If you get reliable rainfall over the winter, a good dollop at least once a week, then you may not need to water much at all. If you get a burst of unseasonable heat - then you will. For the species you've chosen, midwinter heat seems to shorten the flowering time quite a lot. Where I live the ground as such never freezes, except in frost hollows, in highly shady places, several hundred feet higher than I am. A big frost for me is quarter of an inch that's gone by lunchtime. I'm saying this as a run up to saying that you don't really need to park your bulbs in the vegie bin in the fridge until the end of the month - unless your soil holds the heat for a long time into the winter - to have success with the bulbs you want to grow. May I suggest an alternative to burlap? A decorative planter box with excellent drainage and enough room for the pots - plus an insulating filler into which you can plunge the pots to keep the soil temperature fairly even. (Untreated sawdust, bubblewrap covered with a layer of decorative mulch, etc) If you needed to, you could also put up hoops within the planter and cover it with a suitable thickness of horticultural fleece. (And/or a 'canopy' of chicken netting to keep out any rodents, or birds, high enough to let the leaves and flower stalks grow.) The big hazard with bulbs in pots is a freeze that lasts for days, then a thaw, and another freeze. With the soil frozen the actively growing bulbs actually die of thirst, more than the freezing. (In colder zones they go dormant over the long winter - so no harm done.) Bulbs for planting are usually old enough to have converted their bulbs into a freeze resistant carbohydrate - but the flower stalk may well be damaged by a sustained freeze. The leaves are usually fine. Bonedust isn't necessary in pot culture, and it can attract various creatures. If you are buying a potting mix suitable for bulbs then all the ingredients should be there. If you use plain mix - you can add some tomato food according to the instructions. Not too much nitrogen, and higher in potash is what's wanted. The most important thing for overwintering, IMO, is excellent drainage which comes from adding sharp grit to the mix if it hasn't already got it. Not sand. Little pebbles - between a sixteenth and a quarter-inch diameter - about one handful to four handfuls of mix. The roots ripple their way through and get a better grip, which is useful if you live in a windy area. For the Earlicheers - I'd go for a deeper planter, I think. In the garden they're deep-rooting and have a terrific root system. If you want to keep your bulbs for another season then deeper could well be better to get the development needed. Think 2 gallon pail... Dutch Iris - a lean mix, great drainage, and good sun. They need a good baking after flowering to get set up for the following year. About the pansies: yes, you can. The small-face pansies can be useful - and are less likely to be hammered by bad weather. Put them in at the same time you plant your bulbs, put a teaspoon of slow release below, just covered by mix, before you plant over the top. They can be useful indicators of the need to water the pots, too. If the small pansies droop you KNOW it's dry! Remember to keep the dead flowers picked off to have a long flowering season. As you're planning on using quite small pots, put the pansies with the cyclamineus daffodils and the crocuses but perhaps not the Alliums or the big daffs, which produce prodigious amounts of leaves. (You might want to consider adding those bulb hoop thingies to reduce leaf flop in a small space.) Another possible, with Thalia particularly, is to add a couple of Muscari bulbs for a dash of blue, if that appeals. For further protection you can top the pots with gravel or glass pebbles. That helps to keep the soil loose on the top and stops rainsplash.

