Planning and Establishing the Spring Bulb Garden

As another growing season comes to a close, the early Autumn season is the time to provide for early Spring color after an unpredictable Winter. This can be accomplished by the planting of Spring-flowering bulbs to produce next year's crocus, daffodils, hyacinths and tulips.

Careful steps taken in Autumn will lead to a pleasant respite at the end of Winter, returning on a perennial basis. Some view the process as the basic steps of buying bulbs at a local store, digging holes in the garden, and burying the bulbs there. However, gardeners will find more success and happiness with the results of attention to three areas. This material considers these areas as the
"3 P's":

• Planning,
• Purchasing,
• Planting

A first consideration is LOCATION of the plants, starting with a garden area that will be free of other major growth during the months the bulbs will bloom. Bulbs will need a well-drained area, where the plants will not sit in pools of water or mud from melting snow and Spring rains. You can test an area of ground for drainage by digging a hole several inches deep, and filling it with water. Proper drainage will empty that water in at most 30 minutes. It is important to consider how much sun the blooms will receive. Daffodils, planted in what are summer's shady areas, would get enough Spring light to develop in the weeks before trees or shading shrubs are in leaf. Tulips should be located in what will be a sunny spot during late Spring, after trees carry leaves.

Bulbs must be located considering their flowering size and time. Crocus and snowdrops, the first to flower and close to the ground, should be placed in a location easily seen from walks or driveways, for you will not walk across a soggy lawn in early Spring to enjoy these low-growing jewels! The daffodils and tulips, with their greater height and later blooming period, may be located at areas of greater distance across the yard. Remember to place hyacinths and other fragrant bulbs close enough to walks, doorways or windows to catch samples of their perfumed flowers.

Keep in mind who will be viewing your bulbs. Shorter bulbs will be seen by walkways and porches. Taller varieties should be used if the garden is a long distance from the window, walk or road. Yellow is the color which gets our attention easiest from a distance.
Early- to mid-season blooming bulbs such as daffodils can be located in the same gardens with later-developing perennials such as hosta or roses. As those summer plants leaf out, they will cover the bulb's fading foliage.

Early tulips bring color to a bare rose bed. Later rose foliage hides remaining tulip leaves.

It is important to note that all daffodils do not have the same blooming height. Neither do all tulips. Place the shorter, miniature blooming daffodils or tulips at the front of the garden. Taller varieties should be placed at the garden rear or in distant gardens on your property. Blooming height of a variety can be found in the catalog description or store display when choosing bulbs.

Another planning aspect is QUANTITY of bulbs planted. There are several planting methods, including mass planting of dozens up to hundreds of bulbs to fill an area. The opposite method, of planting one straight row of spaced bulbs ('soldiers'), generally looks sparse and depends on each bulb to bloom. The more popular planting scheme (for those of us that cannot afford hundreds of bulbs to create the mass, formal estate plantings) is to group plants in clumps of 6 or more bulbs. This is visually effective for hyacinths, daffodils and tulips. In clumps, the bulbs can be spaced at a minimum distance of 4 inches between bulbs. In a mass planting, if one knows the area of the garden to be planted, the general recommendations are:

Note that top-quality 'double-nosed' daffodil bulbs will produce two flower stems per bulb, so a densely-filled patch of daffodils can result from bulb spacing of six inches. With proper care, bulbs will multiply over the years, so a planting that appears 'thin' the first year will, in time, develop to a densely-filled area. Gardeners should always plant a few extra bulbs to allow cutting some favorites to bring into the house without disturbing the appearance of the outdoor grouping. When planning, one should consider the BLOOM SEQUENCE of the varieties in their locations. Simply put, you must keep in mind when each type of bulb will bloom during the period from March to June. . Considering the changing sunlight in the yard, and planting several types of bulbs in each area, one can achieve colorful flowering every week from March through June. Depending on the planting zone, the start of flowering of the earliest bulbs can start earlier than shown in the table.

A fourth step in our planning process is selecting the bulbs for COLOR, SHAPE and TEXTURE. Although the multitude of commercially-sold bulbs are yellow daffodils and solid-color tulips, there are hundreds of shapes, sizes and colors to give your garden a distinctive look. Selecting from mail-order catalogs offers the most variety, but even shopping local stores will offer you a selection presented in color photos at the bulb display.
Consider:

• Bi-color daffodils, yellow petals with contrasting corona or 'cup'.
• Miniature daffodils, several flowers per stem, or swept-back petals.
• Larger daffodils with ruffled, double, or split cups.
• Two- or multi-color tulips.
• Tulips with lily-flower pointed petals, fringed or double petals.

Daffodils and tulips offer numerous colors except true blue and black. Don't concentrate on only daffodils and tulips. You can try shorter selections such as crocus, muscari and miniature daffodils used under bushes, in rock gardens and along walkways.

