Spring Container Garden Maintenance

Join me on this spring container garden maintenence day as I complete various tasks in my balcony garden!
______

🌿 Other Videos You Might Enjoy Watching 🌿:

▶️ Check Out My Plant Care Guides
https://cutt.ly/vwP39ljk

▶️ What To Do With Spring Bulbs When They Are Done Blooming
https://shorturl.at/hvBLS

______

🍀Follow me elsewhere 🍀:

👉Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/17m2garden/

👉YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/17m2garden

______

🌿 SHOP MY FAVOURITE GARDENING ITEMS 🌿

https://www.amazon.fr/shop/17m2garden

______

🌿Plant Care Products I use 🌿

Plagron “Lightmix” https://amzn.to/3PU277u

Plagron ‘”Alga Grow” https://amzn.to/46Qm8CG

Plagron “Alga Bloom” https://amzn.to/46R3xq3

Plagron “Power Roots” https://amzn.to/3ZUGbh3

Plagron “Green Sensation” https://amzn.to/3Fi0pYK

Plagron “Mega Worm” https://amzn.to/3S4ahwZ

* These links are affiliated, which means that if you make a purchase, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. I appreciate your support!

______
#springgarden #balconygarden #containergardening

Hello everyone! Welcome to this new video! It’s a really lovely spring afternoon, it’s very warm outside, but it’s also very windy! It’s been super windy for the past 3 days, but so far so good, no broken pots. I recently shared with you that I’m changing some of my larger terracota pots to larger plastic pots, because of the wind and so far so good, no broken pots this season yet! But there’s a lot of plant debris laying around so I have to clean it up, I have some early flowering spring bulbs that are now done blooming, that I need to pull out to make some space for my summer bulbs, that I’m going to be planting soon. I also have my flower seedlings that need to be transplanted to their final pots, probably next week so I have to make some space and kind of rearrange the things to make some space for those plants, and then just some general cleanup, fertilizing, watering cause with a wind like that obviously plants get dehydrated pretty quickly. So I thought I’ll take you along with me for this balcony gardening day, so let’s go, why don’t we start with the spring bulbs first. All right so here are my tulips and this was my bulb lasagna. I planted Crocus beautiful large white crocus ‘Jeanne D’arc’ and then I had another layer of tulip Infinity another absolute stunner and then there’s also a third layer and I made a silly mistake. Because I recently said that something is wrong with my irises they are not blooming and in fact I convinced myself that I planted Iris reticulata which is a late winter early spring flowering Iris and then when I checked I actually planted Iris hollandica which makes a huge difference because Iris hollandica blooms a little bit later in the season. So in fact everything is fine, those irises just need a little bit more time. But I’m going to be pulling out the Tulips here and here. I don’t keep Tulips from year to year it’s not worth it because tulips don’t come back well the next year. Those older varieties those that our grandmas have in their gardens or those that we call Botanical type tulips like Tulip turkestanica, these come back from year to year but all of those new fancy hybrids they do not come back, so it’s not worth keeping them. But if you need a little bit more info on how to keep bulbs from year to year I have a whole video dedicated to that where I show different ways of preserving bulbs, different ways of keeping them from year to year so you can check that out for more information. I’m going to keep the soil in this container, it’s perfectly fine to reuse the same potting mix after your spring bulbs, you can just add a little bit of organic matter for example a few handfuls of compost or something like that and you can totally reuse it for your summer plants. All right so here I need to be careful not to damage those Iris bulbs so I think I’m not going to be pulling those Tulips yet I’m just going to cut them low to the ground low to the to the soil level I mean, this way the irises will have a little bit more light a little bit more space to grow just wanted to show you something from up close, these bulbs are absolutely covered with apids but that didn’t prevent them from blooming, a certain amount of aphids is necessary to feed all of those beneficial creatures like ladybugs and and others all right so this part is nice and clean now we can finally see those irises. I’m going to water and fertilize everything at the end and now let’s move on. All right so these bulbs are still looking fine and that’s funny because these are exact same ones that I had in my bulb lasagna Tulip Infinity, these are still looking fine, a little bit beaten by the wind but I’m going to stake them using these individual stakes and then I’m going to water them and hope they bounce back a little bit and I can enjoy them still for a couple more days. these small bulbs here Puschkinia and this one rogue Muscari are pretty much done blooming,so I’m going to get rid of all of that but I’m going to cut those flowers and use them in a mini bouquet for my Sunday Challenge on Instagram. All right so we are at the back of the balcony and I have several things to do in here. It’s quite messy I need to rearrange those pots a little bit better and look at my Lilies they are so large already! There’s Lilium regale and Lilium ‘ Candy Blossom’ these are Lilies that I keep from year to here that’s why they’re already so large normally I’ll be just planting lily bulbs but you know when you keep them as perennials they wake up early in the spring. So I think I’m going to actually take these two and place them in the other part of the balcony because they will be blooming probably in about a month or so. All right so first let’s address this huge Hydrangea in here, Hydrangea sarata ‘Blueberry cheesecake’ I planted it in this large concrete pot here and it’s absolutely massive not that I mind because it’s absolute stunner when it’s in bloom it’s just so so beautiful and pollinators absolutely love it but since this hydrangea was not supposed to be this huge I also planted Pipit Daffodils in here, if you can see here they are barely blooming, there’s one flower in there cuz obviously they are overcrowded by this massive hydrangea so I just have to pull those bulbs out cause there’s no point for those bulbs to be there, they don’t