By Variegated
Essex,
United Kingdom 
two disasters this summer - new gardener, so advice welcomed.
1. Two lavender bushes about 1ft high size, 1 with silver foliage, and t'other with the butterfly tops. Potted them, fed and watered over summer, but never bloomed. Now they're on patio and winter approaches. How should I care from them please?
2. Planted freesia bulbs - 5 to a pot. Only half flowered, and the rest were all leaves, some yellow. I fed and watered them, but the compost got very smelly and a bit green. Should I have added some grit and watered them less perhaps?
11 Nov, 2011
Answers
"Planted freesia bulbs - 5 to a pot. Only half flowered, and the rest were all leaves, some yellow. I fed and watered them, but the compost got very smelly and a bit green. Should I have added some grit and watered them less perhaps?"
You need to take out the Freesia corms now and let them dry for a week or 2 in a frost free place. Remove any foliage. Keep the corms in a frost free place till next April/May.
The fact that the compost smelled and went green means that it was waterlogged - so you need to improve the water. Throw the old compost out into your garden and get fresh stuff next year.
11 Nov, 2011
Check the drainage holes in the pots are clear and not blocked too - and if there aren't drainage holes, put them in, and don't keep the pots standing in trays to catch the water all the time - that's okay when its very dry, but not when it rains or permanently.
11 Nov, 2011
As your lavender are only small you wont need to trim them, Id leave well alone dont feed and wait untill end of sept; next year then they should have flowered and they will need a slight trim to keep them to shape.
It does sound as if you haven't drainage holes in the freesia pots, if you have then stand the pots on stones or something similar so there is plenty of air circulating underneath. I would also knock the corms out and check them you could try storing them inside a shed to dry out and if not soft try planting them again in late spring in new compost.
11 Nov, 2011
Thanks everyone - very helpful.
15 Nov, 2011
Lavenders prefer dryish, free draining soil which is reasonably poor, and full sun, or two thirds sun, mediterranean conditions really - feed them regularly and they don't flower. Just give them a feed in April and another end of May and leave it at that, preferably with something like Miracle Gro general purpose or similar. You will need to give protection to the 'butterfly' flowered one, as this is french lavender, or a version of Lavender stoechas, which often kicks the bucket in a bad winter, or a very damp one. If the winter is particularly bad, you may need to move the other lavender somewhere a bit sheltered so that the pot doesn't freeze solid.
11 Nov, 2011