Need ideas of what to do...

In my area the ground has frozen..I received and still receiving trades on bulbs. So, as far as planting into the gardens will almost be not possible..Would it be an idea to plant in containers and place them into the garage till spring??or is that not a good idea..Tulips and irises.
Thank-You Ingrid

Make sure you use a well draing soil and fill the bottom of the container with gravel for drainage. I planted bulbs in a fluffy, peaty soil last year and they just rotted. The soil stayed too wet.

tabasco just posted this link in another thread in this forum. Has good tips on putting them in pots for mid-winter blooms. You might give it a try, Ingrid.

Susan - do you think a mix with a lot of perlite would be good? Like a seed-starting mix? Gravel layer sounds like a good idea or some packing peanuts would work too.

I'm going to try putting together some pots for winter-blooming indoors. I'll pot them up and keep in the garage for 2-3 months and bring them inside for bloom.

I think you will have better luck then I did keeping pots in a garage because you can moniter their moisture better. I left mine outside to get covered in snow and they were just too wet.

That's what tabasco said happened to her?/him? last year as well. What do you think about the perlite? Too dry if kept in the garage?

Well, let's see, I looked up what White Flower Farm says about bulbs in containers and found this link--

http://www.whiteflowerfarm.com/forcinghardybulbs.html

which goes into a lot more detail than the other article on the other thread , but WFF covers a lot of FAQ's--like whether to store them in the garage/basement/porch/outside, whether to cover, mulch, etc., etc. so you can decide depending on your weather...

Now I'm going to Depot to get more bulbs!

By the way, Langbr, I'm a girl (Judy)!

OK. Here's the other National Gardening "Bulbs in Containers" article FYI:

http://www.garden.org/howtos/scripts/howtos.taf?id=1324

Take care.









This message was edited Nov 10, 2004 11:58 AM

Thank-You ALL so very much for your help !!!
Best regards, Ingrid

Judy - thanks for the WFF link!! Good stuff. Didn't get to HD today, but tomorrow or tonite for sure.