My Goal of an Autopilot Garden (Fall Is Perfect for Prep) | The Southerner’s Garden

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Hi y’all and welcome back to the garden. So, a little bit of warning. I’m a bit under the weather. I haven’t shot a video in about two weeks. I went to New York last week. And um on the way home, it’s always difficult for me to get back to Ohio for some reason. Flights are always delayed. Well, my flight was delayed an entire day. So, I lost a day, but I also got sick on the return flight back. And I was really tired for the few days after the next flight. And then Thursday, I woke up pretty sick. So, I’ve not been out in the garden to do anything in over 2 weeks. Um, so we’re going to talk a little bit about what makes that possible this time of year. So, it’s been two weeks as I mentioned. Um, we have not had I just checked my Tempest weather station and also my rain gauge. We have had um maybe 3/4 of an inch of rain in since the beginning of August. So, that’s been 6 weeks, which makes it really difficult for for plants to thrive when it’s 90 something degrees outside. Um, the good thing is now that we’re entering fall, our nights are lower. So, we’ve been had nights almost in the upper 40s, uh, 50s, 60s a little more common now. We were getting a little lower than usual last week. Um, but let’s talk a little bit about that. And I am going to come out this afternoon. I was going to this morning, but because we’ve not had any rain, planting things in the garden, this time of year can be really challenging um with an augur because it is so dry. So, I’ll talk to you about how I’m going to fix that at the end of this video in the back where I’m going to be planting a lot of new shrubs I got in that we’ll show you. So plants after this last uh eight weeks or so of just intense heat and no rain are looking really tired. Uh part of how I make it through that challenging season is simply drip irrigation. I’ve talked to you a lot about drip irrigation. Uh I have multiple videos on drip irrigation if that’s something you want to look into. And fall is the perfect time to start drip irrigation. One of those reasons is because it’s cool. Um, you can see where all your plants are. They’re all up and established for the season. Uh, but also drip irrigation doesn’t need to be blown out like typical sprinkler irrigation does. All of the line is a really pliable plastics and the emitters are meant to drain all or intended to drain all the water from the system. Uh, I do have mine blown out just because it’s part of my underground sprinkler system, but if you’re hooking it to like a hose bib on the side of your house, other than removing the timer, that’s not something you have to worry about. So, drip irrigation is the primary driving factor in me being able to have an autopilot garden where I can just not touch it for 2 weeks and not have to deal with those things. Now, just because you install drip irrigation for a new garden does not mean that you can’t uh babysit it, all plants are going to need a little supplemental attention as they get established. But outside of drip irrigation, I tend to focus on plants that are drought tolerant that do not have drip irrigation. So, from a design perspective, these hookra like their drip irrigation. And so, I have drip irrigation running here. And you can actually see the darker spots on the mulch here where the drip irrigation has been running consistently. But after this area, there’s a big part of the garden here that doesn’t have drip irrigation on the perennials. So like all of these salvas here, these iris, these aliums, veronas, um this dragon slayer yucka, which is new, the Russian sage back here is also not got drip irrigation on it. So all of those plants though are drought tolerant. So although we’ve had very little rain, they still look okay. Now the salvia has been cut back once this season, uh the new foliage or the new growth has flopped a little bit too. Uh these plants are just ready to go to sleep for winter. Now I do have drip irrigation like single emitters on the dogwood for instance. So, I use drip irrigation as a way to limp plants along during these times of drought. This garden is still very new. Things are still getting very established. And so, drip irrigation is just a tool um to help limp it along because like I said, most of the season this year, we had a lot of rain until like mid July. It was so rainy, in fact, I was having terrible issues with crabrass uh all throughout the garden. And now that we’ve not had rain, the crab grass is essentially like I’ve not seen any germinate. So that’s been good, too. So plant choice makes a big difference in how you’re able to maintain an autopilot garden. Now, one thing this fall I’m really excited about is my roses. This has been a really difficult year for roses in my opinion. We had a really, really tough winter. Most of my roses that I planted, if you’ve been following this year, I had to cut them to the ground. They’re all onroot roses, most from heirloom roses.com. I’ve got some proven winners varieties and some varieties from easyelegance roses. Um, but they’re all coming into their own again now that the temperatures are dropping. Spring was difficult because they had to be cut to the ground. And then we had endless rain which made disease really difficult on them. And then we had very very hot temperatures which