Do you plant your tulips or daffs in containers?

12 years ago

Somebody on this website or DG plants all their Spring bulbs in cheap plastic pots, then buried them in the ground with mulch covering them so they can lift them after they have finished blooming and when their foliage has died back they will cut the rest of the foliage off, clean the bulbs up and store them for the summer and replant in late Fall. Would like to hear from people that might do something similar to this. Pros and cons of it?

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Comments (5)

vetivert8
12 years ago
It can be useful to use a bulb basket for planting out if you have a small garden. It's a bit easier to locate the plastic container and reduce the risk of bulb kebabs on your garden fork...:-((. Then you can clear away the bulbs in time to plant up for a summer's display and watering regime.

If you want to do this - be sure that the pots you use have very generous holes otherwise the daffs particularly will circle the pot many times before they find an exit. Not optimum for developing buds and reserves for the following year.

Also - some Narcissus seem to be downright picky about flowering in pots more than once. (Jonquils. Tazetta.) Others, such as Tete a tete and Jetfire are quite uninhibited and multiply generously. The system you're proposing - lift and replant annually - definitely works in my zone. Make sure you select your bulbs for size and keep the smaller bulbs together for growing on.

Tulips. Deep pots are better, IMO. They provide enough room for the droppers and the formation of the new bulbs. But I'd have to be very fond of the variety before I'd be excavating foot-deep holes.
anna_in_quebec
12 years ago
"bulb kebabs on your garden fork" - Vetivert - you made me LOL - and I work in a library!!
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Chemocurl zn5b/6a Indiana
12 years ago
I haven't yet, but have often thought of planting some daffs in pots and sinking them into the ground. Then come bloom time, I'd planned to sink them in the ground out by the mailbox. As the blooms withered, I'd remove the early blooming pots, and replace them with mid or late season blooming ones in pots. Good theory, but not sure how well it might work. Maybe I'll try it will a few different cultivars yet this fall. I've not started planting yet...sigh.... but hope to here pretty soon.

We've had some nice fall rains, so it will be a lot easier planting this year than what it was last year in rock hard dry soil.

Sue
flora_uk
12 years ago
This is exactly what I do with my window boxes. They have some permanent evergreens and pot shaped holes in the compost. Daffs in pots in the spring followed by geraniums or someting else in pots, maybe chrysanthemums in the autumn and then back to violas in the winter and then the daffs again. They can stay in the same pots for several years and I just shove them behind the compost heap in the summer out of the way.
katob Z6ish, NE Pa
12 years ago
flora that sounds nice.

I've planted bulbs in pots mostly to be able to move them around in the spring or force them into earlier bloom. They either get buried in mulch and loose soil (the thicker the mulch the better) or go into the garage. Never a problem with the mulched ones... unless they freeze so solid I can't dig them up for early forcing... the garage ones I've lost a couple times probably from wet soil and/or freezing and refreezing. They have no problem with the freezing, it's the repeated back and forth or the rapid freezing that do the damage (IMO)

Do you plant your tulips or daffs in containers?

Comments (5)

vetivert8

anna_in_quebec

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