EP214- Plant Summer Bulbs & Bareroot Perennials Now For A Summer Of Colour!

In this weeks episode John looks at summer flowering bulbs and bareroot perennial plants that you can plant now for an high colour garden this year. 

Summer Flowering bulbs available now include: 

• Dahalias
• Lillium 
• Gladiolus
• Anemones
• Ranunculus
• Rudbeckias 

Then when it comes to bareroot perennials the list is endless at the moment and includes:

• Salvias
• Verbena 
• Geum
• Lupin
• Geraniums 
• Dierama

and many many more. Buying perennials bareroot will ensure strong plants that flower this year and will be much more cost effective than buying mature plants. 

Imagine your garden transforming into a kaleidoscope of colors with summer flowering bulbs and bare-root perennials like dahlias and lilies. This episode is your guide to making it happen. I'll share my experiences with the practical beauty of these plants, offering tips on how to leverage the spring season for vibrant garden success. Get ready to learn about the economic smarts of starting with tubers and the horticultural magic of seaweed and mycorrhizal fungi. Whether you've got green fingers or are just dabbling in dirt for the first time, I promise you'll walk away with insights to cultivate a garden that neighbors will envy.

As the season turns, it's time to embrace the long-term rewards of thoughtful gardening. I'll delve into why now is the ideal moment to lay the groundwork for an awe-inspiring garden display, discussing the strategic planning and troubleshooting that ensures perennial success. From safeguarding tender shoots against slugs to anticipating the sheer joy of blooms unfurling, this episode is brimming with advice straight from the earth's playbook. So don your gardening gloves and tune in – your future self, and your garden, will thank you for it.

For those of you looking to join my "Grow Your Own Food Course" there are two options. Please note option 2 the launch pad goes off sale next week. 


Option 1: Grow your own food online course, this is a self paced course with over 4.5 hours of tutorial videos taking your through each step of growing your own food from sowing your first seed to harvest and everything in between. Including monthly sowing guides and additional modules to be added throughout the year. This course is available for €97 and is available for the lifetime of the course.

Option 2: All the goodness of the above course with the added benefit of monthly live group calls from March through to the end of June (dates TBC but replays available) These calls will answers community questions, plan the month ahead, troubleshoot any sticking points you have and of course support as you master growing your own food. This option closes at the end of February and the People inside will get great support over the coming months.

You can purchase these courses here;
https://mastermygarden.com/grow

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:13

How's it going, everybody, and welcome to episode 214 of Master my Garden podcast. Now, this week's episode, I'm looking at the topic of summer flowering bulbs and I suppose we've talked about bulbs a lot on the podcast, but typically when we talk about them we are talking about the autumn plant and spring flowering bulbs, and you know these are the crocuses and snow drops, bluebells, daffodils and so on, and we've covered that on the podcast on a couple of occasions and for some reason I've never actually covered the summer flowering bulbs. I know, as you know, as a category they're less popular obviously than the autumn planting ones. That is the big. You know the bulb season is really autumn time is the big one, but this sort of spring planting, summer flowering season is a very, very worthwhile one for you as a gardener. Now, in some ways I have covered that. You know where we talk about the perennials to sow in the autumn time and you know I've covered that on a couple of occasions the top 10 perennials to sow in the autumn time, and that's a really useful one because you can sow your perennial seeds in the autumn time and they'll germinate and grow slightly over the winter, over the late autumn and winter. They'll grow really quickly once we get any sort of heat in the spring time, and then you'll have flower in that year.

Speaker 1: 1:36

But if you've missed that that sowing in the autumn now is a great time to, I suppose, capitalize on that by buying either bulbs or bare-rooted plants, and the category of products that's available is still huge. You have a small amount of actual summer flowering bulbs, but there's a huge amount of perennials that are available bare-rooted at this time of the year, and so it's a really useful time to, I suppose, get a lot of flower. And you know, when it comes to things like perennials, you can fill your garden, add a lot of color to your garden, and definitely at this time of the year it's really easy to do it and it's a lot less expensive than, say, fill in a complete perennial bed with perennial plants that are fully grown later on in the year. So it's a great opportunity for you to do that. And when we talk about you know, bulbs at this time of the year, what we're looking at really is in terms of summer flowering bulbs. It's quite a limited range really. You are looking at and enemies are in unculus and they're also available at the autumn time, so they're still available at this time of the year and you will get flower off them this summer. But we're also looking at and the main one is dailies. So dailies is both the funny one. You can do it from seed, but you wouldn't be sowing them until March time and then you will get, you know, great flower later on in September time from them. But the selection of bulbs available in terms of dailies is phenomenal at this time of the year. So you can get everything from your really big dinner plates flowers to the cactus ones. There's just so much choice in dailies at the moment.

