Bulb season's almost here. What are you planting?

I'm trying something from Garden's Alive

Yes I was a busy girl planting all those bulbs! I got home and found my delivery from Burgess. So all I have left to plant are the hardy glads, blue lagoon tulip and tulip linifolia I got from brent and becky's. I planted daffodils a couple weeks ago and the other day when I was adding some hyacinth bulbs in front of where they were, I accidently found some bulbs that were sprouting from the top. Is this normal or did I plant them too soon? I'm in zone 5, If so do you think they'll still be fine come spring? I knocked it off with my spade by accident, so hopefully just that one will be damaged.

Regarding planting tulips for reblooming: I ordered 150 of White Flower Farm's Perennial Tulip Mixture collection--they are supposed to come back for several years, if not forever. I'll look forward to seeing how they work out.
I did have some gorgeous Darwin tulips that came up last spring for the second year under conditions of complete neglect, because I didn't know they were there until about 50 huge yellow and red blooms reared their heads beside our driveway. Someone had obviously dumped a bunch of bulbs on our property after they had bloomed. They received no water all summer (since I didn't know they were even there!) which I understand tulip bulbs like. They were beautiful. I'll be VERY interested to see if they re-appear next spring for the third year.
Meredith79, I'm with you. This is MY first year planting bulbs in the fall and I went completely overboard. Plus, when my order from WFF arrived, I realized that somehow I had accidentally ordered the Perennial Tulip Collection twice! I had 300 huge bulbs to plant. I ran out of steam and donated 150 of them to our local library's garden. Thank heavens they said "yes."
--Emily

I usually run out of steam looking at the bulbs LOL. so I have learned to scale down.I will be very interested in seeing how those 'perennial' tulips perform. I have some Angeliques and Fantasy parrots that have bloomed for me for 3 years now. But a large group of peony-flowered ones were a one-year only, except for the Lilac Perfection, which has been beautiful for 2 years.

I've decided that for tulips,I would only plant darwin & species after watching a couple hundred peony,verde, etc., tulips last a year or two. I've only had 2 years with the darwin & species but they are looking good.

Sigh. When you are finished Meredith, send the backhoe you used to make the trenches down here to me. I have about a hundred and fifty or so bulbs to go and I don't have the thirty muscari I ordered from Brent and Becky's yet. They should be here soon since they called to confirm my shipping address earlier in the week. Nice folk, by the way.
I am going to pot up most of the 80 tulips I got at Costco for forcing. I have several 14" pots and I am going to make the combo kind up for forcing. That's daffodils, tulips, the aformentioned muscari and crocus. Some of the muscari, the "Golden Fragrance' are going into separate pots for the Spring Flower show here in Boston. I might even get some hyacinth in them, except I like pots of those by themselves.
I am doing this more this year since getting out and digging all the holes in the yard has been too much for me while I am in chemo. I managed some in the ground. I can handle going back to work, but digging is too much. I can sit down and fill the pots and plant them that way. I make my son put the bag of potting soil in the wheelbarrow and i sit next to it with my scoop and I work away. I hope they look gorgeous in the spring. I hope all of yours look gorgeous in the spring. We all need to put a thread up when they start to bloom so we can see how it all turned out!
Martha

How do you handle the bulbs that you force? Do you put them in the pots and leave them outside during the cold weather and then just bring them in early? I am assuming you then plant them out in the spring?

Anita

Anita, I am trying to do a forcing for the flower show in the spring for March 17 or March 21. We have two separate entry days for the forcing challenges. The rest can bloom when they feel like it. I have a small bulkhead airlock in the basement that is not heated but doesn't freeze, either so I am going to try to keep things cool down there. I have put pots in the ground for forcing long ago in the past, but I don't have the energy to dig the necessary holes. When they come up and are done, they go into the ground in the fall. Not all will make it, but I will enjoy those that do. Forcing saps their strength somewhat so I put them in the ground with fertilizer and hope for the best. I have planted forced tete a tete's that I bought from Homey d's the last few years and put these in the ground when they are done in my window boxes. they came back just fine. I have tulips that come back every year from an Easter bunch that my hubby and kids gave me at least 15 years ago. Only about 5 of them are left, but they get a shot of bulb booster in their spot and they have returned many years in a row. others I planted from bulbs have long since gone. Guess it shows what love can do!
Martha

I force hyacinths, paperwhites and other cheap bulbs in water. The rest are forced in pots that are currently chilling in an extra fridge I have. The Amaryllis I do nothing to other than fertilize twice a year and repot once every other year and have gotten beautiful flowers every year and many new side shoots that grew into mature bulbs of their own.

I'm not the biggest bulb fan, but I have got around to some. I ordered the azure allium and picked some of these on sale also. I am now laughing at this package and the 'value pack' of one bulb ;))

Al, it's a value because if you bought a pack of more than one it would cost more.

touche'

I do have a picture of the allium azureum - not mine.

I planted some allium Purple Sensation. my first experience with allium, so I'm looking forward to it.

I had ripped out all of mine with reworking last spring. The planting directions on the package seemed off to me - said 8" spacing and 16:" planting depth. I would reverse those.

