How to Create a Beautiful Spring Planter Full of Tulips and Daffodils

Would you love to have some color on your porch after a long winter of cold, wet and brown scenery?

It is possible, you just need to start planning now in the fall.

Plant spring flowering bulbs like tulips, daffodils, hyacinth in the fall (Oct-Dec)

Here are the supplies you need:

A pot (large or small)

Potting soil (or use the same soil that you grew annuals in the summer)

Bulbs

Small shovel (or you can use your hands)

1.First, for the fun part, dream up what you want your pot to look like.

Decide if you want tulips, daffodils, pansies or all of the above.

There are many places to buy bulbs:

• A local garden center (Al’s Garden Center-Woodburn, OR)

• Big box store like Lowe’s/Home Depot

• A local flower farmer, like Petal Pink Flower Farm, Three Acre Farms, and The Farmhouse Flower Farm. Look for bulbs sales is Sept-Nov.

2. Choose a location that will be at least 6 hours of sun (full sun).

3. If I am using a large or medium pot, I like to put a few rocks or something in the bottom to help with drainage. If you are using a small 1-2 gallon pot, just make sure it has holes in the bottom.

4. Fill pot with soil 6” from that top of the rim.

5. If using tulip bulbs only, plant those in one layer about 6” from top. Place tulips side by side until you fill all the area. (It doesn’t really matter if the point on the bulb is down or up) If you are using both daffodil bulbs and tulips, first place a layer of tulips, but do not pack as many any. Leave some several inches of space between since you will want to leave room for daffodil bulbs to grow on the 2nd layer.

6. Add a 2-3 inches of soil over tulips bulbs.

7. Next add daffodil bulbs. Leave some space between these bulbs too so the tulips have room to grow through later.

8. Add 2-3 inches of soil over daffodil bulbs. At this time, the should be only a few inches below the rim of the pot.

9. This is the time to add pansies too, if you’d like. Plant around the outer edges of the pot.

10. At this point (especially if you don’t plant pansies), your pot will look boring and only full of dirt.

11. BUT this is where gardening requires patience. As you wait, in a few months, the green tips will start to poke through the dirt and come spring, you will have a pot full of beautiful blooming flowers.

12. In the meantime, protect pot from children or pets sitting in the pot, or placing basketballs, etc. Not from experience of course, do I recommend this :)

What do I do after the blooms are done?

Once your blooms are done, now you wait. If you did not cut any blooms, then wait until the foliage dies down to yellow/brown.

Usually I am ready to plant my early summer annual by this time and the tulip and daffodil foliage are not completely died down yet. If I can’t wait, I take a large shovel and take a big scoop collecting all the bulbs and lots of dirt along with it. I then carefully transfer it to a location in my yard and plant there. There I let it finish dying down and next year, I am usually blessed with it reblooming.

If you HAVE cut off blooms to enjoy inside, then just pull the bulbs and throw them away. They are not worth keeping because with the blooms/foliage gone, the bulb cannot produce enough energy to rebloom for a few years after that.

Hope you enjoyed your winter experiment!