Help a novice gardener out

I gardened exclusively in containers for a while and learned a few tricks. No experience with daffodils though, but yes, they are perennials. But I would get advice before trying to winter them over in a container.

About ground cover: I've had a lot of success using lemon thyme (or any thyme really) as a living mulch and dispensable ground cover with my window-box tomatoes and other things. It likes full sun, spreads fast, will bloom, smells fantastic, is useful in cooking, and may possibly repel some pests. At least, my tomatoes have always remained pest-free in its company. When it threatens to overrun its neighbors, I just rip bits of it out. And you can get it cheaply in all the standard places that sell potted annuals in the spring/early summer.

About soil: it's worth it to invest the effort and little bit of money to get a good medium for an outdoor container. Otherwise, especially in full sun, you'll find it turning into a brick or dust pile, depending.

Plants in containers need a lot of water and a lot of fertilizer. It's not the same as growing stuff in the ground. They're more likely to go through wild swings from wet to dry, which is hard on them and causes blossom end rot in tomatoes.

If you decide to replace your boxes, I've had good luck with "self-watering" boxes. You can buy them, or see the Green Roof Growers. Actually, see the Green Roof Growers anyway. They know a hell of a lot more than I do.

Policy not party!

Zuzu, I've been doing this for years. You can indeed poke the bulbs in right about now if they're hardy bulbs like daffodills, grape hyacinth (works very well), etc. You'll want to keep the soil a teensy bit moist until it gets colder. Once it's winter you can pretty much forget them (unless we get one of those early warm spells we seem to get so often these days).

Some bulbs are not really hardy and will die if they freeze. e.g. Amaryllis, hyacinth (grape hyacinth is a different thing). But daffodills are just fine.

I put a little bone meal in the hole when I plant them.

The only ground cover I've had any success with is a succulent I got from around Fort Tryon park. I'll see if I can come up with the name.

Four o'clocks, morning glory (growing up a string to the top of the window frame). Plus some more traditional window-boxy stuff.

So, now we're here and now is fine

So far away from there

And there is time, time, time

To plant new seeds and watch them grow

So there'll be flowers in the window when we go

are kind of jungle-y and wild. I don't plan them, just put things in on whims. But in years past I've grown lots of herbs and hot peppers, even lettuces and a few tomatoes. I can definitely see that in my future...
(saving seeds now)

Oh yeah, my plantings started with what seed I could save from local plants or from food sources. I now splurge and buy seeds sometimes.

in tight spaces like windowboxes is that the dying foliage is ugly, ugly, ugly, but if you rip/clip it off, you'll starve the bulbs and they may not come up again. In larger spaces, the solution is to plant later-growing perennials on top of or in front of them, or throw some fast-growing annuals in front after the daff flowers quit. As the daff foliage gets ugly, the perennial or annual grows up to conceal it.

www.vermontwildflowerfarm.com sells a wonderful wildflower seed mix called "Tulip Toppers" that you strew over the top of your bulbs in the fall (or spring, but fall works better). The very colorful mix comes up just as the bulb foliage is getting ugly. I've used it and got the most marvelous summer-long patch of varied flower colors and textures, some long-lasting, others blooming for a week or two in a very satisfying succession of blooms.

It's a bit harder to get the dying bulb foliage concealed in a windowbox, but not impossible. Or you can just treat the bulbs like annuals, remove them and their dying foliage when they're done, replant with whatever you want, and put new ones in the next fall.

You might want to think about putting a good layer of mulch of some kind on your soil right up to the top of the windowbox as soon as the soil has frozen hard, then wrap something loose like burlap over the whole box to keep it in place. Windowboxes are much more vulnerable to cycles of freezing and thawing, which is very hard on both bulbs and any perennials you have in there, and the layer of mulch should help a bit to keep it all frozen.

Do Not Water Them Very Much. Because They Rot.

I have proven this conclusively over several winters.

You want a little moisture to encourage the little fall rootlings but not enough to keep the soil wet during the winter. I couldn't believe this and kept trying to give them enough water to keep them safe over the winter months. But something was always rotten in the state of daffodils...