Knowing where you are would help a lot :-) But in general, when the green shoots start poking above the soil level, you can think about bringing the pot out into the daylight.

You might need to haul the pot back inside on the coldest nights for another month or so. You just want avoid the container freezing solid.

I‘m in Kansas City, zone 6.

I'd wait until at least the end of the month.....maybe longer. You will have to play it by ear depending on your weather forecast.

What kind of bulbs?

@popmama (Colorado, USDA z5) I put daffodil ’Mt. Hood’ in with all white triumph tulip ‘Kansas.’

I am interested to hear others’ experiences with combining bulbs for forcing. I have had bad luck getting them to bloom simultaneously.

@kitasei2 I don’t expect mine to bloom at the same time. I found the bulbs on sale and bought them without a plan and decided to experiment by potting them since the tulips might not be perennial. I only looked into each variety’s bloom time after they had been potted. It sounds like I’ll probably get daffodils, then tulips. Also, I am not forcing my bulbs either, just potting them for outdoor use. Hopefully someone else will have advice for you. Aside from this experiment, I typically plant bulbs into the ground and only perennial varieties.

It is rare to get a combined or mixed planting of bulbs to bloom simultaneously. They don't all keep to the same schedule :-) Generally I believe the intent is for sequential blooming over an extended period, although there is often some overlap.

You might get closer to a simultaneous bloom by forcing although IME, that is also up to nature and your bulb choice. And your forcing methodology.

In short, if the bulbs planted in the ground have a staggered bloom season - which they do - there is nothing about planting them in a container that would necessarily alter that.

So you will have to extricate the daffs when theyre finished so your tulips arent blooming amidst dying foliage..

Daffodil foliage was pretty persistant in my last garden, hopefully they won’t look too messy by the time the tulips bloom. It would be impossible for me to remove the daff bulbs before the tulips are done blooming since I potted the the daffs under the tulips lasagna-style. I am planning on relocating the bulbs to the ground when they’re done. Next fall, I guess.

I did a potted bulb thing about three years ago. I planted about a hundred bulbs in pots. I buried the pots in my raised vegetable bed and covered them with leaves. My intention was to move the pots to the front of my house in spring and plop them into containers for a grand display. It didn't end up being grand but just so-so. Some of them didn't bloom, others were either too short or far too leggy to be attractive.

But the biggest issue came when they were done. What was I going to do with over a hundred tulip bulbs? My nature says, "You can't just throw these away!" So I found myself trying to plant over 100 tulip bulbs in basically the wrong time of year. Plus my garden is pretty tightly packed. By the time I planted about 2-3 of them, I was toast. So I gave the rest away on Nextdoor.

There seems to be some misconceptions about when you can plant these already flowered bulbs in the ground. You don't need to dig, dry and store before replanting in the fall (like one would do with fresh bulbs). As long as you leave the foliage intact to ripen and dry on its own, you can plant the bulbs at any time after flowering. I often buy potted pre-started bulbs - usually tulips or hyacinths - to enjoy inside the house in early spring. When they are finished flowering, I plant them in the garden to finish their growth cycle (the foliage dieback) and they come up routinely the following spring. Blooms the first season in the ground after unpotting/planting may be sporadic but once established, they should flower as intended. How successful one is with the tulips depends on which types one chooses......some are much better at perennializing than others.

If you want to plant several types of bulbs in the same pot, you shouldn't expect them all to bloom at once. One of the reasons we mix assorted bulbs is so the the collective bloom period lasts longer than a single species planting.

I buy bulbs in the fall and read the label to see how deep they want to be planted before establishing the planting; then, I layer the bulbs so they are at the appropriate depth. The bulbs then go on the garage floor against the wall that divides the house from the garage to vernalize. Once they have about 8 weeks of chilling temps between 32 and about 1,200 hours (8 weeks) of chilling, the bulbs will have passed out of dormancy into a stage called quiescence, during which they are capable of normal growth and blooming, but are still prevented from doing so by low temperatures. At that point, you can take the planting indoors to enjoy watching them bloom, or wait until outdoor temps are above freezing so they can add color to your yard, deck, etc.

Once they first bulbs have a good start on popping up through the soil, most of their ability to resist freezing will have abated, so it's a good idea to move them in and out as temps allow. If you are enjoying the show indoors, blooms will last much longer if they are in a coolish room, and especially if you remember to move the planting back into the cool but not freezing garage or into the coolest spot in the house - perhaps a breezeway or enclosed 3 season room.

Al

Both the tulips and the daffs have emerged in my pot, all about an inch or less. I put the pot outside for a few days last week when the weather was nice, but the temps have fallen again. If I have to keep the pot in the garage for days on end, will the plants need a grow light? It won’t be above freezing for several more days.