When pansies are on the tables at Johnson’s, you know fall has arrived. In Kansas, these hardy tiny plants have grown to be a welcome addition to autumnal landscapes. Pansies are available with the well-known pansy “face or in clear solid colors, ranging in color from pastel paints to black. The size of the blooms ranges from the tiniest one-inch blooms to the enormous four-inch Super Majestic Giants series. Pansies love chilly and cloudy conditions. Pansies may survive a winter of -20 degrees if they are sown in the ground in the fall. The plant will become dormant when the temperature falls below 10. You may grow pansies through the spring with very little care, so you can enjoy blooming in the fall, winter, and spring! Blooms often return by February. The ancestor of current pansies, violas have a little pansy-like appearance. Pansies and violas can both be planted in the fall for three seasons of color, and both are similarly planted and tended for.
Pflanzen und Pflege Plant pansies in a spot that is safe, sunny, and well-drained. Heavy shade may prevent your pansies from flowering well, but partial shade is acceptable. In regions with shade, violas will blossom. Our multi-packs can be planted individually if you want, or in large groups for immediate impact. When planting pansies, incorporate cotton burr compost and ferti•lome Premium Bedding Plant Food into the soil. Well water that has been fertilized The Root Stimulator. Pansies benefit from insulation and soil moisture retention from mulch. To maintain pansy roots’ comfort throughout the winter, we advise using Cotton Burr Compost or Cocoa Shell Mulch. Remember to water your pansies if the fall and/or winter are particularly dry. Use ferti•lome to fertilize When pansies are getting ready to start their profuse flowering in the spring, water soluble plant food 20-20-20 should be applied every 7 to 10 days.
Pansies look fantastic in large plantings and work well with mums for a fall display. Put pansies in pots, hanging baskets, beds, and borders. The best way to overwinter pansies is to put them in the ground, though. Plant tulips beside pansies to create a two-layer effect in the garden and a lovely spring bed. If you’ve never planted pansies, give it a shot once, and they’ll become a staple of your fall planting routine. Choosing a color for pansies to grow is the trickiest part!
Pansies and Tulips for Stunning Spring Color Plant tulips under your pansies this fall for a COLOR EXPLOSION in your spring garden. Pansies and tulips can be planted together now for a springtime bloom that will provide stunning color to your garden. Use these easy planting instructions to create a display of tulips and pansies:
1. Pick a spot that receives full or partial sun. 2. Make a 6″-deep hole throughout the entire bed area. Incorporate Cotton Burr Compost, Dutch Bulb Food, and Hi-Yield Bone Meal into the soil. 3. Space your bulbs 6 to 8 inches apart and 4-6 inches deep. With improved soil, lightly round the bulbs. 4. Take the pansies out of the package and space them about 6″ apart between the bulbs. Multipacks can be planted together or separately, as desired. If you directly plant pansies over the bulbs, it won’t matter. The tulips will ascend eventually! With the remaining adjusted soil, fill up the area around the pansies. 5. To build a strong root system, water the pansies and bulbs using Ferti•lome Root Simulator. 6. Use mulch to protect the pansy roots during the winter and to help keep the soil moist. Cotton burr compost or cocoa shell mulch are our suggestions. 7. Provided the ground is not frozen and the winters are dry, water pansies and bulbs at least once a month. 8. Use ferti•lome to fertilize pansies. Plant Food That Is Water Soluble Every 7 to 10 days in the spring, when new growth starts, 20-20-20.
Is it possible to grow blooms above tulip bulbs?
Is it possible to grow another flower on top of my dormant tulips? The front of my house’s garden has some unsightly gaps in it. Thanks,
Thanita from Ashburn, Virginia
Mike: The reasons we Americans (as opposed to those in Holland) have trouble getting our spring bulbs to bloom year after year are, according to what I overheard you mention last spring:
- We drastically over-earnest the green, nourishing portion of the bulb and
- If we grow annual flowers on top of our bulbs, they receive an excessive amount of watering and fertilizing.
Your recommendation was to dig up the bulbs once the greenery had withered back and layer them in a pot, according to kind, with alternating layers of peat and vermiculite to keep the layers apart. You suggested, I believe, that they should still be watered, just not more frequently than a typical rainfall schedule would allow. So I took action. However, when I went looking for confirmation on the Internet, the data I discovered suggested that it would just cause the bulbs to rot and serve as a buffet for neighborhood field mice and/or squirrels (and deer if they found the container). I gave the collection one “watering”; after that, they only received rain. How did I do?
Hockessin, Delaware’s Tina
A. Tina, you mainly got it correct. The irrigation section was the one you misheard the most. I HOPE I mentioned to only let the rain hit the container they are in and NOT to add ANY water.
However, let’s go back to the beginning. One of the best interview guests we’ve ever had on the program, British gardening writer Anna Pavord, gave us this piece of advise while she was on tour in 2000 in support of her stunning book “The Tulip,” which was published in 1999. I remarked during the interview that one of our most frequent inquiries was over the reliability of tulip returns. That’s because you Americans plant annual flowers on top of the bulbs and then water and Miracle-Grow the crap out of them, rotting the poor bulbs underground, she immediately said.
