My First Big Containers :)

Well, big to me anyway :) Planted these today with my mom (buckimom) and daddy. Sam and the girls "gave" me the plants for Mother's Day. Which basically means that we all went to the garden center together and I got to pick out my plants :) Mom and Dad gave me the adorable little toadstool (picked that out too), LOL :) Hubby snapped these shots before I nipped all the plants back. I'll post more in a few weeks when everybody starts to fill out.

Huga :)

This message was edited May 13, 2006 4:36 PM

Here's the one with the toadstool. Cute :)

Here's my sophisticated potting system...

Perfect to shelter me from the inclement weather :)

So, that's it :) The other pots all got nipped before I took any pictures. It was raining the day I potted those, so not a good day for pics. I'll post them later when they've had a chance to recover from their haircuts.

BTW, no one warned me how expensive it was going to be to plant these pots! Yikes! I can return some of my soil and a bag of woodchips, but it still wound up being furthur from frugal than I anticipated. Oh well! No matter! Happy Mother's Day to me!!! :)

LOL,

Huga :)

Very nice. I like the innovative use of the stroller.

Victor

Very nice container plantings Hugahosta. I like your use of tropicals.
Your containers themselves are nice too..........we got the same ones this year! :D

Steve

Which ones? The deal at Sam's Club or the Lowe's ones? I was trying to get them to all be roughly the same color & style. Not exactly the same (too little interest for me), but nearly the same to attract attention to the plants before the pots. Those tropicals just sort of happened. They were in the houseplant section of Lowe's and the local garden center, but they had the visual presence I needed to weight down the plants w/ finer foliage. Hope they still look good 4 months from now :) BTW, thanks for the kind complement :)

Jacci

The deal at Sam's Club! :D Weren't those amazing prices on those containers? They also had this great set of hose attachments I got, one of them is like a wand with a sprayer on the end that has like 10 different settings, so I go around misting everything and it makes me feel like I have a garden center :)
Just a heads up, In your one container I saw you have a Deiffenbachia, they can be really touchy about any direct sun and get burned.

Steve

LOL -- is that what that is??? I wondered if the lady at the garden center knew what she was talking about. I saw her later at the register in the floral arrangement section. Hmmm... woops. Well, better to know that now I guess. Bummer. I had originally wanted swiss chard, but the varieties available were just not appealing to me. Then I struck out looking for dwarf elephant ear. I thought this guy was the ticket. Bummer... you can tell I'm definitely not the tropical gardener :)

Thanks for the heads up,
Huga

edited for typo

This message was edited May 14, 2006 9:06 PM

The only big leaved tropical plant for sun I can think of at the moment is a banana plant. But I think even the dwarf ones get pretty tall, so maybe that's too big. Hmm.....You could try bloodleaf http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/51652/index.html It's not really big leaved but it would look good in your container! I have one and it has very vibrant colour. Just an idea :)

Steve

I was looking at the bloodleaf and wondering...hmmm. Well, maybe I'll leave the current ones in until they start to look unhappy and then grab a bloodleaf or two to fill the spaces. Phooey. I'm laughing at myself here...

That sounds like a good way to go. You never know for sure if something will work or not unless you try it yourself! :D

Steve

Maybe if I water it more... LOL -- oh well, we'll see :) The diffenbachia does look pretty there, though, don't you think? LOL...

Yes, it does look really good there, next to that very cute little toadstool :) It's a very nice arrangement. What's the bigger plant behind the diffenbachia?

Steve

Caryopteris. It wasn't my first choice, either, but you take what you can get :) I was going for a fine foliage and originally wanted an amsonia. No dice. I plan on keeping it somewhat controlled. Not really shear it, just "control it" to keep things in proportion.

Thanks for complimenting my toadstool :)

I'll have to take some pics of our containers once they're planted, as we have the same ones! So it will be neat to see different ideas of what can be put in them :)

Steve

Oooh, yeah. That sounds like fun. My are in sun, just one or two hours partial shade.

edited to say I'm zone 6

This message was edited May 16, 2006 10:07 PM

Even better. We're in the same zone!
One of mine will be in full sun on the patio and the other will get quite a bit of shade on the front porch. I've got a banana plant I'm putting in the one on the patio. I'm thinking of under planting it with sun impatens.

Steve

Oh fun! Let's! :)

Ok! We'll probably be getting ours planted in the next couple weeks.
I'll keep you posted :D

Steve

Here's the first one I planted up. It's on our patio.
Planted with Bidens, Sweet Potato 'tricolor' and dwarf Balsam 'TopKnot' and a Banana in the middle.

Steve

Oooh, nice :) Your's will get a good bit more height than mine will. I think your plant sizes will be nicely proportioned to the container. I have my containers directly under hanging baskets on the front porch-type-thing. Not really a porch, more of a ledge on each side of the bay window. Anyway, I'm hoping that the baskets above (fern) will help the containers remain in proportion to the rest of what I have going on in front of the house. We'll see how it turns out.