Speaker 1: 3:28

I love dailies, love the color of them, love the vibrancy of them, love the timing of them and you know that they're flowering at that stage that's September time. Love the fact that there's such an array of colors in them, such an array of sizes and styles in them. I dislike the fact that you have to lift them out of the ground. I'm you know, I've tried to overwinter them, and sometimes you can overwinter them, but I haven't had much success. Some of them are still there, actually three years later, and this is a very cold part of the world, but what it really is is the wet gets them, so they eventually just rot in the ground. But I don't like this, you know, going and digging them all up at that time of the year for some reason I just dislike it. So I do them a bit in pots now. But they are a fantastic flower and if you want dailies in your garden, to buy them now as tubers is a really great way to do it With all of these. You know, when we talk about any of these here now coming up, I always recommend, you know, using some seaweed and some micro-ice of fungi when planting them in.

Speaker 1: 4:36

So whether that's planting them into a ground or into a pot, but first off and we're talking about dailies initially you're going to plant them into a pot. So ideally you need these started inside, you know, in a polytunnel or in a, you know, in a patio area or a conservatory area, because they're not fit to go outside just yet. So you're not going straight into the ground with these. So definitely pot them on first, protect them for frost for the next couple of months and then let them hit the ground once your last frost has passed, and you will have fantastic flowers from them this year, just in terms of you know the economics of it. You know a lot of these fully grown dailies or perennials later on the year are going to be anything from you know 7 euros up to 15 euros, maybe fully grown. But at this stage of the year you'll buy your bulbs editing from you know 150 up to you know some of the maybe more special ones. You might pay 6, 5, 6 euro. So really really economical way to do to do to get flower this year.

Speaker 1: 5:46

So dailies is the main one at this stage of the year. The next one is lilies, again superb for pots. They can go straight into the ground, to be honest with you. So plant them straight into the ground or into pots and they'll do really well. Lillies is a great flower for me, whatever it is about the flower. It's an allergy thing, it gives me a headache, so I don't like them in the house. But outside they're beautiful, really strong performers, almost impossible to get them wrong. No real work with them after you've got them planted and, yeah, just a really great flower and you get lots of different varieties, colors at this time of the year as well.

Speaker 1: 6:23

Next one is begonias, again superb. So these are more of a calm. They're a flat, sort of hairy, looking almost like kiwi skin, on them, and you get them at this time of the year, really vibrant colors. They're typically. You can get the upright versions or the hanging versions, suitable for hanging baskets, suitable for large pots, let them tumble over the top. But they're really prolific flowers, and a variety that I had over the last couple of years was called Switzerland and it was such a long flower. It flowered for months and months and months. Just at the end of the season, just cut off all the growth, lift in the the pot into the shed, let it completely dry out, lift out the pot again in the spring time and water it and get the get the energy going again in it and you'll just have so much flower for years and years and they just keep coming back and they're fantastic at this time of the year. Beautiful colors again vibrant reds, vibrant yellows. You get some pinks as well, which is all overly like, but they're a really grey flower.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Glad that all is is another one Again, sort of old, traditional one, perfect for cottage gardens. Not a lover of the flower personally, but they are great, ardy, can go straight into the ground and, you know, would be there for years and years and years to come. Free shoes is another one available at this time of the year. And then you kind of get into perennials which are going to be bear roots and, as I said, this is a great time for doing bear roots Really economical for you as well. So you're going to flower a whole area for just so much less than you will by buying fully mature plants. Obviously, you know there's a lot of work and attention will go into them in the garden centres and nurseries between now and then. But at this stage, the bear root it's a really economical way of doing it and for certain ones it's actually maybe a better way than sowing seeds, or you know that I would be sort of talking about in September, october.

Speaker 1: 8:27

So what can you get in terms of perennials at this time of the year? Well, the list is huge, so I'm not going to cover it all but to give you an idea, peonies is one. So obviously a lot of people love peonies and later in the season, when they're fully mature plants, they can be very expensive. At this time of the year you might get them for, you know, five euros, six euros. So that's a great way of getting a lot, of getting a lot of colour for less. So peony bear root, really good quality root, probably five, six euros. So you know really really great value on those.

Speaker 1: 9:04

One that I recommend either by as a fully mature plant or a strong bear root is Agapantis. I've grown that before from seed and it's just very, very slow, but from bear root or as a fully mature plant it's the best way to do it. Same can be said for angels fishing rod. Angels fishing rod I've grown them from seed and they are painfully slow. They germinate really easily or quite easily. They are slow to germinate but they do. You know they don't take a lot of minding. They will germinate, but it's a long time from germination to from potting on to having a flower. You're talking years and so from that point of view you're better off to buy.

