Plant the seeds for stunning spring blooms
Fall gardening is as easy as choosing a spot with sunlight, setting bulbs before chill hits
As the gardening season winds down for 2015, it’s hard to fathom spring blooms tentatively peeking up through the snow. However, autumn is when you need to plant the bulbs so that those spring blooms appear in your garden.
Here’s the thing. We often see the same standard red and yellow tulips, and tried and true yellow daffodils. There is absolutely nothing wrong with them. But, why not add something a little different to your garden this year? Before wowing you with amazing bulb varieties, here are a few planting tips.
Let’s start with the most common bulb-planting mistake people make. Many people don’t realize that bulbs are perishable — you need to plant them as soon as you get them, says Pamela Dangelmaier, co-owner and manager of Langley, B.C.-based Botanus, a mail-order bulb company.
If you can’t plant your bulbs right away, open the package to allow for some air circulation and store them in a cool, dark place (for no more than two weeks).
If you purchase your bulbs from a local nursery, make sure they are firm and have some weight to them, recommends Dangelmaier. A bulb that feels too light could be past its prime and dried out inside.
If you’re new to this whole fall gardening process, there’s really not much to planting bulbs.
“The great thing about flower bulbs is they are so easy — Mother Nature has done all the work for you,” says Dangelmaier. Choose a location in your garden that has good drainage and plenty of sunlight. If you’re not sure whether your garden drains well, Dangelmaier recommends looking at it closely after a rainfall.
“If there is a place where the water is pooling, don’t plant there.” If you happen to have clay soil that’s just not workable, consider planting your bulbs in pots. Mixing a bit of sand into your soil can also help with drainage, says Dangelmaier.
You want to make sure that you get those bulbs in the ground toward the end of fall, before the ground freezes. After that it’s really hard to dig the soil to plant. You don’t really need to do too much to the soil itself because all the nutrients the flowers need are in the bulb itself. However, if you do want to amend the soil in your garden, working a bit of leaf mould or compost about 12 inches deep will add nutrients and make it a bit easier to work the soil.
Finally, when you’re ready to plant a bulb, “you literally dig a hole, you drop it in, you cover it up, that’s all you need to do,” says Dangelmaier.
Be sure to take a careful look at the bulb package. It will provide you with the recommended depth you need to dig your hole before dropping that bulb in. A wooden ruler or tape measure is useful to have on hand. And, to dig, you can use a garden trowel. Or, you can buy a bulb planter that has a ruler on the side and that helps you dig up a perfectly round hole to the correct depth.
“If you plant bulbs too shallow, you run the risk of them freezing during winter,” says Dangelmaier. “An easy rule of thumb is three times the size of the bulb down in the ground.” If you happen to live in a colder hardiness zone, you can even plant a little bit deeper, she says.