My motherlode plant bargain bonanza (see Florida Forum thread for details) recently included about 30 pots of tulip bulbs, with about 5 bulbs to a pot (total of about 150 bulbs). These were "forced" bulbs for recent holiday sales at a mega-garden center store.
I looked for a tulip forum to offer the plants there and get some advice, but we don't seem to have a tulip forum. What should I do to properly prepare the tulips for planting in the ground in a climate (other than my Zone 8b/9a garden) where they can survive? My instinct tells me to leave them in the pot in a sunny location until the leaves wither, and then remove the bulbs and keep them in a cool, dry location for planting in the fall, but I'm not sure this is correct. Your assistance/advice in regard to how to properly prepare the bulbs for planting will be appreciated. I have successfully planted "forced" jonquil bulbs and have them reflower in subsequent years, but the bulbs went directly into the garden from the pots. The tulip bulbs may require some cold treatment to get them back on cycle -- I don't know.
All the tulip bulbs are available for SASE. Tulips will not grow (at least from my experience) in our hot, humid climate. I don't know the colors or cultivars as the pots came to me unlabeled. They would be good for an area in your garden where you are not too particular about the color arrangement or for naturalizing in a field. I don't need anything in trade as I am overwhelmed with potted plants to tend at this time, so I am accepting only offers from those willing to reimburse actual postage to receive the tulip bulbs. Please specify the number of bulbs you would like to receive. I may proportion the bulbs to a certain amount to each person, depending on the number of requests received.
I also have about the same amount of hyacinth bulbs and can include some of them in the SASE offer if you request them. However, I have had some success with getting hyacinths to return here and am somewhat less interested in giving all the hyacinths away.
If you sing my praises heartily, I may also be cajoled and flattered into also sharing some freesia bulbs, which will grow nicely here and most of which I want to keep.
I will "close" the offer in one week, on Friday 5/19, so that I can limit the number of boxes I need to pack.
Thanks for helping give these bulbs a good home where they can thrive and multiply!
Jeremy
CLOSED: Tulip bulbs available for SASE
jeremy i would love to give them a nice home in my garden!!!
and you could toss in a hyacinth bulb if you felt the need!
Jeremy,
I would love to give some of those tulips a home in one of my beds. If one or two of those hyacinth and freesia bulbs just happened to hop into the box, it wouldn't hurt my feelings at all. :)
Thanks for sharing!
Dee
Jeremy,
I would absolutely love some Tulips for my garden/yard...been wanted to get some, just never could find any that i could afford.
I could send (i think) it is $8.10 for a priority flat rate mail box and it i can hold up to 70 lbs...not that i will need the 70 lbs, just saying...Please let me know.
Char
Hi,
I would love some of your bulbs for postage. I will give them a good home.
Edited to say I would like tulips and hyacinth for flat rate postage $8.10
Thanks
Winnie
This message was edited May 12, 2006 1:08 PM
I would simply LOVE to give both the tulips & hyacinth a good home here in Maine. Please let me know if you have any left and what I should send you for postage.
I would greatly appreciate it!
Kim
Hi Jeremy. I would absolutely love some tulips and hyacinth and will give them a very loving home. Spring bulbs are my absolute favorite! :)
Thanks so much!
Becky
May I have some of weach Shirley
I would love some of the tulips. I would be glad to send 8.10 for the priority box..Thanks so much Janetlee50
Hi Jeremy, I would love to add tulips to my garden and could use 20-25 bulbs if you have that many left. I adore hyacinths so if you have any extras would really like to have some of those, too. LMK. Thanks for sharing!
Lana
Any of your tulips bulbs left? If so I would like a few or as many as you can spare.
Thanks, Maxine
Hi,
I would also love to get in on this! I don't have any Tulips and would LOVE some. Thank you for your generosity!! (singing your praises, ahem) =)
I'm not in need of any Hyacinths, but would love to have any other bulbs you'd like to share that you have excess of.
Thanks again so much & please let us know...you did expect to get swamped didn't you?? ;-)
Heather
|Jeremy got any bulbs left? If so I would be interested, just saw this tonight.
