Bulbs Related Q & A desk by Heinie

[Munir]

Farhan, could you please give a finally agreed solution, recommended in our given environment.

[Farhan Ahmed]

@Sir Munir...regarding?
Sir there can be no final solutions in my opinion. Just point of views. Because there are so many variables involved.

[Heinie]

Rafique,
You ask: Would this mixture be equally good for all plant other than bulbous plants?

The answer is no.

Note that the original question was asked particularly for bulbs and I gave my method for bulbs as per the question: 1. What is the best potting mix for flowering bulbs, can you share the recipe or composition ?

The ultimate growing medium to grow bulbs successfully is to obtain sharp drainage.

After seeing and hearing that just about every plant or bulb is planted in large clay pots. Let me ask the forum members the following questions to enable me to get a better idea of what I assume your problem with rotting bulbs, plants and roots could be:

1. What are the sizes of the holes in the bottom of those large clay pots?
2. How many of that size of holes are at the bottom of those clay pots?
3. Are the large clay pots placed directly on the ground or are they elevated?
4. Do you feel comfortable that these holes are sufficient for drainage?
5. Do you fill the pot from bottom to top with the same growing medium?
6. Do you place large stones, broken clay pot shards or any bits of other debris at the bottom of the pot before you fill it with growing medium?
7. If item 6 applies to your method why do you add these items to the bottom of the pot?
8. If item 6 applies to your method do you feel comfortable that you achieve your goal?

I look forward to some replies to these questions because I already have some ideas for your problems.

[Farhan Ahmed]

1) Not more than 1 inch ever. And that too sometimes get clogged.

2) Only One...it is as per design.

3) Depends. But mostly clay pots find places on cemented places. Seldom over ground. Not elevated in most of the cases/touching the ground.

4) No. But drilling hole in clay pots can be tricky. Secondly as a culture we are not fond of DIY. We use what we get in market and as i told earlier only one hole.

5) Well again depends on individuals. Seasoned gardeners go for some sort of recipe they have decided upon. People like me just fill them with garden soil

6) We should, but we don't. I recommend that. However we always do put one big stone to cover only drainage hole available to hinder drainage as well as soil loss. Isn't that just against the book

7 & 8 ) it doesn't apply in majority of cases.

[Heinie]

Farhan,
Thank you for your replies. I hope to receive a few more but I assume that it will be much the same as yours. With your replies we can already get a nice discussion going and we are going to wish we were in one room.

I knew when I joined the forum that I am going to learn a lot from Pakistan growers because I have never had contact in Pakistan before. We have the saying that you never dicuss religion and politics at work and we are hard at work now but I have to comment on something you wrote above. I find it very interesting that you are not fond of DIY as a culture. This is the best lesson I learned on the forum so far. I am a technical person and do most maintenance on my own home. A good example is the slots I cut in the pots which I understand now that you will probably not do it. Thank you for telling me because it will help me not to tread on the wrong little toes so to speak. I hope that I will be corrected nicely if ever I make a mistake that wrongly involves your culture.

I have some very strange friendships I made through plants on the internet. I communicate often with a chap in Germany who I found out one day sits with a dictionary next to him to translate most of what I write. We then agreed that I will use the most simplest English possible when I write to him. Since then our emails are longer and more often. I often buy bulbs for him here and send it across to him. He pays me with Moneybookers.

Well let me get back to the subject. I will check tomorrow what else we receive on this topic and reply here then. It is almost 22h00 and I want to get showered and pay some attention to grandma too. Cheers for today then friends.

[Syed Adnan]

Preaparing soil is the most important part i believe and a novice gardener neglect this , this happened to me as well in the begginning, normally we use to pay attention to purchase expensive plants and forget to prepare the soil well or think it is not necessary, the consequence is we doesnot achieve the required result.

Coming back to your questions , following is my practice :

1. What are the sizes of the holes in the bottom of those large clay pots? 1 inch average
2. How many of that size of holes are at the bottom of those clay pots? One only
3. Are the large clay pots placed directly on the ground or are they elevated? not elevated i found soil keeps on draining out of the hole, this wan't a good idea for me. So i stopped doing this.
4. Do you feel comfortable that these holes are sufficient for drainage? yes, i normally check the bottom hole by placing finger inside before watering , if i found dry then only i water, i used to wait for water drainage when i water the plant, if it doesn't drain in 5 minutes i always check the bottom by lifting pot.
5. Do you fill the pot from bottom to top with the same growing medium? yes
6. Do you place large stones, broken clay pot shards or any bits of other debris at the bottom of the pot before you fill it with growing medium? yes
7. If item 6 applies to your method why do you add these items to the bottom of the pot? for drainage
8. If item 6 applies to your method do you feel comfortable that you achieve your goal? yes

[Tahir Khan]

1. What are the sizes of the holes in the bottom of those large clay pots?
2. How many of that size of holes are at the bottom of those clay pots?
3. Are the large clay pots placed directly on the ground or are they elevated?
4. Do you feel comfortable that these holes are sufficient for drainage?
5. Do you fill the pot from bottom to top with the same growing medium?
6. Do you place large stones, broken clay pot shards or any bits of other debris at the bottom of the pot before you fill it with growing medium?
7. If item 6 applies to your method why do you add these items to the bottom of the pot?
8. If item 6 applies to your method do you feel comfortable that you achieve your goal?

