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New to the garden: container planting questions!
iz.mae
Posts: 4
Hi. I'm very new to gardening and at the start of the year did some spring containers: tulips and daff bulbs, with pansies and violas on tops. They all seem to have died now and the pots aren't looking so great. I'd like to replace them with some summer/autumn flowers and maybe some greenery that will last more into winter. I'm a bit lost as how to do that though.. do I just dig out the existing plants and put in the new ones? Should I be save any of the roots/bulbs for next year? Or do they get thrown away now they've died back? Apologies if this is a silly question - any advice would be gratefully received!
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Posts
Never ever be afraid to ask questions because you think they may be considered " silly " we've all got to start somewhere and none of us knows everything.
I'd keep the daff bulbs as they'll come back if planted in Autumn, I'd stick everything else in the compost bin.
Garden centres are full of plants for containers now, so go crazy and get planting.
An easy (lazy) way to change the seasonal display in a planter is to have a couple of plastic pots that can fit inside it. One containing spring bulbs and one for summer flowering plants etc.
When the daffodils start looking tatty, you simply hoik out the pot and move it out of sight, down the back of the shed works for me 😉. Then you can pop in the summer pot and enjoy the fresh blooms 😁.
Swap them out again at the start of spring. I scrape out the top few inches of old compost before the bulbs begin sprouting and replace with fresh, pop some new violas in the top and your spring display is all done without the hassle of lifting/drying/storing the bulbs.
I agree that tulips never give as good a show as in their first year. I buy a couple of wilko packs each autumn for pots and the old ones get planted out to take their chances in the garden. Sometimes they flower, sometimes they dont 😕.
No question is ever silly - and we were all novice gardeners once.
As others have said, I'd probably ditch the tulips (they're generally not good repeat bulbs, putting on their best display in their first year) but hold onto the daffs.
I usually leave mine in pots Year on Year, but my pots are fairly large and the daffs are miniatures, i.e.narcissus.
They may clump up after several years though, then I'd lift them out and divide them up again.
With pots, it's also nice to have other bulbs in there for different seasons, like some hederifolium cyclamens or some mini irises. I've got a large pot with hardy geraniums (they're not the classic pelargonium geraniums you may know about, that are thick stemmed and don't naturally die back every year, then pop back up in spring), that like part shade, with loads of snowdrops underneath, so I get a good winter display, then the geraniums grow up and cover the dying back leaves of the bulbs.
In a larger pot, you could also try sticking in an evergreen that gives you year round colour / greenery and is nice as a backdrop for the other stuff.
Loads of cheap and cheerful annual plants in garden centres too. Just don't be scared to make mistakes, it's part of the fun
@dappledshade I love dwarf iris reticulata, so delicate and pretty. Another one that never comes back as good as the first year though, by yr3 it's all leaf and no flowers 😞.
Enjoy!