Enjoy Perennials in Beautiful Self-Watering AquaPots!

hey guys how's it going today i'm planting up a part shade loving container because this is going to go on our front sun porch i've got some gorgeous plants hosta a beautiful new fern hooker and some violas they're all perennial plants which is really exciting but i'm also planting in one of the new aqua pots by proven winners so these are self-watering containers and we have tried out a couple different types of self-watering containers in the past but the difference is these are glazed ceramic the others are plastic it is totally fine they've worked really great for us but these are pretty so this one is called matte black it's kind of like a charcoal gray color and i like the kind of clean design of it and the neutral color i think it'll actually set these plants off really beautifully but i want to explain the aqua pot design this is the first year i'm ever using it in my garden so this is going to be a test and that's why i wanted to plant it up early because i want to see how far we can get in the springtime like how many days we can go between filling the reservoir in this container versus in the summertime and and so on um so we did an unboxing earlier this this spring where i showed you a bunch of different aqua pots that we have to plant up this year this is what the insert looks like on the inside but i kind of wanted to just show you everything so the inside of the container let me just show you it's completely enclosed there's no drain hole in the bottom so your water reservoir is of course at the bottom of the container and then there's this rim that's built into the inside right here and that's what this disc sits on top of there is one hole though let me show you right here so that is the overflow drain so that keeps it to where you can't fill up the entire container with water once you get to a certain level which is right below that rim that i just showed you the water will come out the back so we'll make sure to position that toward the back side but i'm going to be very careful with it because this is going on our sun porch that's wood i want to make sure that no water gets out and that's why i'm excited to use a self-watering container up there so how the reservoir works or the insert i should say works is this is the water tube right here so this will stick out the top of the pot just slightly you won't be able to really see it because the plants will cover it but you'll be able to find it in order to put your hose in there so you can fill up the reservoir when you need to and then the disc sits on top of that rim that i showed you inside and then this is called the soil tube and the soil tube has little slits built into it you actually pack soil in from the top and it goes down inside the tube and then that soil wicks in moisture from the sides and then up into the container so your plants roots can utilize it and this whole thing just sits like it just nestles really nicely into your container like that so that's what it looks like when it's inside your pot and the thing that i really like about these is that you can take this whole thing out at the end of the season and you can clean it so there's no way that this planter can get plugged up over the course of several years which we were starting to have a little bit of issues with with our other self-watering containers so all of that said i want to get some soil in here and get this thing this thing planted i'm going to use the regular potting mix for all of these plants because these are just that's the soil they'll like so let me get this filled up hold on i brought my gloves out i'm gonna do this the right way here okay so i'm just making sure that soil makes it down into that tube that's nicely packed in there i'm dealing with some bigger root balls so it's possible i might have to take some of the soil back out but i wanted to talk about fertilizers real quick when you're dealing with a self-watering container the developer of the aquapot inserts jack barnwell who we've introduced to you in videos before he recommends that you put two scoops of this slow release fertilizer just right down in this water reservoir just like that and that will kind of dissolve in the water and create this like diluted fertilizer solution that can wick up into your container but i text him this morning because i told him you know is that just for annuals or is that for perennials or he said he would do it either way annuals or perennials but you could also mix in a little bit of biotone fertilizer into the soil he said especially in the larger pots that would not hurt a single thing because i'm used to using this for perennials so i'm just going to kind of double prong approach this thing so i want to keep these plants happy so i'm just going to put a little bit in there like that and just mix it in thoroughly kind of into the planting portion i don't need to get it all the way to the bottom of the soil okay so you might wonder if i'm going to be burning the roots of my plants by using both types of fertilizer but both of these are very slow release type fertilizers there's very little chance i'm also not packing it full like i only put oh i don't even know maybe not even a quarter cup of the biotone in here and then just the two scoops of slow release so everything should be fine and i think what i'm going to do is start with my centerpiece plant first this is the fun part so this is a wu la la hosta now these things get huge like three to four feet tall and five to six feet wide so clearly it's not something that can live in this container forever um but it can this year it takes approximately four to five years for a hosta that gets that big to actually mature to that size so we've got a little bit of time this is a zone i can't even remember three through nine maybe oh i was right three through nine and it blooms early to mid-summer so this one has been grown on a little bit in this warm greenhouse so it has thrown a bloom spike already a little bit early we don't typically grow hostas for their bloom so i typically cut mine off i'll let this one bloom because it's in a container and usually it attracts hummingbirds so this one i'm gonna rough up the roots just a little bit you can see at the bottom here it's a little tight not bad though and then this is going to go to the back left the doorway is going to be right here this is going to sit to the left of the door as you walk out of it so i want the tall center piece to be on the left side here that would be your right my left okay and you want to make sure you've got soil