How to Plant Hardy Cyclamen Bulbs

Hardy cyclamen are a wonderful addition to partially to fully shaded areas of your garden. In this video, Spring Hill Nursery's gardening expert talks you through the steps of planting hardy cyclamen, offering tips on site selection, planting depth and drainage.

Hi there, this is Scott with Spring Hill Nurseries and today, on step-by-step gardening, I'm going to give you three steps to having success with your hardy cyclamen. Number one - site selection, number two - planting depth, number three - the correct drainage for your soil. Let's take a look. The number one key to having success with your hardy cyclamen is site selection. They don't want full sun. Partial sun to full shade is the right place to plant your hardy cyclamen. Pick a place at your house that's on the east or north side of your home. I'm at a shady area here, at Spring Hill Nursery. Here's the site where I'm going to plant the hardy cyclamen. I've pulled back the mulch, okay, and you want to be careful about having mulch because you don't want these to rot out. That has to do with step number three and we'll talk about good drainage, but you don't want to have too much moisture around these, okay? So, if I look at my plant instructions here that come on my bag, it says we're going to plant these two inches deep. Now with this particular tuber, you can't go wrong with being too shallow, okay? A big problem is planting it too deep. Step number two is planting depth. You don't want to plant them too deep. You can go just by putting maybe an inch of soil on top of these. So, I'm going to dig out this hole right now. I've dug my hole about eight inches deep. You can do about six to eight inches, it's fine, depending on your soil composition. The third key to having success with your hardy cyclamen is, you want great drainage, okay? It's really important. So, the worse your soil, the more clay etcetera, the better you've got to prepare this site, okay? So, I'm going to suggest I've got here some slate that's sort of chopped up real nice with some nice edges here. You want lots of edges to promote good drainage, okay? I'm going to put this in the bottom, let's put a little bit more in here, then I'm going to take some peat, alright? Peat and other organic matter is really good, you can use some well rotted manure. I'm going to add this to the slate and just sort of mix it, and I'm going to add some of the local soil as well. Your cyclamen will come three to a bag and the official planting instructions say ten to twelve inches apart for spacing which is great for when the plants reach maturity. But for myself, to get a quicker show, I like to plant them about four to six inches apart. I'm just going to place them right here in a triangle to have a nice, sort of natural look to them. And then you're just going to put an inch of local soil on top of them, okay? Now like I said, it's really important to not plant them too deep, so make sure you're just doing an inch, okay? I've planted them an inch deep, and that's it. It's spring time, they're planted now, I'll start to see some foliage in the fall. And then the following year, in the summer, the blooms will come out. That will give the plants a year to grow the roots and get established. So, that's it for hardy cyclamen. Have fun. I know you'll have great success. I'm Scott with Spring Hill Nurseries.