bloom and they just look a little bit messy they look like tall grass. plenty of spiders everywhere there okay so it looks super messy right now but um ultimately I want this space to be my sort of vegetable garden. I have my two blueberry bushes in here, my two alpine strawberries and then I want to create a sort of galvanized buckets area in here so to use those galvanized buckets that I have for example over here currently I have spring bulbs in them but I would love to use them only in my vegetable garden from now on to create sort of a lovely little arrangement in here and on the other side and to grow only edibles in this part of the balcony. You know what I was just thinking why don’t I just bring all of those galvanized buckets here already I mean those Tulips will be done blooming in about a week so this way I already have the pots placed in their final location so I’ll just have to pull the Tulips out and that’s it I can plant my my veggies in here, so figured going to enjoy this little display for a couple more days in this corner looks pretty decent to be honest and then I can continue to rearrange my veggie garden in here. goodness this plants definitely needs a haircut and the pot is broken… great all right you guys so it’s been a couple of days and I wanted to show you an update on this corner I continued to work on this corner I removed all the Tulips that were done blooming I just kept this one container because these Healthcare tulips are still looking fine, in this large galvanized tub I transplanted my lettuce seedlings, it’s lettuce that I started probably about a month or so ago indoors, it’s Batavia lettuce then I divided one of my alpine strawberries and planted some of them in here, then in this empty pot we have arugula that I just started from seeds and then I transplanted my Parsley into the this last galvanized bucket. I keep Parsley as perennial it’s pretty winter hardy and then on this side I have some radish that I am growing in this wicker basket more radish and another Alpine strawberry so here is the progress on this corner. all right so it’s finally times to water and fertilize everything, so let me show you really quickly my spring fertilizing routine. So for all of those plants that are putting on vegetative growth so only foliage I’m going to be using Alga Grow which is an organic fertilizer reach in nitrogen and nitrogen is the mineral that your plant needs the most when it’s in the growth phase, so all the trees and shrubs non-flowering shrubs and all the leafy plants are getting Alga Grow, then all of the plants that are either blooming already or are about to bloom, so they already started to produce flower buds, these are getting Alga Bloom which is an organic fertilizer reach in pottassium and phosphorus which are two minerals that are essential when your plant is in the flowering or the fruiting phase. And this year I’m also trying Power Buds this is a bio stimulant so it’s not a fertilizer it’s a biostimulant and it helps your plant utilize those nutrients that you give in a fertilizer to produce more flower buds. So it’s really awesome for ornamental plants if you want to enjoy more flowers if you want that plant to produce more abundantly but it’s also great in your vegetable garden for all of those fruiting in plants like tomatoes peppers and all of your fruit bushes this increases the flowering and obviously the more flowers the more fruits or vegetables you will have. So something I’m trying this year and these are my just base plant care routine that I’ve been using for years now. So I already mixed in Alga Grow in here so let me show you what I’m fertilizing with it. So in the shade garden here it’s mostly foliage um so pretty much everything here is getting Alga Grow so we have a Fern, Hostas Japanese maple Little ornamental grass on the floor Another one in here Another Hosta and Podophyllum There’s also Brunnera on the floor and as long as it produces some flowers I don’t really care much for those flowers. I mean they’re really cute but I have plenty of forget-me-nots that look identical so I don’t really care, so I will just give it a bit of Alga Grow as well cause I mostly care about foliage. All right and then it goes pretty much the same for the other plants back there and all the rest of it that’s flowering is getting Alga Bloom plus Power Buds All right so now that everything is watered and fertilized, there are a couple more things that I want to do I want to bring some of my seedlings outside. I wanted to say to harden them off but it’s 20° Celsius outside so it’s not really hardening off, so I’m going to place them all outside let them get a little bit of fresh air a little bit of wind that makes them stronger so that’s great so let’s bring them all out So here they all are a couple of Coleuses, some Nasturtiums, sweet peas looking a little bit messy and tangled, Snapdragons Lucky Lips and snapdragons Kimosy Appleblossom and some lettuce. Okay and last thing that I will do today as I mentioned at the beginning of the video I’m going to create a mini bouquet for my Sunday challenge. If you guys are on Instagram don’t hesitate to follow me there as well it’s 17m2garden and every Sunday we have this fun challenge called #myminibouquet it’s a challenge I started last year where we just celebrate our small gardens with some seasonal mini bouquets and every week so many people participate I think we shared like in total over 1,000 mini bouquets so that’s pretty amazing, so if you would like to participate it’s always on Sunday you can post anytime you want but I usually repost all of those bouquets on Sunday. So going to create a mini bouquet for the challenge all right you guys hope that you enjoyed this balcony gardening day with me just as a quick reminder I also have membership programs available on my YouTube channel now by joining one of those membership programs you can gain access to exclusive bonuses such as personalized feedback and advices from me and you can also gain access to exclusive members only videos where I post detailed plant care guides and tutorials I already have a tutorial available on how to grow Caladiums from tubers and how to grow beautiful Clematises in pots. You can join that membership program by clicking the join button below the video thanks so much for joining me today for this balcony gardening day and we’ll see each other in the next video bye!