all the way around that root ball then i'm going to go ahead and tuck in my heuchera this is a wild berry hooker grows about 10 to 14 inches tall like 16 inch spread i think zone four through eight four through nine so this is a beauty right here love the color of foliage both with the container and with this hosta the root ball looks very healthy in this one i don't need to rough up anything i'm going to likely have to fuss with this a little bit once i can see it from the front but you get the idea all right then next i'm going to tuck a few of these biolas they're called sorbet orchid rose beacon they have these sweetest little faces and they are a perennial so i can plant all of these out in the landscape unlike pansies pansies they do okay sometimes they come back after winter sometimes they don't for us it just depends i think i'm going to use a few of these i want to be heavy on the purple flowers and three and the last plant i want to put in here other than maybe another viola or two is a new fern it's called crested surf and this is the most gorgeous fern ever if you look at the top of the leaves they have a double crest let me find a really good example right here so if you follow that up you can see it forks at the top double crested and i love the color of the stem it's the same color of this heuchera so this hookura really draws that color out and if you look at the underside of the leaves you can see a lot more of that kind of deep purplish red color and the variegation is beautiful so a little bit of details on these since these are brand new to me 20 to 22 inches tall and a 28 to 30 inch spread and they are a zone three through eight so this is going to be gorgeous i have a few more of these too so i'm hoping in the end i'll use them in containers some in the landscape but i would love to have a big kind of swath of these somewhere in my garden i might need to remove a little bit of soil okay now i got to figure out the best way to put this in maybe like hold on i need to come to the front for this last plant oh my goodness isn't that like so pretty now i've got a little bit of air pockets around the air around the fern so i'm going to pack some soil in around that and then i'm essentially done just crazy it's really simple so i think i'm going to put in one more viola kind of right in here behind the hooker i just tucked in just to fill in this little bit of space here but the hookura will grow a bit and it will also put on bloom stocks later on this season so even if i didn't put a viola here it would still fill in and look really pretty so let me do that real quick then i'm just kind of fussing with the leaves to make sure i like how they look and this will change a little bit as the season goes as well but that is just absolutely beautiful i actually posted a picture of the hooker viola and the fern on instagram and facebook a few days ago and you guys seem to really enjoy seeing that combination of colors and i do too but i feel like putting it in this dark container i needed to elevate it and bring it like bring a little bit of brightness to the arrangement with this hosta but that is just so pretty i love it um so what we need to do now before we fill the water reservoir is to take it up to where it's going to live because it will get awful heavy once it's full of water so we'll do that and then i'll try to get some good pictures to show you guys what it looks like in the spot where it's going um but i'm just really looking forward to reporting back to you how the aquapot works how many days we get between watering so i'll start recording that today um you know write down that we filled it up with water and then i'll just monitor and see how things go so anyway i hope you guys enjoyed seeing this come together seeing these beautiful fresh plants we will link them all down below and i know it's a weird time right now to try to find plants most of these are available online if that's something that you want to do do definitely check with your local garden center first but yeah thank you guys so much for watching this video and we will see you in the next one [Music] bye [Music] all right so just really quick i forgot to really talk about watering initially um and i wanted to mention that you do need to water these containers in from overhead like normally with your hose or your watering can just to get all the root balls settled in and let them root in just a little bit especially when you're dealing with smaller plants like annuals that don't have a very big root ball we're dealing with a lot bigger root balls here for the most part so they reach further down in like closer to the water reservoir so probably wouldn't have to do it as long with this sort of arrangement and also wanted to mention when you're watering or filling up the reservoir you want to be really careful to watch that back that overflow in the back and i kind of did it wrong so i actually had to get a towel out and do some cleaning up i kind of held my finger not over the hole completely but a little bit to where i shut the hose off the second i started feeling a little bit of water come out but then you know the whole tube is full of water still so it all kind of came running rushing out onto the floor um so i had to clean that up so i did talk with jack and jack said that a lot of times what they do is if you can see the hole a lot of times you can see it kind of like starting to sputter a little bit of water when it's getting close to that hole and then they can shut the water off or you can sometimes hear it but that's not always possible to be able to hear it or to see it because i've got the overflow hole in the back here so in that case he would rise the pot up you can get little tiny pot risers to where it allows just a little bit of air between the pot itself and the ground so that if any water does spill out you can use a blower or something like that to blow the water away and it just dries up really quickly so i just wanted to mention those things that it might be something that you run into if you are trying out a pot like this too and i suspect that i will learn a lot of these kinds of things as i continue using these containers throughout the season so anyway now we're done we've got it by the front door and i think it looks beautiful so thanks for watching bye you

Channel: Proven Winners

Views: 59,519

Keywords: Proven Winners, gardener, garden, Variety (Organism Classification Rank), Flowering Plant (Organism Classification), flower

Id: qZQhF3nxgf0

Length: 13min 49sec (829 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021