Transforming the Corner Garden for the Spring Wedding

Hey friends, welcome to Gardening with Creekside. Today, we are going to spend some time here at the front porch. We are going to clean up. Oh, look at those! Those are some burnt annuals. That is a sweet potato vine and some sun patients. They are toasty critters after a 25-degree night that we had two weeks ago. So we are going to rip out those mushy plants. We are going to replace them with some gorgeous fall annuals that will take us into spring. I am also going to underplant them with some enemies, yes, spring flowering bulbs. We will get into that.

Lots of exciting developments here right at Creekside. It is always a project going on. Today we're going to focus on this area just to kind of give you a little bit of perspective of where we are. This flower bed is directly off of our front porch and is just a lovely bed that is actually kind of shrinking in size because my trees and shrubs here are growing and developing just like I wanted them to. Back here in the back, we have tea olives, sweet osmanthus. They give us a beautiful evergreen hedge, give us some privacy, also give us a little bit of a break in the afternoon sun. And then our dwarf Blue Atlas Cedar. This is a Horseman, this is a dwarf Horseman, and my gosh, y'all, this tree is super happy.

I realize the sun is not my friend right now. Such as gardening and filming in mid-November, the sun is definitely low in the sky, so it provides a little bit of a challenge sometimes with the Sun, but this tree is beautiful, obviously an evergreen tree that is a dwarf so it's not going to get massive, but I think you can see that it is getting wider. We've had this in the bed for four years, I believe now, and it just has a real fun kind of a funky shape to it. This bed is not on irrigation but does really, really well.

This summer, down here below the fried plants, we had the Bewitched Green with Envy sweet potato vine. There's a little bit of green in certain pockets where it was protected. I think you can see a little bit right there. And then these are sun patients, totally fried, goes all the way around. This is the reason why I like to go ahead and get out as much of my summer annuals out of the ground before that first freeze hits because now they're mush, and they gush, and it's going to be a gross job getting them out, but it is what it is. We can only do so much at a time.

So I've got my shovel and rake. We're going to clean it up. That's going to be really easy because we're just going to dig out what we can, get rid of all this foliage, and then toss it into the compost pile. What are we going to plant with? Well, I'm so glad you asked. Let me show you. We have a beautiful assortment of pansies here. This is the Matrix Coastal Sunrise mix, beautiful shades of blues and purples and creams and Reds and roses and just all sorts of great colors in this mix. So we've got three Flats. There's 18 in a flat, so we've got three Flats of those.

And then when I was watering the greenhouse this morning, I was like, "Oh yeah, we're going to put in some of Isabella Mustard because how pretty is it with the pansies? It's gorgeous. And then with the backdrop of the Horseman and the tea olives with that blue-green of the Horseman and the dark green of the tea olives, stunning. Plus, it gives me a little bit of height. So that will be really pretty. I've got five of those. They're 8-inch pots. So I'm thinking we're going to do a group of two on one side and then a group of three on the other side of the Horseman. So we're going to do that.

Okay, enemies. Now I've never done enemies before. So I have enemies, and I have ricus that we're going to do. We're going to plant both in the fall and the spring. If some of you have heard on the other one of the other videos that we did, our sweet Alyssa. Alyssa has been an employee of ours for three or four years now, an absolute precious gem of a human being. She is part of the Creekside family. We feel like she is like one of our daughters. She is amazing. She is getting married end of May, and she is going to get married here at Creekside. The ceremony is at the nursery, the reception is here at the house in the backyard. I don't know if the pansies will still be in the ground then, and so I'm planting as if they're going to be.

So these are kind of in her color scheme. In the past, I always do really bright yellows right here. That's not her color palette. So we're going to go more for her color palette. And then with the enemies, we're going to underplant. I've never done them before. I have no idea exactly when they're going to bloom, plus you never know what the weather, right? We could have a really warm spring, we could have a really cool spring, and all of that affects the blooms. You can plant ricula and enemies in the fall and the spring. We are North Carolina, a Zone 7B. I am right on the border of like Zones 8 to 10. You plant them in the fall Zones was it 2 to 7? You plant them in the spring. Well, I'm a 7B. Like, I am right there in the middle. So to cover my bases, I'm going to do both. I'm going to plant some in the spring, and I'm going to plant some now in the fall.

