Have you planted all your spring-flowering bulbs yet, or do you have boxes of nascent daffodils, tulips, and crocuses languishing in your garage, cellar, or some other cool location? If you do, I hereby absolve you of all guilt. Why? Because I am in the same boat, and that boat is sailing rapidly towards winter.
Normally I have at least planted the daffodils and small bulbs by this time, but this has not been a normal year. A season of turmoil over the summer, followed by a siege of travel and commitments in the early fall prevented the usual bulb installation. Now, the heat is on as the temperature sinks.
Of course, the whole issue is complicated by the fact that once again, I was seduced by the bulb catalogs and websites and over-ordered. By the time the boxes arrived a few weeks ago I had completely forgotten what I ordered and had only a vague memory of having made the orders at all. Of course, I could have refreshed my memory by going back over the credit card statements, but where is the fun in that? Opening the boxes and looking at the packing lists and the array of little bags is something like opening the boxes of holiday decorations and rediscovering them for the new season.
So it is time to get serious and I have to translate that serious intent with actions that make the most efficient use of both the available time and energy. That means prioritizing. This is difficult, as I am an “everything, everywhere, all at once” kind of gardener. I generally plan on doing garden clean-up, bulb planting, mulching and shrub pruning all in the same weekend. That kind of schedule does not allow for grocery shopping, stress-reducing walks, and churchgoing, not to mention sleeping. Compromises will have to be made in both planning and execution.
I generally abstain from tulips because I have an abundance of deer and squirrels in the garden. The squirrels dig up the bulbs, either eating them, replanting them, or flinging them aside in a cavalier fashion. Those few that are not touched by the squirrels are nipped off in the spring by the deer.
But I love tulips, and in the triumph of hope over experience, I bought sixteen single-flowered triumph tulips in a mix of pastel shades. I have a choice to make if I want to have any hope of seeing the blooms next spring. I can encase those bulbs in air-tight plastic bags, put them in the back of the refrigerator for the next 14 weeks, and mark the calendar with an end date. When that date rolls around, I can remove them from the fridge, pot them up in a container and put them in a cool place where they will begin to sprout. When the weather warms, the containers will go out on the back porch, liberally sprayed with varmint repellant. With luck I will delight in the tulips next spring.
In the alternative, I can spray the bulbs with repellant and plant them, lasagna-style, along with the daffodils, small iris, leucojums, grape hyacinths and crocus. This procedure involves digging large deep holes and planting the bulbs in layers, with the largest on the bottom, followed by layers of smaller bulbs, ending with the smallest on top. Each layer is covered with soil before the next bulb layer is laid down. The lasagna method may confuse the garden varmints and spraying the bulbs with repellant may actually repel them. I will also spray the dirt over the top layer with repellant and cover it with a mulch of dried lemon mint, perilla and lavender—all of which bear scents that repel critters.
This year I purchased a total of 220 bulbs of various kinds—a relatively modest number compared to past indulgences. I can probably get them all planted in four or five big holes, so I am going to opt for a one-weekend, all-out, lasagna-method extravaganza. Everything will be sprayed with repellant prior to installation. The tulips are the biggest bulbs, so they will go in first, along with the largest daffodil bulbs. The next layer will be smaller daffodils, followed by a layer of large Dutch crocus, baby iris, grape hyacinths and leucojum or snowflakes. The little snow crocuses, which are the smallest of this year’s bulb crop, will go last, covered by at least four inches of soil, plus the scented mulch.
That should get the job done and still allow enough weekend time to do five minutes each of garden clean-up, mulching, pruning, and ferrying the last of the vacationing houseplants to the warmth of their winter quarters in my house. I call that success.
If you are not contemplating an extravaganza like mine, at least remember that tulips can go in the ground last. As long as you can turn the soil, the tulips will be fine. If life overtakes you, there is always the refrigerator option. As they say in the U.K., “needs must.”