Click Here To Visit The SRGC Main Site
Like a bulb pot with a rogue grass seedling left to flourish is well drained compared with one containing just the bulb(s). Just occasionally my neglect and bad culture pay dividends instead of punishing me.
This is what I always do with bulbous plants. I let a weed or a small plant like a Viola grow in the pot along with the bulbous plants. It removes a lot of water from the mix, and tells you if the mix is too dry or lacks nutrients. I call them indicator plants. Bulbous plants in general do not tell you there is a problem until it is too late. If the indicator plant gets too big and greedy, you can give it a haircut with scissors. When the bulbous plants go dormant, I stop watering and let the indicator plant absorb moisture from the mix until it wilts and dies. I get excellent survival of my dormant bulbs this way. Without the indicator plant, the soil in a pot of dormant bulbs will remain quite moist for a long time, especially if you use a large deep pot, which I do because the bulbs develop so much faster in a large pot. You have to be careful with lilies, because they don't like to go completely dry. Another great advantage of an indicator plant is that its roots hold the soil mix together, so that you can dump the whole thing out and transplant it in one block.
I like the idea of plant buddies, for plants at a similar stage of growth, but "weeds" that germinate in seed pots that may be kept for several years can be a problem when they take over. Never thought about slipping a single bulb into the middle of a seed pot to simulate that initial germination. Yet another experiment waiting for someone.