Today we're doing enemies. And like I said, we're going to intersperse them amongst the pansies. So that way when they do Bloom, fingers crossed, that they will be popping up amongst the pansies and that color palette will go with them. I have ordered from two different places this year. One is a somewhat local company. This is Petal Pickers. I don't know if you've ever heard of Petal Pickers. I first found Petal Pickers because of my friend Tracy of Plaids and Poppies when she came to visit this past spring. She brought me a bouquet from Petal Pickers. So Daniel and Wesley live in Greenville, South Carolina, which is not quite two hours down the road. And Daniel has a cut flower business, lack of a better word. You can buy subscriptions, and you can get a fresh bouquet in the mail. Tracy brought me one of the bouquets. Stunning. So, of course, what do I do? Yes, I got a subscription for both my mama and myself.

You can do subscriptions like that, but in the fall, they also sell their bulbs. He was selling bulbs. And so I got enemies from him and ricula just because of the numbers and the color palette. I am not going to use these today in this bed. What I am going to use are the First Crush Mix from Eden Brothers. Eden Brothers is a great mail order company that you can order from. And I have 60 corns of the First Crush Mix. So I think that'll do best because it's the end just number-wise. The other colors from Petal Pickers would work as well. I just don't simply have the numbers. I have only like 20, and here I have 60 of the First Crush Mix. So that's why I'm going to go with the First Crush and not Petal Pickers. Petal Pickers is going to end up in other places like the garden boxes and so forth like that.

Now, the trick with enemies is that you have to pre-soak the corns, and that is what I am doing. Depending on where you read, it could be anywhere from 2 to 4 hours of soaking them. So I have a bucket here. I just put them in. These are the enemies' corns. We want to rehydrate them. So here they are in the bucket. Just got some water sitting out in the sun just like this. So I have set the alarm on my phone, the timer for 3 hours. I figured that we're right there, you know, a happy medium. And when we plant them, we will plant them pointy side down. They will hang out all winter, and then come spring, fingers crossed, they will bloom and be absolutely stunning.

I think by the time that I get everything cleaned up, everything planted, then probably my 3 hours will be up, and we will be able to plant them and go from there. What I'm going to do first, of course, is just get everything cleaned up, right? I've got a hot mess on my hands. So I'm going to unload all of the things out of Johnny. That way I can fill Johnny up with all of my debris. So yeah, go get comfy, sit back, relax. You can watch me work.

I got all of the sweet potato vines and the sun. Patients out of the flower bed wasn't hard to pull out. It was just a goopy mess. Now if you will notice, if you grow sweet potato vines and in your garden, whether it's in the landscape or it is in a container, you go to pull them out at the end of the season, you may notice a nice big potato that is either either that is in the soil, right? So I showed you one, hopefully the camera cooperated with me, but they were just like big huge massive sweet potato-like tubers.

Now let's do a little lesson here in case, um, you're not familiar with sweet potatoes vines and how they work. So these are ornamental sweet potato vines. Traditional sweet potatoes that we eat, right, that you buy at the grocery store when they're out in the field growing, they have a lot of top foliage growth and it can be very attractive. But that crop is meant for the tubers, the potatoes, to be eaten, right? That is the main goal. That is why they're bred, flavors are developed, all of that kind of stuff is for the potatoes so that we can eat. These are ornamental sweet potato vines. So yes, they will still produce the potato, the tuber, but their main goal is to have really pretty foliage because that is what we want to use them for is the foliage, not necessarily are we going to go and eat them. Now, if you wanted to try to bake it and eat it, I guess it won't hurt you. I've never done it. I've never tried it. You can do your own research on that, uh, but just know that you will find some of those tubers in the ground sometimes they are white like mine and sometimes they can take on those pinkish reddish hues that we think of as a traditional sweet potato. So that's a little lesson on the sweet potato vines and if you find a tuber.

What I did is I went ahead and laid out the five Miz America mustards. I ended up doing two right here, it might be kind of hard to see just because of the shadows. Two here because that was a smaller side and then over on this side, we did three in a little bit of a triangle. I'll give you an up-close view in just a little bit. But that way we have those again, those are in 8-inch pots, nice and big, have height, we'll have foliage, we'll have color. All of this is going to be full sun annuals, cool weather annuals. So they will stay nice and green purple all throughout the winter and into spring.

What I'm going to do next is I've got my Biotone fertilizer. I'm just going to do a broad spreading of that throughout the whole flower bed where I am planting. I'm not going to lay down Land and Sea first because this spot is always an annual planting bed, and we have planted in it for years. When I planted in the spring, I put tons of compost, tons of additives in there. So this time I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to top dress with my Land and Sea when we're all done. But everybody's going to get Biotone. I have found it the easiest way is just to broadcast the whole bed because that's I'm planting the entire bed so instead of doing it hole by hole, totally can do that that's just a personal preference. I'm going to do the whole bed, get the mustards planted first and then because my pansies are basically all the same I'm just going to take my power planter augur I have the 5 in drill on it we're going to do those holes and I'm going to do the holes first and then go back and plant because I'm just going to space them out and get them in there then hopefully my 3-hour mark will be close to be ending and we can come back and plant the anomy corns between the pansies so that's what we're going to do my friends the project is halfway complete in the fact that we have the M America mustard is planted and the pansies the sun is not really being my friend right now as far as trying to show this to you so we're going to do the handheld camera and hopefully it will uh pop for you the three mustards are here in the back one in the back is still a little bit in the shade uh but it just I love the the height of this and the color and then of course those beautiful pansies.

