How to Grow a Crocus Lawn - Autumn Bulb Growing Tips for Winter Flowers

welcome back to our cottage garden and today i'm going to tell you all about crocuses and i'm going to show you how i grow these in a lawn here but this will also be helpful if you want to grow crocuses in pots or borders or if you just want to learn a little bit about them so i grow about six different types of crocuses some of them are in a lawn some of them are in borders occasionally they're in pots and here in the south west of england they come back every year so we're in approximately zone eight which means we have cold enough winters that the bulbs will get nice and chilled and then they will flower again and multiply year after year so if you're interested in growing crocuses it's really useful to check which zone you're in and see whether your winters will allow the bulbs to come back year after year the main reason i grow crocuses is because they have a really early flowering time so these crocuses will start flowering in february and for me as someone who doesn't really like winter is a really nice reward for getting through those more miserable months and having something to look forward to and kind of welcome the start of spring and the end of winter and here in our garden growing crocuses in those earlier months is also really helpful for the pollinators that wake up early so as we have milder starts to the year sometimes the bees will wake up earlier than planned and the crocuses are there as a really good source of pollen and nectar for them so it's a win-win scenario and they just look amazing seeing a mass of purple when there's nothing else going on on in the garden is such a nice thing to be able to come out here and look at i think crocuses are a super rewarding thing to grow and they're really really easy so i'm going to show you how to do it i'm going to be using dutch varieties of crocuses because these are really nice and big and showy and they won't get swamped if you have long grass or if you want to introduce them in sort of a meadow context the flowers are really big the stems are slightly longer and they have this kind of purple goblet shape that is absolutely stunning and before we get started don't confuse these crocuses with saffron crocuses those are an autumn flowering variety so do not eat any of these crocuses as they're not edible just bear that in mind so i'm going to show you what you need and we can get started so here's what you're going to need to plant your crocuses you're going to need some bulbs and i just picked up this small bag from my local garden center but if you're going to be planting a lot of these it's worth buying them from the wholesalers if you're interested in keeping the costs down so when i started this lawn i bought 700 bulbs from the wholesalers i can't remember the exact price but i know it was less than 70 pounds i think whereas this one packet was about 4 pounds for 10 bulbs so it's much better buying them from the wholesalers but you don't have to plant masses of them because they will spread so these will spread by division in the bulbs so they will multiply underground and they will spread by seed as well so you'll notice them popping up around your garden as the years go on so if you're short on cash don't worry about planting loads of them a bag or two is absolutely fine it will still get the process started and over the years they will multiply and look amazing you'll also need a bulb planter this is a handheld one but if you're planting loads you might want to consider getting one that's like a spade so your handle will be up here and the planter will be on the ground it will just mean it's a lot less strain on your back because planting 800 bowls with this wasn't the best of times so i would recommend getting something that's a bit easier to use if you want to plant more of them i've got something to kneel on because the ground's wet today and i've also got just a weeding stick so that i can push some of the soil out of the bowl planter if it gets stuck but anything will be fine for that you can just use a regular stick from around the garden and bear in mind when you're deciding how many bulbs to order that you're going to be planting these about 10 centimetres apart so if you want a really high impact in your space you're going to want around 100 bulbs per square meter but it doesn't matter you can do less than that if that's all you have available to you it's absolutely fine i did slightly less than that when i planted this lawn and it still looks amazing because these have such big flowers you can part them plant them a little bit further apart and still have a really showy impact from them so the time to plant your crocus bulbs is autumn it's september at the moment it's really great time to plant them you can go into early winter and if you feel like it's too late it's still better to get them in the ground they might end up flowering they might just be a little bit later so you've got nothing to lose really i have planted these as late as december and it's been fine they've just flowered a little bit later and they will still come back every year so to plant these bulbs in the most natural looking way a good thing to do is grab a handful of them and just lightly chuck them and you will plant them wherever they land i will move a couple of these because they've ended up touching each other so i'll just move another one there but that's a good place to plant them so i'm going to go ahead and put those in with my bowl planter now you'll want to plant these about 10 centimetres deep i have done mine much shallower and they've been absolutely fine but if squirrels are a problem you might want to plant a bit them a bit deeper just so it's not easy for the squirrels to take them but with these dutch varieties like pickwick the squirrels don't tend to go for them anyway i've never had a problem with them so this pointy bit of the crocus bulb is the top and that circular bit there is the bottom so you'll want to plant them pointy side up that will produce the stem and the leaves and the flour then pop that into your hole and the ground is really dry here because we've had some heat waves so in theory your soil should stay in one neat lump that you can easily pop back into that hole at the moment that's not happening here but once you've got your soil back in you can just pop the lid on the top there and that will settle down soon and the grass will become neat and tidy again and we're just going to keep planting these until we've used all of our bulbs up but you shouldn't feel pressure to do this all in one go because it can be quite hard on your back if you're using one of these hand-held planters when i did my 700 bulbs i spread it over the course of about three months and it was just it gave me such a nice thing to do over the winter and something to look forward to you can see the ground here is so dry it's really difficult to get the soil out in one go but usually these planters are a lot better and you will get one easy lump of soil that you can just pop back in when you're done so once our bulbs are in the ground all we need to do is watch and wait and we should start seeing those shoots and leaves popping out of the ground around december january time and then in february march they will be flowering and if you are somewhere where you have those colder winters and you want your bulbs to return every year it's important to make sure that you don't mow the lawn straight away after they've finished flowering so we leave ours for six weeks and what this means is the leaves can photosynthesize they'll feed the bulb the bulb will get really nice and big and healthy it will multiply and it will have energy to flower again in the following year but apart from that they're really easy and low maintenance we don't do anything else to these crocuses we just leave them and they're all underground in the summer months and then they pop up every spring and it's such a low maintenance and high reward thing so i really encourage you to grow some if you have the option and thanks for watching and if you enjoyed this video please give us a subscribe

Channel: monalogue

Views: 31,783

Keywords: cottage, garden, bulbs, bulb, planting, plant, how to, how-to, how tos, instructions, guide, tutorial, step by step, winter, autumn, interest, gardens, cottages, monalogue, crocus, crocuses, pickwick, display, gardening, plants, countryside, idea, ideas, planter, lawn, grass, meadow, lawns, pots, corms, flower, flowers, ramona jones

Id: V7AEX84eA20

Length: 7min 5sec (425 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 08 2022