I have some bulbs (daffs, muscari and tulips) that have naturalized well in my hosta bed, but I'm wanting to dig up that corner in spring and plant a large shrub/small tree. Can I just dig them up after the foliage ripens and store them in a cool,dry place until fall? Or would planting them in a holding bed somewhere dry be better? I've lost lots of bulbs in the past when I've decided to change things (newbie mistake!).
Favorite Plants in the Cottage Garden
Here's what I do -- every single year because I have to keep digging & dividing my daffodils on a rotating basis to keep them big for show.
Dig them up after the foliage senesces (turns brown) or 6 weeks, depending on which is faster. You will do yourself a favor if you keep the names with the bulbs, or in lieu of that, the color of the bulbs -- "white/yellow daffodils", for example. Lay them out on top of the soil in the sun until they are dry...and that could be tough in Illinois because it might be rainy. If it is, put them on some mulch or rocks in the shade until they are dry. Be sure it's not in an area where you water, though. It's okay if they are in the rain, and it's okay if it takes 2-3 weeks, eventually they will dry out. Don't forget about them! After they are dry, put them in a net bag (like onions come in) and hang them where it is hot and dry. An outdoor storage shed is ideal, but so is a hot garage or carport. Do NOT take them inside and do not lay them on concrete. In fact, don't lay them down at all unless it is on a wire or mesh drying rack with up and down and around air circulation.
If that sounds too tough, or it's looking bleak for drying, you can do the holding bed, or you can plant them where you want them. To do this, treat them like perennials -- have your holes dug ahead of time and plan how you want them to look. Pull apart any bulbs that have already multiplied if you want, but it's better if you don't. Do a few at a time until you are finished. Throw away any that are soft, black, or rotted, and put them in the trash, not the compost pile. The foliage, if it is still green, can lean over; it's no problem. If they are green, they need water, but if they aren't, don't water them all summer.
Muscari starts growing early, so make sure it gets in Labor Day weekend if you can swing it. The other minor bulbs and daffodils can be planted any time after Labor Day, the earlier the better; wait on tulips until Oct-Nov when the soil is reliably in the 40s to low 50s.
Suzy
Wow Suzy, thanks! I I was being very literal, I have three kinds of bulbs, period. So there shouldn't be any labeling necessary to tell them apart (unless daffs and tulips are the same size) LOL . I'm really grateful for your detailed answer. Now to decide what else to plant! I saw a mixed bag of bulbs at Menard's, couldn't afford it at the time, it had blue & white squill (Puschkinia scilloides libanotica), don't remember all of it. And something else that I was really fascinated with. I don't recall the name at all, but is was a small, brown-striped yellow flower. Anyone know what I'm referring to? I've never seen anything like it, I wish I could've bought it.
Yellow with brown stripes -- A species crocus? That particular one doesn't show up well here because I use leaves and brown bark as mulch. The leaves especially are about the same color as that crosus and there isn't enough contrast for it to pop. It is nice and early, same with the Puschkinia. Both will bloom through snow, in which case there is a LOT of contrast LOL!)
Get back there and see if it's on sale! I have never regretted any of the money I have spent on spring-blooming bulbs. They just, well, replace winter, I guess.
I thought you might have a dozen different kinds/colors of daffodils or tulips.....you should! Send me your address in a dmail and I'll get some extras I have out to you on Monday. They'll hit your house right when you have cold spell, so if you think it's necessary, go out and dig a couple of holes tomorrow while it's nice... 6" deep and 6" in diameter. Put the excavated soil in a bucket in the garage. (When you get the bulbs, seat them in the hole and pour the soil from the bucket over them, then stomp to make sure they're planted.)