meant they did not want to bloom. But the cooler temperatures have made them start setting buds extremely quickly. So we’ve got some beauties like Uptown Girl has a really nice pink bloom. It’s pretty large, but there’s so many buds that’s setting right now. I am going to be coming and transplanting this um desert orchid here. This is El Nino from Proven Winners Collection. I’ve showed you in a video several times. I didn’t expect it to get this big here in zone 6. Um and you can see it’s it’s blooming. It’s blooming a whole lot later than I kind of expected it to. We’re midepptember now and every branch still has just not produced blooms yet. But to transplant this, um, I need to I’ll I’ll do it this week sometime, but I want to come put a hose on it and give it several days of water first because we have been in such a drought. And then I’m going to cut it back to at least half um if not more and then move it to the back of the property. And I’ll show you where I’m going to put that at the end of this video. I planted a lot of tiny geraniums, perennial deranium in this area to fill in. Uh some of them I planted early spring and they’ve just kind of sat there because of the weird season we’ve had and they’re finally starting to thicken up and put on some more growth with the cooling temperatures. So that shows me that they got a good root system established or started establishing one throughout the season and this will be good for them going into fall. Now, if you don’t have drip irrigation and you’ve had a season like the summer that’s as dry as mine, you want to make sure you’re watering your garden even though the temperatures may not be super high. plants after going through a situation like that become very stressed, very tired. And if they go into winter with dry roots and dry conditions and in a stressed state, that is more likely that they may not make it through winter. So, you always want to make sure you’re watering your plants well even though the temperatures are not extremely hot outside during the afternoon to give them time to recover and uh prepare them for dormcancy. This rose, which there’s three of them here, is honey apricot. Um, this is from the Flavorette series. I really love the color on this one. These are the type of blooms that are my favorite. They’re not huge blooms, but they’re really pretty. Uh, and it’s got tons of buds. It’s a little wild. If you remember, this is one that I had. There’s a trio here. And this one right here on the right uh was cut to the ground and it looked so bad. I wasn’t sure that it was going to survive. It had no surviving uh stems above ground. And you can see it has come back in a season and it’s big. It is as big as the other two that are there. So, little wild. I kind of like its um structure here though. It’s very arching. So, it’s nice around all of this other stuff. Uh down here below it is one of my favorite annuals that just continues to blow me away. There are about 10 plants here in this area and this is campfire marshmallow bidens. Last year I planted them but I kind of scrunched them up a little closer together in a smaller group cuz I didn’t realize how big they would get. Uh so I spaced them further apart this year and it looks like I could probably space them even further apart. They just take up this space so wonderfully. And in fact, I have some evergreens under here, which will shine a little more when these hit their first frost. Um, there are some gem box uh eyelets in here that continue this little hedge, but these are ones that are always going to be in my garden. They are just solid performers and loved by the pollinators. I did come through and cut back my gar, which I think I showed you in a video. Uh it’s been a moment now, but uh they’re coming back kind of iffy. Gar can sometimes be kind of bianuals here anyway. And so I’m not sure that they’ll survive for it very well over winter. If they don’t, I’ll find something else to put there. And I might could move the Bidens kind of into this area to fill in that would be really pretty next to this little devil nine bark here. The race for days helopsis uh are finally looking a little rough. They had held those flowers for so long, they could probably use a cut back, but it’s too late in the season to deal with any of that right now. Here is a status update on the wicked witch kolas. Now that it’s gotten cooler at night, you can see the temperature or the color of the leaves changing a little bit. So, they’re still a little dark over here, but they’re getting a little uh different like color here on these that are a little more exposed further away from the house, which is interesting. But I’ve been blown away by this variety. I’ve actually added it to my list for next year along with some other color blaz from the proven winter series because they just performed so well. I’m interested in ridiculous, which is red. Uh there’s a lime and there’s an orange. I think it’s called Sedona Sunset or something. Really pretty. And this red bud’s also done so well this year. Color spectacular. So, let’s talk a little bit about fall. Um, and how I’m going to prepare for spring next year. Typically, uh, and what I’ve done traditionally is I just kind of let my garden go to sleep and I deal with a lot of cleanup in the spring. Um, I’m going to try and approach that a little different this year. I don’t have any big projects to tackle. I need to