I just went through and I was counting in my brain as I was drilling the holes and I just randomly put them in there it kind of worked out to be about like three lines pansies of course will get nice and big and fill in this area and then right here we have the other two M America's right up hopefully that'll show up and then they'll fill in and the mustards will be touching each other and you'll see that nice different color and texture against the horseman and the tea olives and then the pansies continue all the way down. You will see that I've got lots of room here to put the anmies between these pansies going to go ahead and I'm just going to use my Hy Hy because you only have to plant them I want to say it's like 1 to two inches deep I will double check all of that before I do the closest that you can space them really is about I think 6 to 8 in I'm just going to make I'm just going to spread them out I've got 60 corns so I'm just going to spread them out through here in kind of a random fashion and then once everybody's down in the ground we we will come back with our land and sea and top dress and get everybody in there nice and smooth and they will be quite today's project is complete all the summer annuals are ripped out all the fall annuals are put in and spring flowering bulbs are put in feels fantastic to get that done the flower bed got top dressed with land and sea Jerry's working on the irrigation uh that sprinkler had was not turn the correct way so he is fixing that but everybody is nice and tucked in here nice and sweet uh cannot wait to see how this bed develops throughout the coming months hopefully the timing will work even if the enemies are not blooming for Alyssa's wedding because that's the end of May I mean we're getting pretty toasty by then I just hope it's a really pretty spring so nice show in the spring because as long as the enmies bloom and do well and then they are done then we can come back in here and go ahead and plant it with the summer annuals that will be here for Alyssa's wedding because from the wedding people will be going from the ceremony to the backyard so they'll be passing by and this will be kind of kind of off in the distance so of course we want it to look nicely um but yeah this whole little area looks great all I have to do now is give it some water I do have a hose right here behind the house give it a good drink of water cuz that soil was pretty dry and then we are done the only kind of special thing about planting those anmy corns is to make sure that you put the pointy end down um I showed you I think I have a picture of what it looks like so they're very kind of garly and you know rustic looking and so they do have typically a nice big point on the end that goes down cover it up and then of course compost is always a great way to add to the nutrition to your soil do that every time you plant doing this top dress and then you build up your soil having a nice healthy soil is great way to feed your plants naturally I more than likely am not going to have to typically I never have to feed my pansies and Bolas right because adding the compost using the biotone I don't have to come back and do a liquid uh fertilizer on them if your pansies and Viola start to look a little yellow look a little sad the flowers aren't really blooming go ahead and give them a shot of liquid fertilizer for flowering annuals and then they should perk up and get nice and green and of course lots of beautiful flowers remember they need at least 6 hours of Sun so if they're not getting six hours of Sun then that could be another reason maybe why they are not blooming but I will keep you updated on this space while we're here uh the kids are hanging out on the front porch want to go ahead and show you just really quick notice that the Bonia baskets are gone I tell you when you sit on the porch it just feels like you can just see everything and we got our unique stone pieces that we had ordered got the front porch nice and decorated so here we have the two square Planters and all of these are in the dark walnut so these Planters will stay here year round and then I will switch them out with annuals right now they have a nice little selection of the beacon Rose Viola there's four of those in there along with the emesia and there you go so they get nice and sunny watered very very happy and then up by the front door we decided to go with two Nori ears and the Nori ears of course really kind of stately nice uh we move the aquapot that has been here to the signature Garden so we will incorporate that into the signature garden and then for now all I did was simply I actually filled the ears with burlap bags and then bought a grape vine wath at Hobby Lobby and then did my stack of pumpkins so nice kind of fall little fun way to decorate for fall very very easy doesn't have to be flowers right and then we were supposed to get these of course um in early I think oh my gosh when was it early October anyway it was like a month behind whatever that was I can't even think about dates now and so at least we get to enjoy it for about 10 days two weeks before we switch this out and then start decorating for Christmas but the uh front porch is looking nice and festive with of course the gorgeous mums and the pumpkins and all the things so now that this area is done makes me very very happy as always we hope you have found this fun informative and inspirational youall have a great day we'll see you in the next video bye friends.