So I have some black eyed Susan, tall phlox, been balm, cone flowers, and irises. All of them are in pots and did quite well. I'll be creating my perennial garden in the next few weeks. Is there anything special I should do to help them come up in the spring?
I am in Wisconsin too...the earlier you can get them into the ground the better. Right now we are experiencing 80 degree weather and I just moved some of my plants . I looked at them this morning and they are not looking very good. If you can wait till it cools down and move them quickly, you just never know when we will get a frost. I had to move mine because I am having surgery otherwise I would have waited. The mosquitoes here are rampant...felt terrible with them all over me when I watered... Good luck with your flowers they should do fine but need a little time to root in the ground. Don't be fooled if it cools down , they still need water to get rooted. I wouldn't fertilize now because you don't want new growth now.
Just make sure you add multi purpose compost with them and some food around the rooting always help, I use this and put it around the edging of the plant as it's a continuous release food...I've just done mine for over winter
Well mater, I don't think that I would feed them at this stage personally. You don't want them to get the internal signal that they ought to eat and begin flower bud production now that winter is coming on. I would just plant them in the soil from off mid-October and let the roots establish themselves over winter. Then they ought to start off on their own and do well for you. Cone flowers can be tricky with transplanting, but since they are coming out of a pot...and making sure that the plant hole that they will go into has really good drainage and a tiny tad of chalk (lime?). I use seaweed lime. Good luck and please keep us posted on how it goes.