Just a caveat, folks, up North, at least, tulips don't generally perennialize or naturalize well. And it may be true that different types are sold in FL than in MA! Just my two cents.
xxxxx, Carrie
Would love some tulip bulbs and freesia would be wonderful too....Judy
Wow!! I really didn't anticipate this response! I have marked the offfer "closed" and will divide up the tulips amongst the above 12 people that want the bulbs. If my math is correct, which it usually isn't (I'm an artist/writer, not a statistician!), it would mean that you each get about 12 - 13 tulip bulbs? If that is considered a fair way to handle this offer and if you still want the tulips, please send me a D-mail and I'll get the tulips out to you after the leaves have dried up and the bulbs have gone dormant. I think that is the best method to help the tulips store up energy and to save postage, rather than cutting off the leaves or sending the bulbs with leaves attached.
For those that requested freesias and hyacinths, I'll reserve whatever are left after my own use and after the local DGers descend upon my "mini plant nursery" on Monday 5/15 to haul away as many plants as they want. I'll let them know that others are asking for the freesias and hyancinths, so we may be able to somewhat restrain our plant mania and share at least a few freesias and even more hyacinths with you (the hyacinths are "iffy" at best in our sub-tropical climate).
'll use your preference for shipping method, and I'll contact you before mailing to let you know what the exact postage will be.
Please send me a D-mail with your postal mailing address to confirm your interest in receiving the bulbs.
Thanks for your enthusiastic response. I'm glad to know the tulips and other bulbs will be adopted by loving homes!
Jeremy
Well, I was correct about my math being incorrect! I recounted and found 13 people interested in the bulbs, and after some "Jethro ciphering", it looks like you would get about 11 or 12 tulip bulbs each. There will probably be some bulblets attached to the main bulbs, so I can hopefully even up the division. Otherwise, I may be found as immobile as a marble statue for months in my garden due to a permanent math brain freeze!
Jeremy
LOL, don't feel bad Jeremy. I'm an artist also and not a mathematician. I'll be thrilled to get any amount of Tulips. Again, thank you for your generosity!
Sending you mail in a sec.
Jeremy, I am going to cancel out so others can receive more bulbs.
Thanks for the offer. Tulip bulbs only last here in Wisc. for around 4 yrs.
Maxine
Jeremy I feel that what ever you send send is a gift and will be enjoyed no matter how large or how small.
Dee
Jeremy,
I also would like to thank you for your offer but on further thought have decided that I need to find bulbs here in Maine which will stand a better chance against fiece Maine winters.
I am graciously backing out also so that others who are able to enjoy the bulbs for many years can have more.
I thank you so much though,
Kim
Thanks, Maxine & Kim, for letting me know not to send the bulbs. But DERN!, now I have to go back and recalculate the number each person will receive! Too much math! I'll just put out the number of boxes for people requesting the bulbs and toss one bulb in each in succession until I run out of bulbs.
My next door neighbor is a math teacher and got a good laugh out of my attempts to square up a garden area to make a formal topiary garden in an exact rectangle with two entrances directly across from each other and a rectangular pond in the exact center. After measuring, stretching strings, and trying every method I could think of to make it come out right, I still ended up with a trapezoid, and the entrances were askew and the pond off center. I may break down and ask the math teacher if she will come over and help me before I go much further with that garden concept. But as you know, men don't ask for directions!
Jeremy
Jeremy, LOL! I am the same way. My high school teachers never could give a good reason as to why I needed algabra or how I would use it in normal life...well, now I know I could have used it trying to change/alter recipes while cooking, figuring amounts of medicine to give my goats and, like you, in gardening! If I have a problem like that I end up asking DH he can do algabra and other complex math in his head! I can do simple addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division in my head to a certain extent but that's as much as I can do without at least a piece of paper or calculator. I just don't have enough fingers and toes! :~D
Glad to know I am not the only "math challenged" gardener, WVD, and like you, I foresaw no practical applications of math, algebra, or geometry, in my daily life. It is especially bad when I'm doing carpentry work that requires some precise cutting -- guesstimating doesn't really work when you are trying to get a structure to stand square and not lean or fall down!
Jeremy
Exactly!
Lana
I'm not sure any of you that asked for tulip bulbs are still watching this thread, but I wanted to give you an update on why they haven't been sent yet.