SIZE DOES COUNT!
When you buy a flower bulb, the next season's flower is already prepared and waiting inside the bulb in miniature. Surrounding the flower parts are layers of stored plant energy for its bloom. Buy the bulb which has the best potential. Always strive for top quality bulbs, which are large and thus produce healthy flowers. Both in catalog and store sales, these larger bulbs are better buys even though they are more expensive. For daffodils, the largest size bulb rating is "DN I", most commercial bulbs are the medium size "DN II", and the bargain bulbs in bulk are small "DN III". Bags of bulbs will be marked with the size code of the contents. Top-size tulip bulbs are 12 centimeters and larger in circumference (5 inches). Such large bulbs sold individually for 40 cents each or more will be top size bulbs.
Don't be tempted to buy the bags of "25 bulbs for $4" for your primary plantings. These 'collections' consist of bulbs UNDER the top size, most suited for general, mass planting where you are not concerned when some bulbs will not produce flowers.
DN II bulb (left); DN III bulb (right)

If you wish to 'naturalize', that is, have a large collection of daffodils or crocus in a grassy or wooded area, you may want to buy a naturalizing mix. Such a mix gives you hundreds of small bulbs of varying types. For example, from a catalog you would buy a bushel of 250 daffodil bulbs representing 7 varieties. These would be planted in a casual fashion (without a pattern) in an area to bloom and multiply each year. In this case, the small DN III bulbs are sufficient.

Characteristics to check in the catalog or at the sales counter include the blooming time, blooming height, and color, to agree with your garden plan. Look at the bulbs in the store for size, firmness, and health. A bulb may have some small brown or moldy spots, but you should avoid bulbs that are soft, lightweight or cracked. Keep the bulbs purchased in the store separated by variety, as you can easily confuse one tulip bulb with another tulip bulb. If the store display offers small labels with pictures to take with you, place them in the bags with each variety to remind you during planting.

Whether you buy bulbs locally or have them shipped to you, they should be kept in their original bags (opened to admit air), in a cool place until the time to plant. Never freeze bulbs or store them in air-tight containers. Note that most bulbs are poisonous if eaten by humans or pets, so keep the bags away from your curious dog.

It has been found (by surveys of major bulb vendors and experts) that most failures with bulbs can be traced back to problems at the time of planting. Give yourself time to do proper planting, and don't ignore the details.

Planting of the bulbs should take place during late September to mid-October in the northern USA. The idea is to get the bulbs in place in time for a six-week rooting period before Winter cools the ground. Area gardeners who wait until garden stores place bulbs on close-out sales in November will find they are planting the bulbs too late, and reducing the potential of their bargain bulbs.

For newly dug gardens, it is sometimes more effective to remove all soil to a depth of 4 to 6 inches, then dig shallow holes to locate each bulb at the base of the trench. I refer to this method as 'egg crating', for the bulbs are placed in shallow individual holes as if eggs in an egg crate. This method offers more accurate depth control and bulb-to-bulb spacing than digging many individual holes down from the top surface.

For digging many holes from the top surface, a hand planter or long-handled bulb planter would be useful. A hand-planter appears as a large cookie-cutter, and is effective for creating holes in soft, workable soil. The long-handled planter cuts and removes dirt from the hole, with places to use feet and hands to apply digging pressure. If you are planting quantities of bulbs, pick up one of these for under $15 at garden stores. For large daffodils with two or more attached bulbs, adjacent holes can be dug to create the oval shape to plant the daffodil. Arranging the holes of each row on diagonals to each other will give a more solid look of bloom when facing from the viewer's direction.

Holes should be dug to place the bulb at the proper depth. A general rule places the neck of the bulb (widest part of the top) below the soil line a distance 3 times the bulb's WIDTH. For crocus, this depth is 3 to 4 inches. Daffodils and hyacinths go 6 inches deep. Tulips generally are 8 inches deep. I find it important to get the bulbs out to a good start by fertilizing UNDER them at the time of planting. One can use material such as bone meal, but a more complete fertilizer would be one of the 'bulb booster' mixtures sold at garden centers or through bulb catalogs. Their analysis, such as 4-12-8, provides more nutrients than bone meal with 0-11-0 analysis from phosphorus alone. A few grains of the fertilizer should be placed at the bottom of the bulb's hole, then covered with a fine layer of soil, so that the bulb does not sit directly on the fertilizer.

Bulbs should be placed into the hole pointed end up, flat rooting plate down. A gentle downward push will ensure the bulb's rooting end is touching soil. The hole is then refilled with soil (or the trench filled with soil) and the soil firmed. Don't walk over a newly-created garden; this would compress the soil. The planting areas must be watered well once after planting is complete. This water must reach the rooting area of the bulbs that you have placed 6 inches or more beneath the surface, so don't spare the water!. Moisture MUST be present at the base of the bulbs, 6 to 8 inches under the surface, to encourage rooting during Fall.

If you have had past trouble with squirrels or other vermin digging up your garden, you can take steps to protect your bulbs at planting time. Rodents will find daffodil bulbs poisonous, but the critters can make a mess of your planting whether or not they eat what they find. A small amount of protection is provided by placing a layer of chicken wire stretched out over the planting area, buried with 1 inch of the soil covering it. The bulb's foliage will grow through this, or you can remove it after bloom the next year. If there are problems with animals burrowing through the earth, a cage of chicken wire encircling the bulbs can be put into place with the excavation of the 'trench' method described previously. Some growers advocate burying sharp pieces of gravel immediately around the bulbs to deter digging animals without affecting bulb growth.

Given the investment of money and time for perennial bulb planting, it is worth the effort to ensure that you will plan for, purchase and plant bulbs that will be strong, colorful, and an accent to your gardens during the Spring months.

A fourth and sometimes overlooked area of bulb culture is the care given to them at and after the time of Spring bloom. This fourth "P", Pampering, is a task for the spring season also presented on this web site.

This information originally appeared in the Fall 1996 Upstate Gardeners' Journal.