Tom: Let me give you a few more of my thoughts/observations about growing Norway spruce stands. As for provenance/variability. In addition to the general differences in the adaptation of various strains/provenances to different parts of the country, another thing I have observed in the 15 or so substantial NS stands I have seen and collected seed from in the nearby MD, WV, VA, and PA area, there is also a distinct variation in the amount of variability from tree to tree in each stand. In some stands, the trees look more like each other than in others. As luck would have it, in my own two older stands I see more variation than I have seen in any of the others I have visited--I have no idea why this should be so. The trees were planted between 1962 and 1966. But the variation is such that I can sit now and picture in my mind dozens and dozens of individual trees and the color and weeping character of their foliage, branching angles, bark color. I have quite a few special favorites. This may seem strange, but you have to understand that in addition to walking through my NS stands very often, I have pruned each individual tree in several phases up to at least 25 feet, and in some cases well over 30 feet. Anyway, one of the things I especially like about NS is this variability--with the possible exception of red maple, I have never seen another species of tree like it. For me, the effect in a forest stand of NS is glorious. Next, if you plant 6 X 6, or even 8 X 8, in about 12 to 15 years what you will have is a really dense "thicket" of NS trunks and branches that you will not be able to walk through. If at that point you want to thin and prune, you will need loping shears just to work your way into the stand, unless you have long arms, a good pruning saw, and dont mind getting scratched. I would recommend not doing anything for about 30 years, and then if you prune and thin, do it yourself by hand and leave all the wood to compost the soil and be taken up by the remaining trees. But if for aesthetic reasons you want to do some early pruning and thinning, that can do no harm. But for the long term magnificence of the forest, you dont really need to do anything. Norway spruce trees express dominance as well or better than any conifer I know. A couple years ago I called Professor Edwin White at SUNY Syracuse with a few questions that followed up on the studies he directed a few years before, and in the conversation I marveled about the stand at Glady, WV, which I had visited again shortly before--marveled at the strength and beauty of the trees that had continued to express dominance since I first saw the stand almost 20 years before. And he said he was not surprised that I was so impressed, and that if one wants to have the most magnificent stand of NS, and white pine for that matter, there was no need to do any thinning (or pruning) at all. He emphasized that both species expressed dominance over the long run very efficiently. My own observations make me think that NS is even better than white pine in this regard, but I dont have any data--just my informal observations--to back that up. One of the studies that Professor White directed was a site factors study. I will look that up for you and give you the reference--it was published in the SAF Northern Journal of Applied Forestry. If you are near the U of WI you can find it there (they do have a school of forestry?), but if you call SUNY Syracuse I would guess they would send you a copy. I am not sure how useful this would be to you in selecting a site for your planting, but I found the study fascinating. It is an observational rather than an experimental study, so it is not easy to understand exactly what it all means in practical silvicultural terms. But I can suggest that NS will grow well in soils with a pH above 4.8, and maybe 4.4 or a bit lower, but pH above 5 with some good amount of magnesium is probably best. I have soils in the 4.8 range and I experimented by broadcasting some high mag crushed limestone around a few groups of trees. No dramatic results, but perhaps some improvement--the kind of measurements really needed to determine exactly what the effects have been, were too difficult for me to do with any accuracy. One surprising finding of the study was that slope position and aspect were apparently unrelated to NS growth. For many species the lower east and north facing slopes are best. When I remarked about this to Professor White, he said that since I am so much further south, that may not be true for NS grown here. Anyway--interesting! Well, if I can think of anything else, I will come back and post it. In the meantime I will look up the site factors study and give the specific reference. Oh, I just thought--about larch. There is a professor at SUNY Syracuse who has dome some work with larch--I cant remember his name now, and he told me that larch does best where the soil is fairly deep--he gave me a number like an "A" and "B" horizon (or rooting zone) of at least 18 inches, or something like that. But then he added that if growing on a slope they can do well with less soil depth. I dont know if you have any slopes on your new land. Anyway, for what its worth --Spruce

Ok guys you have to help this rookie out I have never attended a function like this before...I am really hoping to make it seeing how I am due to have my baby June 15th should I be bringing a door prize or something for the chinese auction? Also I am going to have.. grape tomato plants black eyed susan splits different kinds of daylillies whatever else I have that has not been planted or found a place in my yard what I am looking for is of course sum and substance as listed above or any kind of hosta because I would like to start a hosta garden in my yard I know that I do not have much to offer but the belly has kind of made it hard to bend over :-)

Lauriescreams - Thank you! I felt like I was just getting into my groove with my last garden when the decision was made to move. We did not take anything with us, our house closed a month before our new house was done being built and we stayed in a hotel for half of that with everything in storage. I am slowly getting a feel for what the plan will be with this one, my first inclination was to remove the sod on the back slope and plant on it but now I am leaning more towards trying to convince the husband that we need to terrace it with a retaining wall. I have had a few different companies out here to measure and give me quotes but so far none of the quotes have come in yet. So far the plan for the roses is to plant them in sort of an ombre' effect pattern, with the deepest colors(Young Lycidas, Darcy Brussel) in the middle going out to the lavenders(Plum Perfect, Angel Face, Heirloom, Love Song) and whites(Earth Angel, PJPII, Winchester Cathedral).