Don’t Wait! Plant These Bulbs Now for a Colour Explosion This Summer

I know what that's going to turn into. It's going to be about three feet tall with great star-shaped flowers on the top. How can all that come out of a bulb like that? Magic, isn't it really? Say the words garden bulbs to most people and they'll think, oh yes, daffodils, narcissi, tulips, plant them in autumn, flower in spring. Well, they're not the only kind of flowering There are the summer bloomers too and the time you plant them is in spring. There's a huge variety of summer flowering bulbs that you can plant in spring, tall ones, short ones and ones that carry on blooming right until the end of the summer. They're really worth growing because they extend the season of what you might call bulbous interest. One of the most popular is the gladiolus, gladioli in the plural. These are the tall spire-like flowers. They come in all different shades. Here we've got a pink and white one, here a bright orange one, scarlet ones as well. For me the most elegant of the gladiolus types is this. This is gladiolus calianthus, also known as acidanthra. I love the elegance of these flowers. The ones I want to concentrate on today really are lilies and this acidanthra for big pots. Now the idea behind big pots is you can plant these bulbs directly into a soil border. You'll probably forget where you put them. You'll spear them with a garden fork and forget they were there. And if you leave them in there, are they going to grow next year? I prefer to plant a lot of summer flowering bulbs in pots. They can then either go on a patio terrace or you can drop that pot into the middle of a border. That way you know exactly where it is, it becomes a bit of a focal point and you can then remove it at the end of the year, put it somewhere safe and know that those bulbs will probably grow again next year. I've got two lovely handsome terracotta pots here. Now when you're choosing pots for outdoor work, terraces, patios, choose big ones. If you have lots and lots of small ones you will be a slave to the hose pipe and the watering can. The larger they are, the more sustenance they offer the plant and the slower they will dry out. And on days like today that's really useful, particularly if you're out at work all day. In this huge one here I'm going to plant a real favourite of mine. I'm going to plant lilies. Anastasia and in the back there you are, you can see them now. Just check, not squeezing them too hard but very gently. They are firm, there's no sign of rotting or fungus disease. That's why it's handy to have this polythene. This one's even beginning to grow, great promise. I'm going to put four of these in and some lilies of another variety as well because I want to get a second session of flowering, the first lot flowering in July, the second lot in August so I can extend the season of interest. Now whatever your pot, it needs drainage holes in the base. You may think oh it'll dry out, well it will dry out in sunny weather but if it's very very wet it will fill up with water unless you've got drainage holes in the base. To prevent the compost from blocking them up, pits of broken flower pot, concave side downwards so that you're keeping that drainage hole open rather than blocking it up if you put them that way up. A little bit more and that should do it and then in with the compost. This is multi-purpose peat-free compost, very important that bit, conserving our peat bogs but it has added John Innes. Now John Innes is a formula devised in the 1930s and it was a compost that was comprised of loam, peat, then those days, and sand so it gave you nutrition, it gave you weight and the important thing about having a bit of John Innes in here is it's got a bit of loam content and that means your pot's got stability because it'll be that little bit heavier and the loam also hangs on to nutrients longer than an ordinary peat-free compost so this is exactly what I like to use. You can firm it slightly and if you notice I've put a bit too much in here, it's a good, well it will be when I've done, about 15 centimeters lower than the rim of the pot. You can see how much I've left there because these lilies, as they come up, a lot of them start to root out of the stem and if you plant them at a decent depth, that gives the plant itself greater stability. So let's have a look at the goodies, isn't it promising, you know, look at that, it never fails to excite me, I'm a simple soul, when you see a lily bulb already beginning to grow and I know what that's going to turn into, it's going to be about three feet tall with great star-shaped flowers on the top. How can all that come out of a bulb like that? Magic, isn't it really? So I'll have four of those to play with in here, here we are, here's another one, all at the same stage of development, all good bulbs which is lovely and what I'll do, I'm going to plant this particular variety in one half of the pot which will be the front half because they'll flower first, keeping these fleshy roots, don't lose them, just make sure they're nicely bedded in to the compost, there we are, sitting beautifully, look at those spears of growth about to start, I'm planting them far enough apart for each bulb to have enough sustenance but not too far apart to look silly and I've left this back half for another variety, lotus elegans which flowers about a month later than the lily in the front to give you sort of two seasons of interest from your one pot, again three great bulbs, there's one, two, three, so they're all snugly bedded in, giving plenty of room to grow, pointy end upwards, roots down, I don't have to say that to myself anymore and then filling in with that multi-purpose peat-free compost with added John Innes because lilies are greedy bulbs, they like a good feed, you can fill in with that then lightly push it down with your fingertips, never pat compost, we're not flattening it, we're tucking it around the bulbs, when I was training as an apprentice gardener in the parks department, if the parks superintendent ever saw me using my thumbs to pot up a small plant, he'd come to me, don't do that, use your fingers, so I always use my fingers, it worked telling me, a little bit more than that but not much more because I want to leave a good two inch gap there which means in summer when I'm watering, I can fill it up right to the rim from the surface of the compost and rule of thumb, an inch of water will generally travel nine inches down in compost, so with two inches here, it'll easily reach the bottom of this pot, what it needs now, apart from labelling, is watering in a really good soak, however if I soak this now and then try and lift it off the table and carry it around to this terrace, I'll get a hernia, so put the pot in position where it's going to be before you give it a really good soak, that's one down, smaller one to go, and what I'm going to put in here is the acid anthra, all of them in one pot, gosh that'll make a show won't it, I'm just going to space and I'll fill the pot up with compost to within about eight to ten centimetres of the rim, that'll just space the whole lot around, again you can see these, it's an obvious top and bottom, I know it sounds silly to say that the flat bit's the bottom and the spiky bit's the top but that's not the case with every single bulb, it is with these, spacing them about five centimetres apart and absolutely ramming this pot full with them, just spend a moment listening to the birds in your garden and gently popping these into compost, thinking about the summer to come that's going to be filled with flowers. Right there we are, two good pots of summer flowering bulbs, promise in a pot, I'm going to move these two now out onto a sunny terrace alongside the house and just keep watching because very shortly the shoots will perforate the surface of the compost and then I can watch them develop, making sure they don't dry out, they get plenty of sun and a good supply of water, job done. I'll be posting new videos each week so subscribe to the channel below and let's get gardening together.