How to Grow and Care for Crocus in Containers
Intro: The beautiful crocus flower comes in many colors, including blue, purple, light orange, yellow and white, and it has thin, grasslike leaves. It is often the first flower to bloom once winter ends, and their waxy leaf and leaf covering allows them protection from frost. These 3- to 4-inch-high early bloomers are easy to grow and care for in a balcony container garden.
Many gardeners who grow crocus plant corms (bulbs) once, and then allow this flower to grow naturally in wild areas of their lawns. Year after year they come out from between rocks or grass before anything else begins to grow. Balcony container gardeners can keep a windowbox or a container of these in their container plant gardens and also enjoy their two-week-long flower blooms.
Scientific Name: Crocus spp., mainly C. chrysanthus, C. flavus, C. sieberi, C. tommasinianus and C. vernus.
Plant Type: Perennial flower
Light: Full sun
Water: Give the crocus flower well-drained potting soil. Keep them dryer in the summer and water them a little more in the fall. The biggest reason why crocus flowers don’t do well is overwatering.
Propagation: To propagate crocus plants, you can grow them from seed, but most gardeners use corms, which are a bulblike stem from a mother plant. Plant corms 1.5 inches deep in their plant containers. Although many people call them bulbs, crocuses actually have corms. To retrieve corms from a previous planting, dig them up and separate them before replanting. You can store bulbs and use the plant container for another planting before replanting the corms in the fall. Use a bulb fertilizer.
Misc. Info: Crocus flowers will reproduce so prolifically that they will come back every year. If you plant just a few flowers, in a year or two, a small group will become a mass of crowded crocus flowers (which, fortunately, the crocus will tolerate), and they will come back year after year. Once the container plant begins to die, leave it alone. Allow the crocus flower to completely die before cutting it so that it can properly produce its corms.
