how many plants per pot
Mary Sue Ittner (Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:56:21 PDT)

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.

When plants don't bloom for me very regularly when they seem large enough
to bloom (eg. Eucomis) could there be too few or too many in a pot?

Yesterday I tackled a pot of Nerine masoniorum which hadn't bloomed for a
couple of years. Since it is almost evergreen I haven't repotted it. I
intended to divide it to send extras to the BX, but have been having wrist
problems so needed to let it dry out a bit to do it and then got swamped
converting the wiki. This was a 8 in (20 cm) pot. The bulbs were really
dense. I counted them and there were 254 bulbs in that pot. I mailed most
of them to the BX this morning. I don't believe the soil in my garden is
wet enough in summer to support them in the ground and I'm trying to reduce
the number of pots I have.

Mary Sue