Suzy
This message was edited Nov 25, 2006 5:07 PM
prarie girl- illoquin has given you good advice. I always choose the treat them like perennials option because i know i'll just not get to that later planting after drying option- so i just divide and plop those bulbs in the ground in their new homes while i can still see the leaves on them (and know where they are!) and still have in my mind where else i'd like to have them growing. I wait till the flowers are gone, and the leaves are starting to be kind of tired and limp, but they aren't really dead or brown yet. that way, i'm more sure of what i'm digging up and also still am in the mood of the season and am motivated to change some things..... most all bulbs work fine for me, except I don't try to move hybrid tulips.
Illoquin, Thanks for your very generous offer! You've got d-mail LOL. I use brown mulch (cedar chips & chopped leaves) as well, so I don't feel bad about skipping those (crocus?) bulbs. I thought for sure it was some obscure bulb.
Prairiegirl,
It might have been an obscure bulb -- I was just guessing. It couldn't be too exotic, tho, if Menard's was selling it. (They sell the average stuff that grows well in the area.)
I got your mail, thanks,
Suzy
Happy Belated Thanksgiving! I didn't watch this thread! Duh!
I've got Rip Van Winkle Daf's all over this old farm. Sarah is right. They
do love this area. I've dug them out to give to a friend and replaced them
with some other types to add variety. They are charming but I do like variety.
Hi Tammy,
I don't think that's Rip Van Winkle -- it's either Eystettensis (if it's sulphur yellow).
http://daffseek.org/query-detail.php?value1=Eystettensis&lastpage=1
or more likely, Van Sion if it's golden yellow:
http://daffseek.org/query-detail.php?value1=Van%20Sion&lastpage=4
It's hard to tell the color yellow on the old ones because they usually have so much green in them, but Van Sion is way more plentiful and easier to grow than Eystettensis
This is Rip Van Winkle:
http://daffseek.org/query-detail.php?value1=Rip%20van%20Winkle&lastpage=4
Suzy
You are correct! Its not RVW.
Tammyy, whatever the name, they sure are pretty.
uh oh...the rvw daffs i've been talking about don't look like the daffseek picture either- perhaps a bit shaggier than tammy's ....well, i'll have to take a careful look this spring!
garden6- yeah, i try to get as many seasons out of the tulips as they're willing, except for the rare few, they seem to peter out.
Thanks Sjms ~ it seems that there's conflicting info re: the darwin hybrids, one nursery stated they can be treated as perennials, then a master gardener stated that they are not reliable in the same site and should be rotated "regularly"...I guess I should have asked what was her definition of " regular" LOL!
Illoquin: Can you explain to me the benefits of digging daffodil bulbs? I always just planted them and left them forever -- it never occurred to me to dig them up and move them. There are places where I am sorry I planted them, so I'd be delighted to follow your advice (other than that I generally follow a very lazy approach to gardening). But are you suggesting the bulbs will actually flower stronger as a result of being dug up and left to dry during the summer months? That seems counter-intuitive. And you do this every single year for all your important bulbs?
Also, is there a simple method for digging the bulbs up? I would think it would be hard to avoid damaging neighboring plants if I just used a spade -- but that using a bulb planter to unplant them would result in a lot of chopped-up bulbs.
Use a spade fork to gently pry up the soil and sift through it.
happy, I believe Suzy was refering to dividing crowded clumps of daffodils on a rotating basis. As long as daffs are blooming well its fine to leave them, but sometimes they get so crowded that you see few blooms and lots of leaves. Varieties that are said to naturalize well usually don't need dividing(much). And if you just need to move the ones you have, the above method works great.
Neal
Oh, Happy, I read this and had to wait to answer because I knew it would be a long post and then couldn't find the darn thread again!
#1 You can't use a bulb planted as a bulb unplanter! LOL!
#2 You can move daffodils any time after bloom in the spring -summer provided you treat them as a perennial and get them back in the ground if they are actively growing. If you disturb them in the fall, or before bloom, they are not quite so accomodating, but it can be done.
