Muscari are the bulb people buy to fill pockets in the border and then discover they have bought the most useful thing in the order. Most of how to grow muscari is really a matter of knowing what they will do on their own, because they are hardy, they multiply without being asked, and the only decisions that matter are where to put them and whether to let them run.
Why Do My Muscari Have Leaves In Autumn
Because that is what they do, and nothing has gone wrong. Muscari send their leaves up in mid autumn, months ahead of any flower, and those leaves then sit through the winter looking steadily more battered until the spikes finally arrive in March.
It is the one real drawback of the plant and the reason to think about where they go. Put them at the foot of a shrub or behind the front rank of a border, where something else is furnished through the winter, and the untidy months simply pass unnoticed.
When And How Deep Should You Plant Muscari
Any time from September to November, 8cm deep and 7cm apart. They are among the least fussy bulbs we sell and will take almost any soil that is not sitting wet.
In a pot, ignore that spacing and crowd them. Set them almost shoulder to shoulder, because a container planted at border spacing looks thin, and nothing has to be thinned out of a display that only needs to last one spring.
Do Muscari Spread Too Much
Armeniacum will, if you let it, and that is only fair to say on a page selling them. It increases both by splitting and by seed, and somewhere it is happy it will quietly colonise ground you had other plans for.
Taking the dead heads off after flowering stops the seed and settles most of the problem. The named sorts are far better behaved than the plain species anyway, so if you want the colour without the takeover, buy a variety rather than a bag of armeniacum.
Which Muscari Should You Choose
It depends whether you are after a mass or a specimen, and the range has gone well beyond plain blue. For sheer quantity Heavenly Blue and Big Smile are the ones to plant, identical in colour and habit except that Big Smile carries the larger heads.
The white tipped kinds are what surprises people. Dark Eyes and Night Eyes are intense blue with a fine silver white rim to every floret, Grape Ice is rich purple tipped with white, and Neglectum is so deep a purple that it reads almost black with a silvery edge.
Then there are the ones that are not blue at all. White Magic is pure white on strong stems, Pink Sunrise is a genuine pink rather than a mauve pretending, and Lady Madonna opens lime green and ages to cream, which is exactly the sort of thing to put in a pot by the door where you will actually look at it.
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Are Muscari The Same As Hyacinths
No, and the nickname is the whole trouble. Grape hyacinth is muscari, a different plant altogether from the hyacinth, and the two want quite different handling despite sitting on the same page of most catalogues.
A hyacinth is one thick spike on a fat bulb, scented enough to fill a room, and most people treat it as a showpiece for a season or two. Muscari is a small bulb throwing many slender spikes, faintly sweet rather than powerful, and it gets better every year instead of tailing off.
Why Did My Muscari Not Flower
Nine times out of ten the clump has simply become too crowded. Muscari increase hard, and after a few years a colony can be congested enough that the bulbs are competing with one another and none of them reaches flowering size.
Lift and split them in the green, straight after flowering, rather than waiting for them to go dormant. The other common cause is foliage cut away too early the previous summer, which leaves the bulb without the reserves to make a spike at all.
When Should You Cut Muscari Foliage Back
Not until it has yellowed and comes away in your hand, which is usually well into June. Those leaves are what builds next spring’s flower, and shearing them off while they are still green is the surest way to be disappointed the following year.
The spent flower spikes are a different matter and can come off as soon as they fade. Removing them stops seed setting, which is worth doing anywhere you would rather the colony stayed roughly where you put it.
Do Muscari Need Full Sun
They do best in sun, but the flowers last noticeably longer with a little shade on them. Somewhere that gets sun for most of the day and some relief in the afternoon gives you a well fed bulb and a longer display at the same time.
Full shade is the thing to avoid. They will survive it and go on making leaves indefinitely, but the spikes get fewer every season until the clump is doing nothing except occupying ground.
How Long Do Muscari Flower For
Three to four weeks from one clump, and a good deal longer if you have more than one sort. Each spike opens from the bottom upwards over about a week, which is why a group stays presentable far longer than a single flower would suggest.
Two or three varieties stretch it considerably. The earliest come with the daffodils and the later ones are still going as the tulips take over, so a border can carry blue at ground level for the best part of two months.
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What To Plant With Muscari
Put them under something taller, which is what they are really for. Tulips and daffodils are the obvious partners, and muscari does that job better than anything else, covering the bare ground those bulbs leave around their stems.
For a longer run, chionodoxa and scilla open at the same low level as the earliest muscari, and alliums carry the border on into May and June once the rest has finished. Garden hyacinths planted among them supply the scent that muscari only hints at.