finish the gravel around the pool that I started, you know, a month and a half ago and then never finished. Uh, but I spring for me is really busy. Um, and so it’s difficult for me to get stuff cleaned up and tackle the spring projects that I want to do. I’m approaching a spot in the garden uh here where I’ve mentioned I’m not going to be doing a whole lot of new beds. We’ll just be refining stuff because it’s got to the point where I just can’t take care of all of it. Uh to the extent that I like to have my garden tidy and in place all the time. So, uh we’re going to be moving shrubs out and in from here going forward, things that just aren’t performing very well, things that look a little rough. um and tweaking and adding perennials and ground covers here and there to make maintenance easier over time. Something that really blew me away this year was how big this sapphire surf blue beard got. So, this was I think it come from Bailey or their first edition shrubs and trees line. It’s maybe like a two gallon last year. Had three of these in the garden. The two that were planted uh in October did not survive. So, if you’re going to plant this one, I think it’s hardy down to zone 6. If you’re going to plant it and you’re in zone 6, do not plant it in the fall. Plant it in spring or summer. Uh, it got massive this year. And it’s beautiful. And you can see how many pollinators are on it already early this morning. Uh, it’s not even it’s barely 8:00 in the morning. Something I wanted to point out though is this viburnum here. This is yard line. Uh you can see how much it’s grown this year. This is an upright viburnum from Proven Winners that it’s evergreen in most climates. It would not be uh evergreen here in zone 6 because it’s not hardy in zone 6, but it has performed really wonderfully this summer. Uh and it has gotten 4 foot tall at least after dying mostly to the ground. There were some stems that completely died on me. It is a south facing brick wall, so keep that in mind. Uh, and it may be difficult to find since it is not um hardy to zone 6. If you’re in zone 6, you may have to order it online. If you’re interested in trying it on a south facing wall, but it’s returned really nice for me, even though it was planted last July and we had a really horrible typical zone 6 winter, uh, that doesn’t always happen all the time. So, if we have a milder winter, it may do even better. So, this year is going to be really interesting. I can see you can see how thick some of these stems are. So, they’re more likely to survive winter than the tinier stems that were there last year. And I’m really excited to see if this returns year after year because I love this variety. Uh it is really stunning, very upright, leaves are very glossy, and if you’re in zone 7 or above, see if you can find it. They would make an excellent privacy hedge like an alternative for like an arborita or something. Um, but that’s yard line really gorgeous. So, I talked to you about doing like a formal boxwood um and Annabelle hydrangeanger garden in front of the swing swing set over here. Well, I got I did some planning on my computer which I use like Excel because I can make perfectly one by one squares and plan stuff out by the feet. And I had planned a 20 by 30 area with quadrants that are, you know, 10 10 by 8 or something enough for pathways in between. And I have a tarp that’s 20 by 30. And I went and grabbed it and pulled it out here the other day and I didn’t love it in this space. Nothing here is square. Um the garden beds around the fence are angled. Uh which I wasn’t going to do a square square. I was going to do like rounded edges, but nothing here align um perfectly. So stuff are symmetrical. Like the barn is a little off. Like the barn is a little off. So this pathway that would have been here would have been at an angle. This would have been kind of straight. I could have made that pretty straight. But then the swing set sets crooked and so that would have been a narrowing pathway. There was no way of doing it here because it’s skinnier there than it is over here. And so I considered just doing a circle and just doing a round boxwood uh or ink berry holl around it and then a bunch of hydrangeas in the center. And then I decided I’m just going to scrap that too and leave that open for now because I also don’t have many wood chips available going into I may change my mind cuz that stuff happens. Uh if I can figure out I need to get the drone up above me and take some actual pictures and see if I can sketch it out cuz I want the placement not to be weird. I think it would be pretty to have a round um area here. I just don’t know where to place it yet for it to not look funny to me. But if I don’t, then I’m going to plant a bunch of um storm proof hydrangeas in the cut flower garden on the front edge because storm proof stays a little shorter. It gets about 4t tall. Um and it’ll be the front so it’ll be able to be seen by the road really well. It’d also be a great place to try them and trial them in full sun conditions. So, I always get questions about people from people who uh ask about planting those type of hydrangeas in full sun. I typically don’t recommend it. Um, at least they will burn at least for a few years most likely. Uh, but I also have storm proof in other areas of the garden which would be considered full sun and I have them in some areas that would be more part sun