#3 Leave them down if you like what they look like, where they are, etc. As soon as the blooms starts to diminish in number, it's time to dig & divide them. You can squeak out 1-2 more years if you throw on a big handful of 6-24-24 or 5-20-20 in the fall, and spring as they're coming up, and right after bloom.
I grow and show daffodils, and I'm also a judge. The month of April is Daffodil Month and I am exempt from...everything. LOL! I seriously don't have to do a thing because it is that time consuming. When the kids were little, I didn't cook, clean, drive carpool, go to basketball games, I literally took the month off, and even now I make arrangements months in advance to take care of all the petty details of life. LOL! Now it's a lot easier for me because the kids are driving ages, so I have a little more time for my husband, etc., but it's still hectic.
Now that you have the frame of mind, you can understand I have devoted my entire garden to them. I literally had mulch for 9 months of the year over the daffodils to keep them cool in the summer (speaking of counter-intuitive, I'd better explain this one -- in the ground where they might get wet, they have to stay cool, but if they're dug & dry under cover, they much prefer to be hot.)
I dig bulbs on a rotating basis...every 3 years for about 800 different kinds, so roughly 250 different varieties a year. A lot of times I have help because other collectors want my bulbs, and well, we think it's fun. It's called going on digs or harvesting. Some people use a fork, some a spade, most use a tile spade -- a long narrow one. The problem, I noticed early on, with the tile spades is you need to be a certain height to use one efficiently. if you continually use a long thin tile spade and are too short, you have to lift your leg way high to push down on it...I noticed a lot of older daffodil women with hip problems. But I digress.
I want to dig my bulbs every three years because I only have room, space, sun for the biggest single bulbs. If I were to put two bulbs in front of you -- a 3N (triple nose) and a fat single, you'd want the 3N and I'd want the single. It's just like the dahlia & peony people who disbud so they can have one single gigantic beautiful bloom when the rest of us want more flowers and a staggered bloom time.
When I dig, it's to reset the bed. Everyday in March and April, I spend at least an hour evaluating flowers & making notes about color and form and stem height (the 3 biggies, but if I had older flowers, I'd also worry about texture & substance, too...I don't grow old flowers, so that's why I didn't know much about RVW.) I'll dig out everything in a certain area, mark them, dry them, net them (bag in net bags) and hang them to dry. Most people use a fan on them, but I prefer to lay them out in the sun. When I'm digging I notice the condition of the bulbs, the condition of the soil and make adjustments. During the spring, I have made notes on what flowers are too tall or short for their spaces, and also which ones are too short (never too tall) for show. Is it genetic or is it my fault they're too short?
For me, it's adding compost and sand and maybe more sand, also organic fertilizers like greensand, bonemeal, kelp meal, rock phosphate and stuff like that. Alfalfa meal gets put on about Jan-Feb, depending on the weather. On the bonemeal, I have to rototill it in or my dog goes berzerk. If there is any one place that has too high a concentration, he is digging it up, so I can't just put a tablespoon or two under a bulb, I have to put it over the entire bed.
Daffodils have simple roots and are not efficient feeders. Everytime I dig in there, mix things up a little, the bulbs do better for a couple years. This is because the fertilizers are not equal in their downward percolation in the soil. Nitrogen is way faster than potassium, and organic fertilizers are way slower than chemical -- oh, and I do use both, I just wouldn't rototill chemical fertilizer into the bed -- it needs to be under the bulb if possible.
Naturalizing is the opposite of what I do, and I am assuming naturalizing is exactly what you would like to do. Bulbs increase in a way that an entire bouquet of leaves and flowers comes from one spot in the ground, which is from one single bulb's division over time. That's why the coolest naturalizing, the kind where you say, "Oooh, that's what I want." takes a long time. What happens over a period of time is the bulbs "apartmentize", a term made up by the midwestern folks who garden in clay. Every flower stem divides a bulb in half, so the more flowering, the more new bulbs you have...each of these bulbs grows and expands, but in clay soil, and more importantly, with other bulbs doing the same thing too close by, they can't always go sideways, they have to go up. If you have had bulbs down, say 10 years, and they are healthy and not rotting, you can actually brush away the soil and see the tips of the bulbs. The top layer of bulbs. And there could be 3 or more layer beneath! These bulbs, when they are dug are not round -- some could be oval, but a lot are triangular, fitting together like crazy bread.
