Have You Planted Your Bulbs Yet?

Above is the only shot from today on the blog. It's a nice shot of the progressive fall color of the fullmoon maple (Acer japonicum 'Aconitifolium'). This is the smallest specimen of three that we have situated in the Japanese garden and fern & moss garden. The fall color will range from yellows to oranges and eventually go to a vivid red; in fact, one of our best fall colors in the garden. I was away from the gardens most of the day with a three hour presentation to the Kenosha (WI) County Master Gardeners in Bristol, WI. They were a friendly bunch and my presentation on sensory plants and therapeutic gardens went well (thanks to Barb for having me over!). I then had two other meetings that filled out the day. The gardens were in very good hands with Larry, Marv, Marianne, Terry, Big John and Janice. I left a "Master List" of projects that included a mix of gardening, lights set-up and some indoor work so everyone could get out of the crazy wind. I did see Dr. Gredler, Robin, Mary (with two RECAPPERS) and am sure there were many others that stopped by throughout the day. Right before I left, Marianne mentioned that our 2,000 backordered grape hyacinths (Muscari armeniacum) arrived today. We'll plant the rest of our "ordered" bulbs this week with the plant sale leftovers going in the ground next week. When I do bulb talks, I always mention the interesting factoid that roughly 50% of the bulbs purchased for the home garden are never planted! Many of us, myself included, are guilty of forgetting and later realizing around New Years Day that we didn't plant those bulbs sitting out in the garage. My blog title is meant to get you inspired to plant your bulbs but also start sniffing around for some good deals on late season bulbs. If you can still dig a hole (and you can for quite some time), put in some bulbs and reap the beautiful rewards next spring. It is time well spent. If you have deer problems, consider daffodils (Narcissus) or ornamental onions (Allium) as seen directly below.

We will typically order our bulbs in a bulk by the thousands. We then count them out in to smaller groupings that will be planted as clusters out in the gardens. We consider this the "bouquet effect" with nice groupings that have more impact and are easier to plant in one large hole as opposed to many small ones. The mesh bags below are something that we save from year to year and as I left today, Marianne was bagging up the grape hyacinths in bags of 25 for planting very soon. Further below is a sample of a larger hole that we would use for tulips, daffodils or alliums. We typically cluster these larger bulbs in groups of 20 or 25 which will dictate a 6-8" deep hole with roughly a 20" diameter. We always sprinkle Milorganite (www.milorganite.com/) fertilizer in the bottom of the hole and over the top of the bulbs once the soil is placed back in the hole. The reason for this is twofold, we want to lightly fertilize the bulbs but this fertilizer also has a persistent odor that helps detract rodents (squirrels, chipmunks, etc.) from pawing thru your newly disturbed soil and locating potentially tasty bulbs. Directly below is a recent bulb planting of yellow tulips and wild hyacinths (Camassia leichtlinii 'Blue Danube') in one of our three center patio planters. Sue (lower left) and Bev (headless) planted these bulbs tightly (Oct. 9th work day) and the composition will be dynamite in spring. We also followed the Milorganite rule on this space and look forward to the final effect. Further below is a sample of what our tulips ('Sky High Scarlet) looked like this past spring with a similar planting approach and spacing the previous October (2009). We replant these circles every year to kick off our color scheme for the entrance garden. We love our bulbs (over 400,000) at RBG and visitors will time visits to catch peak tulips (mid-May) and alliums (late May/early June). Of course the weather is a huge factor and all of our bulbs were three weeks early this year. Below are some historic bulb images from RBG that don't exist anymore. Back in 2001, we planted 25,000 tulips representing 500 varieties (clumps of 50) and called the collection "Tulip Time". It was fantastic and the spring was relatively cool, thereby extending the show. We still have people coming back asking about the tulips. We left that collection in for two years but it began to peter out as excessive summer irrigation for the annuals that filled the spot later in the year began to rot out and affect the tulips. It was a fun collection that we hope to replicate if we ever have the funds....The bottom photo shows hyacinths planted to form our garden symbol at the time. Marv and Jim W. planted this and we had high hopes. However, the bulbs were so close (based on MY directions) that they collectively shoved the soil up and created a mess with variable bloom effect. To be honest, it looked better like this before they grew. I learned a lesson with hyacinths that spring. Anyway, get out there and plant/buy some bulbs! ALWAYS PATRONIZE YOUR LOCAL GARDEN CENTER FIRST!!! I become "cord boy" tomorrow and start the epic duty of running six miles of extension cords.. (is the enthusiasm evident?).