locations. So that would be a great location to try them anyway. And then if I plant them this fall there and I decide to use them in another project, I can dig them up. But at least they’re not sitting in their containers over winter in a place that is unused. So, let’s take a look at where I’m going to put the um desert orchid and then some new shrubs I have for this garden space. So, I’d originally planned this garden bed to be kind of um front to mid to back where the tallest stuff is in the center, but realistically, this bed’s not going to be seen so much from the backside. So, I’ve kind of changed that a little bit over the uh recent days cuz I’ve moved some trees to the back further back. So, they’re going to be taller. I’m going to stick the desert orchid right here toward the back of this bed. Um that will be another tall uh center pieceish type thing back there. And then I have a lot more shrubs in this area, including a lot of the hydrangeas from up front from my hydrangeanger trials that I want to try in uh more sun or different conditions to continue to test how they perform. I’m supposed to be getting DreamCloud from Bailey and Endless Summer, which is their new macroofila release. I don’t know when that’s will happen. Sometimes they don’t get here until late, but I have some more Let’s Dance Can Do, which has been an incredible performer for me here in zone 6. It is a hybrid mountain h uh macrofila and it produces lace cap blooms, but they are really stunning. You can see how many buds are on this one right here. It has been grown in greenhouse conditions. Now, they did come through and cut all the blooms and buds off of these other two that were sent to me, but that’s okay. We’ll probably get some blooms on it yet this season. Um, and then we have some more Let’s Dance Lovable right here, which I am really interested to see how they perform in a little more sun conditions. Uh, in the shade this year, Let’s Dance Lovable did or part sun, probably more part shade. Uh, they did not produce as much buds as I expected them to. We have Fresco, which is like the trailing hydrangeanger. I wanted to try them out. I have a couple in the garden. They did not perform well this year. They are only rated to zone 6. And the things online, some say they bloom on new wood, some say they bloom only on old wood. Uh I did get a bloom off one of mine in the spring, but I’m not entirely convinced that they bloom on new wood. Um so we will try these and see if we get blooms off of them. I planted them here because I don’t expect them to perform well in zone six based on the I’ve grown them for a couple years. I grew them in my last garden. Um they’re beautiful hydrangeas, but higher winters here in Ohio, you just can’t um they don’t seem to return well. Uh so the ones I have up front are maybe four or five inches tall from the winter dieback and that’s all they put on all year. Now, the soil back here in the back garden is much better than the really heavy compacted clay at the front. So, they might perform a little better up here. We got a reminiscent yellow rose here from Proven Winners. We got more of the glow pops, which is that right there. Uh they have been in greenhouse condition, so they look more green, but this is what they look like. This is the glow pop as well. when they get more sun, they are much more yellow, which I really love that pop of yellow back here. It was something that was desperately needed in this area. So, I started adding some shrubs that are yellow and some evergreens that are yellow. Here is another rose from heirloom roses that is looking gorgeous this fall. This is perfumed kiss. This is the latest one I added to the garden from Brad Jar’s collection. It is producing a ton of buds. It smells amazing. It has these lilac color blooms on it. Um, but the new growth is gorgeous. We got uh wee bit innocent back here, which is one that hasn’t bloomed like prolifically well for me in my garden. It’s from a different breeding line from my understanding from some books I’ve read. Um, it’s from the Cityline series, which is a florist type hydrangeanger from Proven Winners collection. Um, and I think it was the City Line anyway. And although the Cityline series has beautiful blooms, they were bred not necessarily for bud hardiness. So, I I have two right next to each other on either side of the sidewalk in the front. I’ve showed you throughout the season. One I don’t know that it’s bloomed all season. The others had several buds on it. Uh, some of these I’m just giving several years to get established and see if they perform better after they get a few years under them in the ground. This is good vibrations. It’s a privet beautiful variegated right here. So, it can add some nice color. We have Let’s Dance Ariba, which is a relooming macroila. More glow pop, which I think is just like the perfect name. There’s glow pop and glow stick. Glow stick is a a vertical um that grows more upright. This is a yellow winecraft gold uh smoke bush. So, it looks very green right now cuz it’s been in the greenhouse, too, but I kind of stuck it in the center. Uh smoke bushes grow with like these really kind of random long stems. They’re not like a super thick shrub. So, I planted it here next to this oak leaf and this fiber optics button bush. So, it would kind of just grow out and among them and it’ll be nice yellow foliage here to add to the center of this