She explained that Spring bulbs have evolved to live in their native mountains of Russia, Turkey, and Afghanistan in a harsh and largely God-forsaken environment. The bulbs that have been hiding put up their shoots, flower, and absorb a lot of solar energy when heavy snow and freezing cold eventually give way to a rather comfortable Spring. After that, the above-ground growth fades away, and the bulbs hide once more, this time from a dry, sweltering summer.
Therefore, according to Pavord, their DNA does not understand the moisture and food of summer; instead, it understands scorching, dry, and desolate. They don’t respond well to beds that are watered and nourished throughout the summer to keep marigolds, begonias, or petunias alive for that reason.
She continued by saying that because she, too, had a small garden and didn’t want to leave her bulb beds vacant for the summer, she had to learn this lesson the hard way. She began lifting the bulbs, preserving them for the summer, and replanting them in the fall as soon as she realized what was happening. She assured me and my audience that it functioned admirably and had a good deal of room for mistake.
It worked the first time I attempted it that summer and every summer after. I never repeated it exactly the same manner. The first year, when the greens on the bulbs had faded, I pulled them out and moved them to the back of the garden, out of sight and away from the sprinkler. I hammered together a bottomless box out of scrap wood, filled it halfway with soil, then added a layer of one type of bulb, more soil, more bulbs, etc., until it was completely full. Only when it rained did it get irrigated. And I covered it with a tarp when we experienced protracted rainy spells. I removed them in the middle of October, planted them again around Halloween, and had fantastic results.
After a few years, the box completely rotted away, so I transferred to large pots that were initially just plain ugly and had never gotten any prettier. This also functions well. If I have it, I will occasionally add a considerable amount of peat, vermiculite, perlite, or a fine, light professional potting soil blend; if not, I will simply use my compost-enriched garden soil. I’ve never lost more than a few items to rot due to mice or squirrels invading, either (and they were probably already damaged by my tender digging-up style, which involves a lot of creative swearing). Although I adore the picture of Bambi digging through several inches of soil in search of hidden riches, I don’t believe that even deer are that stupid.
Here is how I intend to make my Spring bulbs bloom again:
- Remove the faded blooms and any developing seedpods when they have finished blooming.
- Feed the plants so they will grow new flowers for you the following year. There are numerous feeding instructions in our earlier Spring bulb Question of the Week.
- Wait until the greens have totally lost their green hue before touching them.
- Remove the bulbs. The ideal method is to slowly coax the bulb out of the ground after it goes tan or brown while gently pulling on the faded greens. Go digging if it breaks off, but exercise caution.
- The degreened bulbs should be kept outside in a container with excellent drainage, either in the sun or the shade, in soil, soilless mix, or a mixture of both. Do not water them, and if it is raining a lot, cover the container.
- In the autumn, replant. In the far north, that would be September; in the mid-Atlantic, October; and in warm climates, after Thanksgiving.
Can you combine other flowers with tulips?
It’s not necessary for tulips to function as a formal, stand-alone show in pots or borders. In mixed arrangements with contrasting and complementing flowers and greenery, they also look fantastic.
Tulips’ striking form and colors can be emphasized by other plants’ contrasting colors and shapes. Fresh new growth from lower growing plants will produce a textured background before the buds emerge. Similar or divergent color schemes will highlight the color of the blossoms while they are in bloom. Additionally, varied planting will help cover up unkempt foliage and fading blossoms once the tulips are past their prime.
Pick plants that can survive in the same soil and sunlight conditions as tulips. Plan for a succession of color or foliage interest while also taking into account their flowering schedules. Play around with different pot combinations and border designs.
In a garden, what flowers complement tulips?
Need some companions for your tulips? Tulips are beautiful in the spring, but the rest of the year they can leave the ground bare. Early in the spring and again in the summer when the foliage has died, the ground is frequently bare. It’s the ideal time to plant in succession! Let’s explore the ideal perennials to plant alongside tulips.
The ideal companion plants for tulips are low-maintenance, drought-resistant perennials like native forest flowers and foliage plants. Avoid perennials that require regular watering and fertilization in the middle of the summer. During the summer, this “TLC” may cause your tulip bulbs to decay.
Here are ten excellent perennials you can plant with your tulips that bloom every year:
Can you grow things over bulbs?
Plant some small annuals next to and even on top of those bulb plantings, but be careful not to cut into the bulbs by digging too deeply. You must be careful not to disturb any little bulbs, such as crocus and snowdrops, as they will be closer to the surface.
Can I bury tulip bulbs beneath pansies?
Winter annuals like pansies (Viola x wittrockiana) and snapdragons (Antirrhinum majus) are some of the best flowers for flower beds to add color to an otherwise drab landscape throughout the winter months. Both of these plants can be put over the top of fading bulbs. In Mediterranean climes, snapdragons and pansies are both regarded as winter annuals. Even so, when cultivated as perennials, their hardiness varies. Snapdragons thrive in USDA hardiness zones 7 through 10, whereas pansies do best in zones 6 through 8.