Denny's Soapbox

Plant Spring Flowering Bulbs in the Fall

I gathered the following information thanks to the Netherlands Flower Bulb information center in Danby, Vermont. Today I would like to pass a lot of that information onto you.

In fall, as the days shorten and leaves turn to autumn colors, gardeners will be busy planting the tulips, daffodils and other spring-blooming flower bulbs that will brighten the post-winter landscape. These glorious flowers are, in fact, so easy to grow. That’s probably why they’re so readily available now at garden centers, home centers, and supermarkets.

The following are a few rules and tips to follow.

• Choose a sunny spot. Most bulbs like to be planted in full sun, though some will tolerate partial shade. When choosing a planting site, remember that when the bulbs bloom in spring, especially early blooming bulbs, the leaves of deciduous trees won’t have leaves yet. You may have more choice planting sites than you think!

• Plant bulbs in soil that drains well. Soggy soil can rot bulbs. Avoid planting bulbs in places where water collects, such as the base of hills. When preparing the planting site, be sure to work the soil well and mix in organic compounds such as compost or pine bark. Large bulbs, such as tulips or daffodils, are planted about eight inches deep. Small bulbs, such as crocuses or grape hyacinths, are planted five inches deep. Be sure to work the soil several inches deeper than you plant the bulbs, so the roots have plenty of room.

• Plant bulbs in groups. The biggest mistake that novice gardeners make is planting bulbs as “single soldiers” either in a line along a walkway or border, or just spottily throughout a bed. To get maximum color impact, cluster your bulbs. This is true whether you plant ten or ten thousand.

          o Plant bulbs in a circular grouping to achieve a bouquet effect,

          o or lay them out in a triangle pattern to fool the eye into seeing more flowers than you have actually planted! To do this, position tulips or other bulbs in a triangle pattern in which the narrow point faces your favorite viewing position and the broad expanse is positioned towards the back. When the flowers bloom, the visual result is an enhanced mass of color!

• What about adding fertilizer? Bulbs already come with all the food they need – inside! – to bloom the first season. That’s what a bulb is, really, a storehouse of food and moisture. This would seem to indicate that fertilizing at planting is an overly generous act for many tulip varieties which will bloom only once in most gardens. However, for other bulbs which have a good chance at naturalizing (come back to multiply and bloom, year after year), it is indeed a good idea to fertilize. A good choice is to use a balanced bulb food in the spring to fortify bulbs during their post-bloom “recharging phase”. This is when the leaves of bulb flowers use photosynthesis to store up food for the following year’s bloom which is why experts advise letting bulbs “die back” for six weeks after bloom before cutting back their leaves or mowing them off.

• What about bone meal? These days there are several reasons to hesitate. Bone meal is simply not the best source of phosphorus for the garden, not because it doesn’t contain a lot of phosphorus but because it delivers it into the soil inefficiently. This is especially true of bone meal that has been processed by methods such as chipping or microwaving, instead of the old-fashioned steam treatment. Secondly, putting bone meal in your bulb bed is often an invitation for dogs, squirrels, voles, moles and other critters to sniff it out and dig up your garden.

• Know your bulb enemies. Some bulbs, including tulips and crocus, make favorite foods for pests such as deer and squirrels. Others, such as daffodils, fritillaries, alliums and many of the minor bulbs (scilla, chionodoxa, leucojum, galanthus, etc.) are not appealing to animal pests. If deer are a problem in your area, planting pest resistant varieties makes good sense. It’s also a good idea to clean up after planting. Planting supplies and bits of bulbs papery tunics left on the ground just send bulb-sniffing critters a signal that there is buried treasure nearby.