bed. And we got another glow pop over here to add there. And then over here, I had a shrub die over winter last year and I don’t even remember what it was, but it was right here. Um, it’s really small stem, so I have no idea. But I got a few of these bubbly wine wila, which I love wila. And I’m just going to plant a trio here. I may end up removing the lemony lace elderberry that’s behind there. I’m going to give it another year. Um, they do not perform well. I had one in my last garden that completely died. Uh, and I thought like maybe it was just me, so I planted another one here. I think you just got to have perfect conditions for them. I may transplant it to an area that gets a little more shade than it’s getting here. But I also went to Michigan to see Proven Winners um event last month and to the Garden of Garden Crossings, which creates content here on YouTube and Instagram and owns the Garden Center, a garden center up there called Garden Crossings. and she had one in the landscape and it also looked horrible. So, I don’t know if they just don’t like our climate here in the Midwest or what it is. I’ve seen them look beautiful like uh out west, but here for some reason they do not do well. They look just like that. Like, um Heidi at Garden Crossings was much bigger than that, but it still looked like that. Half dead. Uh just not performing great. So, I’m going to give it and see how it comes up next spring. If it comes up at all, it struggled all year. If it does continue to look like that throughout the spring and the summer, I may transplant it to somewhere else that gets a little more shade uh to see if it’ll do better. I don’t have a whole lot of places in the garden where I can provide stuff that type of shade. Um because I just have a few really big established trees which are hard to garden under to begin with. Uh the best I can do is to move it further back uh along these hedge hedge of trees here that will protect it after lunch. So, um we’ll see. But I’m not hopeful that it’s going to perform well just cuz I’ve not had good experiences with them. Now, what I’m going to do, I was going to come out here this morning and go ahead and plant these. But because the soil is so dry, and I know because I tried to plant a few things uh a couple weeks ago when I planted these trees and showed you these new trees, my augur was really struggling in these areas. So, I’m going to come bring out a water hose uh and a sprinkler and irrigate this bed for a good long while uh both areas of it. And then I’ll come plant this evening, which will be much easier as the sun’s setting. give me a little longer time and then I’ll be in the shade rather than in the sun. So, that sounds like a good idea to me. My priority over the next two weeks is to get everything planted that I need to plant. If you are planting in the fall, it is generally recommended to plant 6 weeks before your first frost, which would be today for me. Um, I have traditionally planted up until frost. I do not recommend planting evergreens uh this late in the season unless you have a wet se winter season like we do here in Ohio. Typically, if you are in a location that receives very little rain, very little precipitation or snowfall, uh that will melt. Evergreens do not stop growing and do not stop transpiring over winter. So, they need irrigation over winter because they will continue to uh transpire throughout their leaves, although slower. So, if you’re planting evergreens, make sure you definitely keep them watered through your first frost until the ground freezes or supplemental water them over winter. These beautiful James Goway. James Goway is finally catching up. James Goway is uh the one I planted 11 of them here along this arbor that I created last fall. I’ve not done any training this year after so much died back last um winter because of our horrible winter. I just kind of left it alone this season and didn’t pay it a whole lot of attention. I’ll probably do a better job of that next year. It’s too late in the season. And I’m not going to be doing much rose care this fall. Like I attempted to do some last year. Every time I do rose care in the fall, like pruning for the spring or whatever, our winters can be so tough here that sometimes it just causes more dieback, which makes you have to redo that job again in the spring anyway. So, after years of testing and triing of doing stuff, not doing stuff, I’m just going to not do anything this winter. Uh, and see how that goes for the spring. And if you have rough winters, maybe give that a try. It might work best for you. It seems to be the best uh for me here. And I think that’s about it for this video. So glad to be back. But I would encourage you if you’re not preparing for fall to start because it’s going to be here and we’re going to have our first frost here in zone 6, Ohio pretty quickly. Uh, it’s only 6 weeks away and with the temperatures looking like they are, it could be an earlier frost than typical, which wouldn’t bother me because if we have an earlier frost, that means I can clean stuff out, annuals out earlier cuz I’m hesitant to pull things out before their time. Annuals in the ground I will leave until frost. Uh, containers I may clean out a little earlier because I’ll need to clean those up and get those stored uh for winter, my crescent garden containers. So, thank you all for joining me and remember, be a light. Take care.