Speaker 1: 9:47

Strong bear roots are mature plants, other ones that are available. You have pretty much all of the regular perennials that we come that. We've become used to the salve, as rebecki is still bees, geraniums, alastom areas, agapanthus that I mentioned already, coriopsis, g James for being as hostess Lupins, achilles, echinacea, you know, and so many more. Like it's all. All of these are Pretty much. Pretty much all perennials are available to the stage D. And then there's certain ones, as I said, the likes of a Angels fishing rod and Agapanthus arranging them available. Bear root again. Any of those You're actually really better to buy them as a bear root are mature plant then. So I'm from seed. I find just some of those are just too slow and, you know, for someone who's not very patient like myself, and it's not work to wait. So yeah, it's a great time to hear to flower up beds.

Speaker 1: 10:49

Most of the perennials, you can go straight into the open ground with them. I would be careful of a few of them. You know, likes of a salvia and Somebody else, maria's and things like that. I would be just careful of those. And on two fronts really. The last frost is important for some of them.

Speaker 1: 11:08

But on top of that, you're looking at when these are emerging from the ground. Tensely you could have slug issues. So especially on the really young road as I start to people through the soil, the slugs come and munch them off. You never see them coming up and you just wonder where did the go. So that's just want to watch out. For if you are going straight into the ground, just watch slugs, particularly for the first few months. Once they get up and you can actually see them and you know they're there, then it's easier to watch them and protect them. But just in them very early stages, as the as the bay root plant starts to send out its shoots and it's starting to come up a small little bit of the surface of the soil, that's when it can be a real problem because you don't know what's actually coming. But the slugs are there already waiting to munch it off as it comes up through the soil. So just watch that.

Speaker 1: 11:59

But other than that, it's a really superb and easy way to get a lot of flour into your garden. Daily is lilies, but only is perfect in pots and, you know, can be just put back in pots, can be just put back in and and dried out and minded for the following year. If you're not, if you're like me and you don't like digging them up. So that's the, you know the sort of bones of it. It's a great, great time to to get Adding flour to your garden.

Speaker 1: 12:30

While even this week the weather has been really poor, again, it still is starting to feel spring night. So now we're getting to. You know we're heading for six o'clock in the evening when we have still got daylight. The mornings are a lot brighter and it is starting when the rain eventually stops, and it will stop, that's you know. It's a certainty that it will stop. When it eventually stops, we will get, you know, get quite quickly into spring and things will grow really, really fast at that stage. So be planning, be organizing, be getting yourself set up now. You know it's, it's a, it's a really important time, even though you know, given the week that we've had your wind and rain again, it doesn't feel like, you know, I won't feel like you want to be out gardening. But even little small things, like you know, in your greenhouse hot, non, some dailies the only is in things like that are getting some of your your bear roots, organize, even if you're not putting them into the ground, getting organized, getting them, no one where you're gonna put them, and having that sort of pipeline for when the weather does, you know, get good in the next week or two.

Speaker 1: 13:39

Last Sunday was a superb day here, like quite warm. It did have that feel that I talk about quite a bit, where you get that feeling that the spring has arrived. It had that feeling at times last Sunday it was nice warmth. There was a long stretch in the day and it felt like everything was starting to waken up. That will get our pace over the next week or two again, as the day is extending, as the temperatures come up and as it stops raining and it will and at that stage then it will be all systems go for a few months. I saw somebody had something up the other day about the stretch in the evenings and that there won't be any housework done now until October. I laughed at that and that is what's going to happen quite quickly. You know, once this rain stops and things start to move on, we will get very, very busy very, very quickly.

Speaker 1: 14:32

For any of you who are looking to get onto the Grow your Own Food Launchpad, that's ending at the end of February and then we'll be kicking off in early March. There's a few people in there already and they're going to get really concentrated advice specific to their garden to help them grow perfect food this summer. And whether you're starting from scratch or whether you're growing for a while and just want to improve what you're doing, then definitely get in there before the 28th of close, I think, and the standard course which is just available to view in your own time. That will be available probably for another couple of months because it's still useful for everyone for the next few months, but for anyone looking to get onto the Launchpad, there's only one week left on that. So definitely, if that's for you and you want that individual support that tailor to your garden, then jump in now.

Speaker 1: 15:32

Any of that information that you're going to gather now is going to stand to you for years and years to come all the planning piece, the troubleshooting specifically in relation to your garden, getting the setup right, and all of that, as I say, that will benefit you for years and years to come. So, yeah, that's this week's episode. Really important time, despite the weather, great time to get your flowers organized spring flowering bulbs, fair-rooted perennials available in most garden centres now and a really great time to, as I say, add colour in a very, very economical way later on in the year. So, yeah, that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and until the next time, happy gardening.