Spring Bulbs in Pots
They say third time’s a charm, and I’m hoping this will be true when it comes to my endeavors at trying to plant and grow spring bulbs in pots! I was re-watching some older episodes of Gardener’s World the other week and came across a piece on planting spring bulbs in pots, so I thought I’d give it yet another go.
My first attempt at this was a couple of years ago when I planted tulips and daffodils in my three window boxes that line our windows looking out onto the patio. This attempt failed miserably as the bulbs froze over the winter and all I had in the spring were mushy, rotten bulbs.
My second attempt was last year, this time I planted bulbs in all my pots and a couple of window boxes that I then brought into the newly made green house. This experiment worked a little better in that more than half of the bulbs did not rot and bloomed, unfortunately they bloomed too early in the green house! I had lovely cut tulips (no daffodils bloomed) in January and February and early March but nothing to bring out in the spring!
So here I am fall 2021 watching Monty Don (again) and revisiting how to plant spring bulbs in pots. I believe I’ve figured out where I went wrong! Plant the bulbs in good potting soil, I used a combination of Miracle Grow potting soil, perlite, and a wee bit of manure. I filled about a ¼ of the pot with this mixture and then packed the bulbs in a single layer as close as I could without them touching each other and then filled the pot with the remaining soil. Next, I gave each pot some water and then labeled them, so I knew which bulbs were in which pots. Then I placed them (at first) on the covered patio where our fire pit is so that they were away from any area that they could get wet from either rain or snow. That was my first mistake, if the bulbs get wet, they will freeze, hence the mushy bulbs from my first attempt.
According to what I learned on Gardener’s World you can leave the pots outside for the winter, in a sheltered place and the bulbs should be okay. Given that show takes place in England and I’m not sure what their temperatures are like compared to ours in Colorado, my pots started outside but then I got nervous and brought them in and have them stored in the basement which is also cool but with no risk of freezing. That was the second thing I got wrong in that spring bulbs need a period where they are cold. By planting them in pots and then moving those pots into the greenhouse, they did not get their down time in the cooler temperatures, lesson two learned!
If all goes well this time around, in spring 2022 I should have five pots filled with beautiful tulips, daffodils and hyacinth. Rather than go with the standard tulip, I took a lesson from a free online workshop I watched from Floret Farms and tried two different varieties of tulips, one called Angelique where the tulips look like pink peonies. The other tulip variety I planted is called Parrot Magic and the petals on this tulip look like feathers! Their tips are a bright pink with veins of green surrounded by pale pink. Both varieties have interesting textures and shapes so it will be fun to see how they bloom in the spring.
Taking more tips from Monty Don, I planted Tete-A-Tete daffodils which are miniature in size and bright yellow. The hyacinths are of the Muscari Armeniacum variety and have fragrant spike blooms of cobalt-blue clusters. So, if I’ve not made any new mistakes then my perseverance should finally pay off and my attempts at planting spring bulbs in pots for a bit of spring color on my patio should final work!