First off:
It has been a hectic and unsettling year for me! The "motherlode" of bargain plants from Lowe's continued to come my way -- much to my delight and that of our other Florida DGers, local Master Gardeners, and individuals that have had a chance to share in the bounty in my "all-you-can-haul-free-for-all" plant give aways. It has truly been amazing beyond my wildest dreams to have thousands of plants coming through for rejuvenation and then putting them in my own yard as time allowed or placing them up for adoption to good homes. The down side was that I found it necessary to give just about all my attention to the plants. I hadn't realized that I was taking on the responsibility of running what amounted to a a one person, full time plant nursery enterprise. We have had an especially dry year coupled with new water restriction rules which allowed daily watering only by hand-held hose, so a lot of my time (up to about 3 hours a day) was spent dragging a hose around and just trying to keep everything watered. Coupled with this, my personal financial situation went totally sour and I've had to scramble for cash just to keep some (but not all!) of the bills paid.
As a result of all of the above, I've fallen way behind on meeting my promises for trades and plants for postage SASE offers. But, I do have my lists of what is owed and I still intend to come through when time permits. Now that we are entering our "Winter" season of about 10 weeks when there is not so many garden tasks (though the "motherlode" plants will continue to come my way and need attention), I'm hoping to find the hours needed to follow up on trades and SASE offers.
If it is any consolation, and if you can find the graciousness of spirit to forgive me, while not providing timely response to my online DG offers and trades, I have been able to provide several thousand dollars in plants that have been rescued from the brink of death, brought back to health, and then freely shared with other DGers, local senior centers and schools, Girl Scout Projects, 4-H projects, and other interested individuals. It has been a blast to be able to share so many plants!
So, that bit of plea for mercy aside, the other reason I didn't send the tulip bulbs is that when I got around to removing them from their pots after their leaves had died back and I felt they had gone dormant, I found that the termites had gotten to the bulbs in the pots and eaten most of the bulbs, and that fungi had taken the opportunity to get at the damaged bulbs and had turned most of them to mush! Such is the life in the sub-tropics where termites and other wood destroying insects, fungus, and bacteria are constanty at hand and hungry for their next meal. I was able to salvage about 2 dozen of the bulbs. I soaked them in a solution of copper sulfate to try to kill the fungi and drown any remaining termites, then packed them in vermiculite and stuck them in one of the crisper drawers of my refrigerator (with frequent complaints from Christina as to when we could have the crisper drawers back again -- I had appropriated the other crisper drawer for seed storage). I just checked the bulbs and it looks like the mold continued to grow on some of them.
But, if you have read this far and are still in a forgiving mood, the good news is that the "motherlode" from Lowe's yesterday provided ten packages of FRESH unplanted tulip bulbs in their original mesh bags, 6 'Upstar' pink with darker pink highlights, 3 'Appledorn' red with yellow at the bottom, and 1 'Merry Widow' light red with white edging. There are 4 bulbs per package.
For those above that are still interested in receiving tulip bulbs, please send me a D-mail or update your previous D-mail with the info that you would like a package of these tulip bulbs and I'll do my very best to package and mail them this week. I only paid 25 cents per package, so I'm willing to send them for the original offer of reimbursement of postage only. They will most likely mail for the first class priority minimum of less than 1 lb for about $4.10. I can also pick through the other tulip bulbs from the crisper storage and send one or two of those that look healthy.
I realize that this is not the season for most of you to be planting tulip bulbs, but if you want to go ahead and receive them now and keep them refrigerated til next Fall, or if you want to pass on this offer now and wait until Spring when I'm sure there will be more forced tulips bulbs in pots that I can (this time!) gather before the termites and other wood destroying critters get to them, you can send me a D-mail or update your previous D-mail for this offer and I'll keep you on the list to receive tulip bulbs at a later date.
Again, I am very sorry I haven't followed through on this offer yet, but it has been one heck of a year where I suddenly found myself without time to do much of anything other than try to stay up with the demands of my personal finances while also tending to thousands of ailing plants in need of rescue and recovery.
Please note, I'm not able at this time to add any new folks to the list of those receiving tulip bulbs, only those that responded (above) to this offer last Spring are eligible at this time for the tulip bulbs for reimbursement of postage offer.
Please send a D-mail to let me know if you want one of the packages of tulip bulbs or if you want to pass at this time and wait for more bulbs to become available. If you want one of the packaged bulbs, please specify which cultivar you want from the available list and your second choice if the first choice is already taken.
Hope all is well with you and that you are having a Merry Season!
Jeremy
PS - I can also make a list of the HUGE supply of many varieties of seeds that I've been storing for over a year and never found time to plant, let you choose from the seeds, and add the seeds to the tulip shipment.
Jeremy
Hi, Jeremy, boy you've been busy! I've had the same personal finances crises the last few months :~( I would love some Upstar or Merry Widow bulbs...or 1 pkg of both. Do you have any seeds for pond plants? Or ornamental grass?