BTW, diffenbachia is complete toast already. I need to replace it this weekend. C-r-i-s-p-y.

Take care all,
Jacci :)

Thanks Jacci. I'm hoping it will turn out well, I've never grown a banana before...so I hope it doesn't smother everything else with it's giant leaves.
I checked out an earlier pic above of the front of your house and it looks really nice the way it's set up.
What are you replacing your diffenbachia with?

Steve

Jacqui~

You gave those gorgeous plants a haircut? (Note to self, consider cutting new plants back right away... Can we see them now?

xxxxx, Carrie

Sure! I'll try to get a new pic in a day or two :)

I'm also trying to see how lush I can get on very little fertilizer (fish emulsion). So far I haven't fertilized the containers at all because I planted them in Miracle Grow PS. They are definitely fuller. Hard to say how they would have looked minus the pinching back. Shoud've had a control group :) Pinching too hard too late can prevent a plant from blooming that year, but done at the right time and to the right degree a nip here and there promotes fullness with most plants. I nip nip several plants all summer long until they look the way I want them to. I guess I missed my Bonsai calling :)

SWgardener, I took the diffs out but haven't replaced them yet. I'm trying to decide if I really need to at all. Maybe there's enough going on in the those containers that the diffenbachias won't be missed. Although, I really wanted a nice, bold foliage to weight things down a bit. So far, though, no replacement.

Jacci :)

Great container plantings! I love the variety of foliage colors & textures! Looking forward to the update pictures....

Oh, and that toadstool couldn't be cuter, especially with that little white-dotted-leafed plant nearby!

SalmonMe - I won't be able to take pictures of the container(like yours) that we put on our front porch. Sorry. My BIL took his DC back.
And looking at your photos again, you're right, you could go without the diffenbachia.

Steve

Yup, I just yanked the diff out of the one container and never replaced it with anything. No hole at all, I had soooo many plants in there. The other diffenbachia must somehow get shaded by the other plants in the container because its' doing alright. Not fantastic, but not super crispy either.

I know I said weeks ago that I would post pics of the containers now. Sorry I haven't yet. They really filled out by the beginning of June and are still looking lovely now. My coleus have gotten huge-mongous and I love they way they're looking. Haven't fertilized yet and still a nice show. I've been watering the containers every other day. So far so good, but I did lose one of the verbenas. Probably dried out too much. I'm hoping that by watering less frequently but deeply early in the summer, the plants will put their roots down deep and be more tolerant of the July-September heat, we'll see. I hate watering 2x a day, so I'm seeing if I can train them to be less thirsty :)

Overall, I'm pleased so far with the containers I planted. We're going out of town this weekend, but hopefully I get some pics up when we get back :) We're going to Door Co. Wisconsin and there are some talented gardeners up there. Maybe I'll have some nice pics of their plants, too :)

Y'all take care,
Jacci

This message was edited Jun 28, 2006 11:50 PM

Well, finally! PICS! :)

Here's a container I planted the same day as "the big containers". I'm pleased with the way this turned out so far :)

Edited to say: Oops! Sorry, just turn your head I guess!

This message was edited Jul 7, 2006 11:11 PM

Okay, I made it a bit smaller and fixed the direction :)

The toady stool one. I took these about 10 days ago.

Had trouble getting this shot. The container is just behind some rather tall shastas. Sort of an odd angle, but you get the idea. No fert yet :)

Oops, that one was big again. I'll shrink it...

Jacci,
Gorgeous containers. Love, love, love the one with the evergreen. Those white petunias really pop out against the dark foliage. Beautiful. Your toady stool planter really filled out very nicely. Good Growing!!

Gay Lynn

LOVE all your containers--especially the one with the evergreen. What is it? I must make one for my son. He doesn't like floral containers, but he loves conifers and ivies. Maybe I can sneak in some petunias or other small white flowers like you did. Thanks for the inspiration.

Pen

Love your containers, esp. the dark coleus, and the one with dark splotches, next to the pale yellow petunias. The evg is great too. What plants do you have in there?

Yes, yes, yes Pennzer! I just planted urns with dwarf Norway spruce, and glacier ivy. Love how the white really shows up.

Thanks, everyone :)

The evergreen is a dwarf alberta spruce that I got at Lowe's. The cascading vine is Tricolor sweet potato vine. Hypoestes (polkadot plant) is toward the front with the white pentunias. Glad ya'll liked it so much. I need a tall strong look for the space between the garage doors to help break up the driveway but not get in the way of the traffic in/out of the garage. It's turned out pretty :) Thanks for the complements :)

Prairie Girl clockwise from the top I have a caryopteris at 12 o' clock, then pale yellow petunias, bacopa, coleus (forgot the name - sorry), licorice plant (helichrysum), and coleus 'Religious Radish".

Thanks, again, everyone :)

Jacci