To your question: Let's say you want to move one clump of bulbs from point A to point B. You would probably use a pitchfork as Green Jay says, and try to dig them 6 weeks after bloom while the foliage is still visible, so you know where to dig. Daffodils come straight up from the bulbs, so they are right beneath the foliage. Depending on what's around them, you might want to tie those other plants away from the work area, or stake them, or maybe even heel them in elsewhere for a hour or so. You'd edge around any plants, and see where the daff foliage is and dig around the perimeter of the foliage. Just as Greenjay says, be prepared to start sifting soil! You will have baby-sized bulbs and giant doubles and everything in between. Any babies you accidentally leave in the soil will grow into blooming sized bulbs. If the bulbs have been down a long while, you might be astonished to see 200 daffodil bulbs from your harvest. Your Point B might be ready to plant, but you've only selected a place that will hold, what? 10-12 bulbs at the most. What will you do with the other 188? (Note: What will happen in reality is point B will have annuals in it and you'll plant daffodis back in the fall (storing them hot & dry over summer) The timing is off to do it any other way....hard to explain, but it's true. By Memorial Day, you have filled all the holes in your garden, Point B is filled with something growing and blooing and why rip it up to plant daffodils that won't bloom for another 10 months?)
Back to your 200 bulbs. The easiest thing is to grade them and only keep the big ones. You'd probably give the others away, trade them, or even flip them over the garden fence. You could also naturalize them. A little hint: The heaviest are the best performers no matter how many noses they have. If you learn to "weigh" bulbs, one in your left hand and one in your right hand you will always pick the best bulb at the garden center -- daff, tulip, frit - hyacinth -- you'll get the best. You're looking for a dense, hard, heavy bulb.
I can't do any of that letting bulbs go until they quit blooming stuff. If I leave even one little slab in my beds, it will bloom in a few years and make my life miserable. I will have a daffodil I don't know (100% sure) the name of, and it might come up and bloom in a place where I could think it was something else. It's also hard to identify the interloper by bulb-only because you dig when the flowers are gone. Is it this bulb here or that one there? All these are no nos, so I can never let my bulbs get that small, & that's why I dig every 3 years AND as new daffodils are introduced, I want them. I have to dig and get rid of stuff so I can get the newest ones.
Definitely more than you wanted to hear, but it will explain some things later on -- like why I want to know so much about the exact annual in a certain picture, or how many there are -- I need shallow rooted plants and ones that take dry conditions to put over the daffodils! I am going to try to have a Cottage Garden over my daffodils instead of a mulch bed.
Suzy
P.S. I made it sound like I am an awful mother, but actually I started a youth group for growing and showing daffodils when they were very young which persisted until they started driving - about 10 years. It got them in to the gifted and talented program in elementary school, into X-science classes in junior high, too. I took flowers into school every year for grade-appropriate botany lessons up to high school and my Brownie/Girl Scout Troops always planted daffodils and other flowers. I made them each memorize the poem by Wordsworth. And yes, my younger daughter was the World Youth Champion Daffodil Grower from 2000-2004, and she put it on her college applications instead of thinking it was the nerdiest thing she'd never admit to doing. If you want your child to get into a special program in school, something weird like daffodils can certainly be the ticket because it captures the interest of the people who screen the applications. They see soccer, flute, violin, piana, baseball, basketball ad nauseum; really, they see it all. This is truly something different.