1. 1 inch
2. 1 only
3. On cemented floor.
4. For small 12 inch containers yes...But i feel there need to be more drainage holes for larger containers.
5. No, i fill the bottom with leaf litter up to 1-2 inches then i use the soil mixture of 1 part soil (Non-clayey) + 1 part coarse sand + 1 part fully rotted manure of compost to top.
6. No, i cover the hole with a large piece of bio degradable material usually a piece of green leaf, then a 1-2 inch layer of leaf clippings debris and then the soil mix.
7.Not applicable, i use leaf or any other horticulture debris as it will decompose overtime and the hole by then will be covered with plant roots and not stones that may choke drainage.
8. Not applicable, Yes i am comfortable with my method and even in heavy rains soil doesn't puddle and i get perfect drainage. I usually grow cacti and succulents along with some bulbous plants...that is why i need excellent aerated medium and drainage to avoid rot...cacti cant tolerate soggy soil or standing water and i use the same soil concoction for all my plants

[Hamad]

Hello Heinie

Being a Tuber lover I was following your posts since you join Gardening Pakistan (WELCOME TO OUR FORUM) but waiting for the right time to give my input, I m a asking member because temporarily I’m based in UK and for that reason I m a virtual gardener nowadays or sometimes I do a little bit of gardening here as the space and time is not enough but soon I will go back home for good and start making my hands dirty again, most of my posts are questions to my fellow members regarding growing different bulbs in our climate (Pakistan).

This thread was supposed to be in Question and Problems sections as Heinie is generous and kind enough to take his time to answer our questions with his experience

Heinie few questions

Q1. What is the best way to keep/store the bulbs when they are dormant, either winter dormant or summer dormant?

Q2. Is there any way to neutralise a tuber in our local climate or to provide an artificial environment to grow them successfully like refrigeration etc.

Q3. You may came across a list of viable tuber for our climate that we recently compiled, now I’m trying to put some details into it specially the time to plant, it is one of the main point that I’m focusing on because I believe no matter if the tuber is viable but the right planting time, right medium to pot, right amount of sunlight and water makes a lot of difference and so on and so forth, and if the planting time is not correct they will not be able to complete their life cycle which will also affect their propagation, so your value able suggestions (tips to grow and care) will help us a lot.

Looking forward for your kind reply

Hamad

[Heinie]

Thank you for your replies which confirm a number of items that I see that can be problematic to your drainage problems. I will discuss it again by the item number and you can then let me know what you think of my comment. I said last night that the ideal would have been if we could sit in the same room so we can all give input and I can use more illustrations. I have learned during my technical career that a silent illustration explains much more than an hour discussion. So here we go.

1. What are the sizes of the holes in the bottom of those large clay pots?
It seems very standard to have 25mm single holes in the bottom of those pots, even the large pots. In my opinion the size of the holes are much too small for various reasons.
• To obtain proper drainage from a 25mm hole from a pot that holds between 30 and 40 liters of growing medium or even more is a drainage problem.
• My 1st illustration will come in handy at this stage. The photos following now are of a 13cm clay pot with a standard single hole size of 30mm compared to your pots. This large hole will most likely wash out half of the possible one liter medium but it will achieve excellent drainage. Now what I do to overcome losing a lot of the medium every time I water the medium in the pot is to cut a piece of shade cloth that will fit in the bottom of the pot over the hole. See photos

This is a 13cm clay pot with a 30mm hole in the base.






The pot is turned upside down with shade cloth over the hole


The shade cloth is inside the pot over the hole and ready to fill with growing medium


2. How many of that size of holes are at the bottom of those clay pots?
• The answer to this item can now be read with item one.

3. Are the large clay pots placed directly on the ground or are they elevated?
• If the pots are placed directly on the ground it is probably the biggest drainage issue for me from this discussion. When watering into a pot a proper capillary action will not be achieved due to blockage between the pot and the ground and a lot of standing water will be left there which has to leave the medium in the bottom of the pot soggy and will rot the roots and plant at some stage.
• Roots not only take up water, they take up and need oxygen too. Roots are normally covered by a thin film of water. Oxygen has to diffuse across this before it can enter the root. Oxygen diffuses through water relatively slowly. So the thicker the layer of water around the root, the longer it takes oxygen to diffuse through it to get to the root, which may result in the roots being starved of oxygen.

4. Do you feel comfortable that these holes are sufficient for drainage?
• This can only be your own decision from the notes of the discussion.

5. Do you fill the pot from bottom to top with the same growing medium?
• I will discuss item 5, 6, 7 and 8 together here. This is one of the most interesting discussion points about drainage. When you water into a pot and excess water starts coming out the bottom, it is coming out due to a mix of gravity pulling on it and the weight of water above pushing down on it (the "hydraulic head"). As water drains, there is a point at which gravity or the hydraulic head are insufficient to push any more water out. So at the bottom of each pot there is a layer where ALL the pores in the medium are filled with water. This is called a perched water table.
• It is old myth to "Put a layer of grit or other coarse material at the bottom of pots and containers to provide drainage". A perched water table is the boundary where the bottom of the pot and the growing medium meet and where the medium is most waterlogged. If a layer of coarse material is placed in the bottom of the pot the drainage is not improved but the perched water table is made higher in the pot and the waterlogged medium is higher and the plant can be damaged by too much water sooner. You actually have less growing medium for the plant too.

To summarize, if your conditions were applicable to me I would do the following to achieve a better medium environment inside the pot.

1. I will place a piece of shade cloth or similar over the hole in the pot
2. I will not add any foreign matter in the bottom of the pot
3. The most important for me is to place the pot on something to lift it off the ground for better drainage. A space of just 50mm will be perfect because water will not collect under the pot then.

Now I would like to hear your comments please.

[Heinie]

Hamad,
Your questions may still be answered in the follow up discussions in this topic or else I will reply to you soon.