You can fool allium some of the time but you can't fool allium all of the time.

Al, I think if you planted them 16" deep they might have trouble finding their way to the surface. that's a heckofa deep hole!

Dave, there's just no suitable reply to that ...you have shut my mouth

Dave I'll give it a try.

There was a person that planted their dahlias 2' deep and they came up - sob to dig back up I bet. I pretty much stick to the hole 3x deep as the bulb height.

What a fun thread. I've been out in the garden too long and somehow missed it.

I can't associate names with answers floating in my head but here goes:

Perennial tulips are Darwins (per Dutch Gardens) and they do return year after year. I added another package each year because I didn't believe they'd return: glad to say I was wrong.

The lovely Angelique (peony flowering) was delightful for the first year, then never again.

Does anyone ever listen to Ralph Snodsmith on WOR radio, 710 on your dial, Sunday mornings from 8 to 10? He was the director of the Queens Botanical Gardens for many, many years and they'd plant 250,000 tulips each fall and each spring, after flowering, they'd dig them up and compost them. Tulips are, as he says, "not reliably hardy".

I do plant mine 2" deeper than the package calls for and now have stopped adding to that bed.

Purple Allium Sensation - I was planting them about five years ago (bought them at half price in December) as I froze and misread the directions so I used my auger and went down 20". When I brought the package inside I saw my error and did go back out to dig them up and replant. They've done fine and I just took them up to replant and now have 19 from about a dozen I planted originally.

The big event last week was lifting a clump of daffodils that were originally planted in 1993: 52 pound clump (including soil) and 93 bulbs! So far I've replanted 39 of them.

I had lifted another clump, two weeks ago, and sent 84 to a DG person, gave 84 to a local friend and still have a lot to replant.

Ralph Snodsmith's advice on fertilizing bulbs is to do it when the first tips appear in springtime.

Ours had pushed both upward and downward in the soil but we didn't have the blooms you'd have expected from these numbers of bulbs. There is one more clump to be dug but it just might not happen this fall.

Long ago, in a former home, I did a fall planting of 1,069 bulbs down the side of the driveway and 144 daffodils in a separate bed: what a lovely spring I had! The new people ripped them all out = knife in the heart.

Dave - loved your allium line!

Hi, pirl, for all the bad luck I seem to have with bulbs, I have angeliques that have bloomed for 3 yrs. the first 2 years they were absolutely gorgeous, last year smaller, so I'm not expecting much next spring. and I haven't fertilized them at all (go figure). I have them with some equally beautiful parrot tulips, Fantasy, that are enormous with beautiful color and have also lasted well. and the only daffodil that has done well well for me...white lion. I have one other peony tulip that has come back well for me, Lilac Perfection. I bought it in a collection with 3 others from Breck's. The few blooms I got the 2nd/3rd yr on the others were not double. But the lilac has come back for 3 years and is still double.

I'm putting in some of the little species tulips this year that are supposed to be perennial as well. maybe some Darwins next year.

I love the species tulips and should have bought some. They do go on like the energizer bunny, year after year.

I have had modest luck with both Zurel and Greenland but nothing like the Darwin Perennial tulips. If you can find them in December, at half price, you will still get spring flowers but getting through the ground might be a problem for anyone with frozen tundra soil.

Poor Pirl! All your bulbs at your previous home. My previous home has had much of my plantings replaced with orange mulch!

IMHO there should be some sort of surcharge on that orange mulch, or at least a special permit. I've seen a few places where it looked good, but that's rare. I apologize to any of you who may have it in your yard/garden and remind you that this is one person's opinion and I'm absolutely sure there is something you'd hate in my garden, too LOL

Oh no! Not the orange mulch! I simply have to be cremated after science takes any and all parts because I fear being buried under orange mulch! Why do they even make it? Whose idea of a bad joke was it?

**blushing** dang! you got me Pirl.

actually I buy the stuff colored black because I do.

Al - you do what?

I liked that wording ;)~

I buy the black bark.

We use compost.

How do you keep the weeds down, Pirl? I use red cedar mulch because it's the cheapest around. I used to use only compost, but new weeds would try to pop up even if I weeded daily.

We use Preen for paths but generally not in gardens. We do have a few annoying weeds but I try getting them in the fall or else I only see them when they're 3 or 4' tall. I am plagued by that very tiny clover and try to keep after it. Other than that we just don't have "weeds" but more like tiny clumps of grass growing in the flower beds and that's easy to pull. I do use a lot of ajuga as ground cover.

arn't the dyed barks bad for the soil? i use whatever mulch suits my fancy at the time of purchase, since i usually do all my beds at the same time. this year it was mahogany, before that cedar. i love all the wonderful smells. mmmmmmm
i use preen, there is no way i could keep up with my garden beds if i didn't. some area's i may want to seed, from a plant or two, i'll not preen them, but for the most part it saves me a lot of back breaking work.

i too have some purple tulips my sweetheart and franklin (my doggie) gave me for easter that have come back 3 years in a row now, with furtilizer.
later.................
debi z and franklin