Suzy, I want to be there to scavenge your extras at digging time, lol. I think I'm at around 100 varieties of daffs now- lots of catching up to do, hehe. Never saw a daff I did'nt like.
Suzy: What a wealth of information -- I really appreciate it. I learned a lot! I have a lot of daffodils I put in that are not in good locations, and I had no idea I could move them successfully! I don't think I'll ever be much of a serious daff grower because I water too much in the summer, and I'm not fussy about variety (but don't ask me about daylilies!). You are right -- I do love the look of naturalized daffodils. Everything you wrote was directly on point to my many questions. Many many thanks. Sounds as if your kids are lucky indeed!
(I think kids do best when their parents are busy and engaged -- because kids model themselves in many ways after their parents. So I think that by being committed to your daffodil work, you show them how to be committed and responsible to whatever they decide give their heart and energy to. No better parenting than that in my book!)
This message was edited Nov 29, 2006 8:18 AM
It's great that you have been able to share your love and knowledge of daffs with your children Suzy. You sound like a great Mom to me!
I got lucky and received my order from Parks yesterday which was the only decent day of the week. We had been having highs near 35 for a few days. Yesterday it was 60 degrees at 7 AM. Not sure what the high got to, but it was perfect weather to plant the new things I ordered. I planted a white Climbing Iceberg rose and a red Double Knockout plus 3 of the giant allium. Today the high is suppose to be 28. Crazy weather! Sure hope the roses do OK planted this late. Anyone grow the climbing Iceberg? I decided it would be perfect for the side of my garage after seeing this photo. It blooms on old wood, so will not get much of a show next summer, but will not need to do much pruning either hopefully. The red rose only gets about 3 feet tall and I planted it in front of the white one. I do think roses add to the cottage look, especially the climbers. I'm not the type to spray, so I went for very disease resistant ones.
Susan
Susan, do you have any climbers already? I'm curious about varieties that do well in your zone. I've been using more OGRs for their hardiness and size (I want HUGE roses, lol). I agree that climbing roses can certainly make a cottage garden perfect. I have the bush form of Iceburg, and it has a lovely, sweet scent.
Neal
This will be the first climbing rose I have. Right now the only 2 roses I have are Abraham Darby and Sweet Juliet, both David Ausitn English rose. They do very well here.
Susan
wow- i learned a lot about daffodils! thanks for that post illoquin- it's inspiring that you have such a passion!
lincolnitis- i hope climbing iceberg can really perform like the picture for you in your zone- you never know, it seems in the cooler zones all roses are very site sensitive. i have some that do so amazingly (and a lot that don't) and yet, they don't necessarily thrive in another garden on the other side of town- i personally have found that iceberg (but i don't have the climbing one) doesn't like my garden, but double knockout does real well. New England has its own challenges, which is not just zone- rocky soil, winter winds, temperatures that plummet from 30's to minuses, then back.. maybe you have better rose growing conditions!....good luck with them!!
sarah
You guys make me feel like a grade-school dropout.
I'm not good at the big picture. My gardens always looks like I just bought the house on Monday.
I find the trick is to get the camera in real close so all you can see in the picture is
the one great shot. No one knows the rest of the garden is a mess. LOL
LOL! I always have white 5 gallon buckets to crop out of the photos.
Thanks for the nice comments everybody. Neal (geminii), I'll let you know when you can come up and dig. Some might have to be dug in flower next year because they are growing together. It will be a 2-step dig, I'm afraid.
Susan, I would LOVE that picture here at my place! I am too chicken to try a white one, but there are some reds and pinks I'm going to buy in the spring. Was your rose on super-sale? No, don't tell me! LOL!
Garden6, Red Appledoorn have been 100% perennial for me (over 25 years) AND they've increased (naturalized). They are Darwin Hybrids. Don't plant them near a northern pink Magnolia -- the saucer magnolias -- they bloom the same day and clash horribly! LOL!