Lana
Great to hear from you, Lana. Got you down for the tulips. We'll see how many of the former folks get this message and then I'll know how many packages I can send to each person.
I'll have to look through my seed supply and see what is there. Most of the seeds are from a large order I did from Texas Wildflowers back a year or two ago when I still had money to toss around, others are seeds I've been given by friends. I'll need to sort through them and make a list of what is there.
I don't have any seeds for pond plants, but could possibly come up with some water hyacinth, water lettuce and other bare root pond plants to send with the tulips. They are tropical plants (some of them are illegal to own in our area because they are so invasive -- but I might be able to "spot" some in a nearby pond or creek -- wink, wink). You would need to overwinter them in some way to protect them from freezes in WVa. I got some small water lilies (unknown flower color and species) as a trade from an "all-you-can-haul" give away I did in Gainesville a few months ago. I could also add some of those to the package if you have a way of overwintering the pond plants. I have some of the "hot packs" here that I saved from eBay orchid purchases and can toss one or two of those in the box to try to keep the tropical pond plants from freezing during shipment.
Some of my red fountain grass still has the seed heads on it. I don't know if you can grow new plants or get good germination from the seed heads, but you are welcome to all of those seed heads, if you want to try them.
I can look up the botanical names and provide the Plant Files link for the above mentioned plants so that you know for sure what I'm able to send, if you need me to.
Jeremy
Jeremy,
Stop apologizing!! Life got in the way, it happens to all of us. =^) God bless you for trying to share...and God bless Christina for giving up her fridge, LOL!
I am interested in the tulip bulbs (pink if possible) and seeds (any), if there's enough to go around. If not then I'll take myself off the list. Even here in the cold north I've lost bulbs to all kinds of nasty critters and rot, it's not hard to have happen.
Have a great Christmas,
Heather
This message was edited Dec 13, 2006 12:02 PM
Mom has some Hyacinth and lettuce overwintering in her greenhouse and I have plenty of water lilies, just thought you might have something I don't :~) If the red ornamental grass is what I'm thinking of it's annual here and mom put a pot of it in the greenhouse to see of she could overwinter it. I'm hoping to convert the porch of the old house we use for storage into a greenhouse by next winter. Thanks bunches for the offer though :~)
Lana
Great to hear from you, Heather! I replied to your kind and considerate D-mail.
Lana, I managed (as part of my frenetic activity over the past year) to convert part of my parking shed with a concrete floor (which was here when I bought the house and was useless for parking the vehicles because it wasn't connected to the driveway) into a greenhouse and workshop. I pulled off some of the corrugated metal roofing and replaced it with the translucent fiberglass corrugated panels, then boxed in the outside of the greenhouse with some double paned insulated glass panels from old sliding glass doors my brother had collected from home remodeling jobs over the years, and finished off the inside of the greenhouse interior walls with pressure treated plywood. I added an aluminum storm door for entry. It worked out great! My orchids finally have a secure and consistently bright but diffusely lit home with high humidity, and they are much happier now, and I don't have to go to the effort of trying to hang up vizqueen plastic every year and drag the orchids and other tropicals into the makeshift vizqueen greenhouse when freezes threaten, so I'm much happier, too!
The red fountain grass is Pennisetum setaceum:
http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/59577/index.html
I can also send you the seed heads off a Bamboo Muhly that MollyMc gave me for my recent Master Gardener graduation:
http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/83536/index.html
I will also check around my yard and the gardens of friends to see what other ornamental grasses may have seed heads for you.
Jeremy
Cool, the Pennisetum setaceum is perennial for me but the Muhly Bamboo isn't. I would love to have any ornamental grass seeds, if they aren't perennial for me I can always trade for some that are or keep them in the greenhouse(hopefully)next year. You are so kind, Jeremy.
We plan to do the same thing as you with our porch, replace some of the corrugated tin roof with the clear corrugated panels, there are already windows in the walls of the porch but we may add more we have some old windows we can use. It has a concrete floor. We'll use a propane heater for heat, I'm sure my dh can set up a thermostat for me. Will probably have to do some insulating, too. I'll be able to keep plenty of water hyacinth for the pond. It needs lots of shade in spring and early summer, it's hard for me to get ahold of enough hyacinth that early in the season. I'll also keep excess house plants and maybe I can have more tropicals for the garden :~D
Lana