how many plants per pot
Jane McGary (Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:19:49 PDT)
Crowded potting is frequently recommended, particularly by
British/Scottish growers who intend to produce "show pots." I don't
crowd mine so much because I have a fair amount of room for extra
pots, and I can control the moisture. One danger of crowding a pot is
that some of the bulbs will clog the drain holes.
If you look at bulbs growing in the wild, they are usually not in
dense clusters. This is true even of species that form dense clusters
in cultivation, and presumably reflects the lower nutrition they get
in nature. (And predation, perhaps, don't get me started on that!)
On the other hand, I do grow a few things that seem not to flourish
unless crowded, and Acis trichophylla comes to mind.
If you spread out "rice-grain" fritillaria bulbs, they will often
devote their energy to making single leaves from the bulblets. When
you have rabbits and voles biting off all the flower stems and
dragging them away, at least you have some promising leaves to look at ....
Jane McGary
Northwestern Oregon, USA
At 11:56 AM 4/6/2009, you wrote:
Hi,
At the NARGS winter study meeting in his lecture Ian Young advocated
planting bulbs quite thickly, saying they love company. He showed pictures
of I think it was Crocus and Narcissus that were planted almost touching in
the pot.
This leads me to ask the question about which genera or species like to be
crowded and which do not. Sometimes when I repot the plants are so crowded,
I can't imagine how they all fit in the pot and how there can be enough
nutrients or soil to sustain so many plants. I'd always heard that when
they stop blooming it may be time to divide. And it would seem to me that
if some species were planted too densely there could be a problem with
disease for those of us who live in areas with excessive humidity over a
long period. With Massonia and some Haemanthus with long leaves that are
prostrate, the leaves of some of the plants sometimes get covered over with
leaves of some of the others and then it is difficult for the blooms to show.