I had a good-bad-good-bad day today. I had Mr. Clean's SUV and I scored some free builder's sand, about 6 buckets and 2 buckets of pulverized top soil. Then I went to the stable and got some really stanky manure for the compost pile (for next spring-summer). I had 5 buckets and a 30 gallon trashcan, but on the way home, I stepped on the brakes too fast & too hard, and the trashcan tilted over the the back of the rear passenger seats, spilling the manure everywhere! Did you ever see the movie, Back to the Future, where Michael J. Fox is on a skateboard escaping the bully from the malt shop? The bully & pals go after him in a car and crash into a manure truck? That's nearly what it looked like -- in MR. CLEAN'S CAR! LOL! I was able to get 2 5-gallon buckets full cleaned out at home, but I spent $3.00 at the carwash to vacuum it all up and out...it was in every cranny & crevice -- you wouldn't believe it! It still reeks, but is clean as a whistle...hmm, I don't know why that smells so bad, honey; it doesn't usually when I just get a few buckets from the stable. ROTFLMAO!!!
In the mail, I got a load of bulbs I thought were lost forever which were mailed from Northern Ireland on 23 Aug, a HUGE swap envelope full of seeds, and a package of dahlia tubers so big it cost $13.00 to mail it to me! ALMOST makes up for all the manure I lost to the vacuum cleaner.
Suzy
OMG Suzy! What a day! The visual images are hysterical!
Oh if Mr Clean only knew what his car had been through!! Suzy, OK, I won't tell you what a good deal I got on the climbing rose. Maybe I won't think it is such a good deal if it does not make it through the winter. It is going to be 9 degrees here in the morning. I hope that poor rose is good at adjusting to crazy temp changes.
Susan
Oh, Susan, that's terrible news about the plummet in temperatures. Going from 60+ degrees to 9 degrees in less than 48 hours cannot be good for your new rose from where?...South Carolina? A South Carolina GREENHOUSE?
My first inclination is to tell you to pull that rose out of the ground right now, today, and put it back in its pot. It is just too soon for the temps to go down that far, that fast (to the rose's point of view) If you can't pull it, and I dont blame you if you don't, cover the entire thing PLUS a foot in every direction with dry leaves and throw a blanket or sheet or fence over it to help the leaves stay put in fierce winds.
If you go to the rose forum, there is an old thread with pictures of potted roses growing in a lady's bedroom to keep them alive over winter. LOL! I think a garage would work better, or at least as well.
Suzy (trying to be helpful, not bossy, but it doesn't always sound like that LOL!)
Or make a tube of chicken wire and brace it around the rose, stuff it with leaves and it should be fine all winter. Doesn't the name Iceberg mean anything? LOL
I got the Iceberg rose from Park's, too, but it has been in the ground for at least a month so I'm hoping this recent ridiculous cold snap we just had didn't harm it (or any of my other roses). We hadn't seen temps in the teens for a loooooong time!
I've so enjoyed all the info on this thread - such knowledgable people are a gift to all of us. and I'm doubly glad everyone admits to having weeds or something they want to hide in their photos!
Oh, yeah, I forgot the logical thing, Prairiegirl -- a fence cage filled with leaves. Would certainly look a lot better than an old blanket LOL!
Murmur, Yes it's a great forum, isn't it? I know one could have a garden with no weeds -- just put down 4-6 inches of mulch, but I don't see how anybody can have plants that reseed and not have weeds. I know I couldn't do it! Tammy had the right idea -- just frame your picture realy close!
Suzy
I'm sure admin is glad they agreed to a cottage garden forum - it seems to be a mighty busy one!
Susan, I think your rose will be ok with protection. I received some rooted cuttings last fall that were technically too young to go right in the ground, but they did just fine with protection. The main thing is to make sure the graft is well protected.
I love this forum too! All the things I like to chat about are under the cottage garden umbrella :)
Weeds! Who has weeds! Do you see any weeds!!!!
LOL
