. The aster is looking beautiful. I either need to divide this thing or provide it some support because it's always wanting to split in the middle. It did that from day one though. That's why I haven't split it up to this point. Usually when you start seeing perennials flop like that in the middle, they either need to be divided or it's too much water. Maybe that's the case. I don't know. I would blame the rain that we got the other night, but it does that every year. The rain may have aided in the splitting of it though this time. All right. Then the other things that we got done are right over here on this side, there was just one rose I wanted to get done over here, the James Galway, which really should be on a trellis. It's wanting to be a climber. One of those that you can train it to be a small climber or a large shrub. But right now that looks really good. But see, that's what the roses do and it drives me crazy. Like I need to carry a rake everywhere. But I also deadheaded the Minarda. So this Minarda we planted this year. It's only been in the ground for a matter of weeks at this point. It was gorgeous in bloom when we planted it and you know those blooms that are spent. So I just cut it down to the nice canopy. You can see new sets of leaves coming out here and it will bloom again. Second round of blooms is usually not quite as profuse, but it will throw some more color later this season and that'll be really nice. I'm loving this little pocket right here. We've got Bells of Ireland, which I never intended to be out here, but when we dug up our Fama pincushion flowers here from the formal flower garden, there was clearly some Bells of Ireland seedlings kind of among the root ball. So those have come up and you know they're pretty. They're an interesting texture. We recently planted the Semps right in here and they look really good. But the Hardy Geraniums and the Senorita Roses right out here, everything's just looking so beautiful. That tall grass in the back, that's Totem Pole and Baptisia in here. Planted the Serviceberry last year. I don't know, the layering is just really pleasing to me. I love this little spot. Okay, last thing for today is to gather up our poppy seeds and then I can get those flats cleaned out and out of the greenhouse. I had to wait until the poppy plants though kind of just died back and dried up. So they don't look awesome, but we can cut the seed pods and get them in bags or jars at this point. A little look at this perennial border right here. A little bit of rose deadheading we need to do, but not too bad. Really full. Also the Cleome over here is really starting to fill in. It was so skinny when we planted it. They were so skinny and tall. That's the pink flower. It's the one I'm talking about. It's the Senorita Rosalita. Boy, they're really coming into their own. Really beautiful. Okay, into the greenhouse we go. You can see these sad trays of poppies sitting here, but they did form up some seed heads and I don't want to forfeit at least their seeds like I did the plants this year. So this one is Swansdown. It's a really beautiful white one. We've got Frosted Salmon, which they are gorgeous. And then there's Sissinghurst White and Amazing Gray. Nothing there. I had a couple of plants come up and just kind of fizzle out. And then the Cream Peony right here. So that's one, two, three, four varieties I want to save. So I'm going to go grab four things to put them in. Okay, whenever I buy pelletized seed, they come sometimes, most of the time, they come in these little vials inside a seed packet. So I usually save them for projects like this. That way we can break open these seed pods and then put all the little seeds in the vials and they'll be good to go. Okay, so the way I'm going to do this is I'm going to cut the seed head off like so. And then I'm going to cut the top off or just, I don't think I need to cut the top off. We'll just release all the seeds onto the paper. See how many seeds just one seed pod creates? Isn't that amazing? So we'll be able to do the same thing with all the rest of seed heads that are ready to roll. And then we can fold the paper and kind of like funnel style, pour them into our little container. So there we go. There's our swans down poppy seeds. So for right now, I'm just going to set the ID tag along with this until I can grab a marker to write on the vial. I think that's all we're going to get today are these two varieties because as I was getting into it, I realized that these are still not dried down enough. So the seeds aren't quite ready. So we'll just keep an eye on these and I'll do the exact same thing. I'll just save these for the next day we're ready to do it. And for now, we've got two different varieties of white poppy ready for next year. While we're here, may as well look at the tomatoes. They've grown even more since the last time we looked. This is a garden gem ready to roll. How beautiful that is. I haven't picked any tomatoes from out in the Dirtlands area where we planted all the original ones. But this is I think the third maybe third tomato I picked from in here. And then I've also picked a lot of the good hearted tomatoes that are in the raised bed garden. And you guys that is going to be it for today's project. Super happy with everything we got done. Having the hose swapped out. I just always like somewhat dreaded not I think dreaded is maybe too strong a word, but it was always just a little bit of a pain to need to go water anything in the raised bed garden because I just hated pulling that heavy hose out. So I'm super thrilled to have that swapped out. Those little changes can make a huge difference. And if it makes your life easier, even a little bit every day, like those daily tasks that you're doing, if you can improve them in any way, it's so worth it. And Benjamin and Samantha were really excited to see where their plants ended up. They were actually their grandpa was here visiting with them. So they were giving him a tour. They were driving around on the golf cart as I was getting all of my work done this morning. So that was really fun to see and they're really excited about it. And then garden maintenance we're just going to continue chipping away at it. It just makes such a huge difference to every area we visit. So thank you so much for watching today's video. I hope you enjoyed it and we will see you in the next one. Bye.