aspenhill's blog: Planting Bulbs

I love spring blooming bulbs. I love when the catalogs come, and I get so much enjoyment picking out what to add to the gardens. I love the beauty that they provide at my favorite time of year. I have to admit though, that I do not relish the actual planting of them. I always go overboard and conveniently don't think of the work involved when I am gleefully adding to my cart and going in on bulk orders with other Mid Atlantic gardening friends.

Planting bulbs is not easy. I've tried every way that I can think of. For example, say the quantity for a specific variety is 50. In the past I've dug one big long hole for all 50, several medium holes for groups of 10, 15, to 20 bulbs, and 50 individual holes - one for each bulb. This year I have a power planter auger on a long shaft and a heavy duty cordless drill as seen on Garden Answer. Laura makes it look easy, but even she says planting bulbs is not her favorite gardening task.

On today's Garden Answer video, Laura had two friends from Seattle who came to help her plant bulbs. They came last year too, so maybe trying to make an annual bulb planting party tradition. They got 2700 bulbs in the ground in one day! And this was only the first round. Today they did Thalia daffodils and snowdrops in the Pond Area, as well as anemones. Also muscari in the grass in the orchard. Thalia is one of my all time favorite daffodils. Pristine delicate pure white triandrus type, and of course I adore all snowdrops. Never planted anemones and not much luck with muscari. I did 200 bulbs myself the other day and I thought that was a lot. I still have about 500 to go... No idea how many more Laura of Garden Answer has left.

Inspired to keep at it, I headed outside a few hours ago. My goal was to get the hyacinths planted today. I have 100 - 50 light lavender 'Splendid Cornelia' and 50 lemon yellow 'Gypsy Princess'.

The auger made easy digging of holes in the Cherry Tree Nook where I am planting the light lavender ones. The problem that I have though is that the soil falls back in the hole. For each individual bulb, I scoop out the dirt with my trowel or hand but it trickles back in as soon as I do. Frustrating and tedious to keep enough of the dirt out to throw in a bit of bulb fertilizer and plop the bulb in before it fills in again. But I'm proud of myself because I finished all 50 without giving up. I got the soil tamped back down and the mulch respread on top of the area.

On to the Lemon Garden for the lemon yellow ones. The soil where I want to put them is so compacted that I wasn't having much luck even with the power auger. I did about 20 holes and then called it quits. I'll regroup and give it another go, maybe later today but maybe not.

I have more containers to plant up with tulips and now I'm thinking that I'll put the 200 little iris reticulata bulbs in containers too. Maybe I'll do 10 pots of 20 bulbs each and then just tuck them in the garden when they start to bloom. Containers are much easier than planting in the ground. It is how I always do my tulip bulbs now since I treat them as annuals. Iris reticulata do come back for me but they are very short lived, so maybe containers are the answer for them too. For tulips, and to some degree the iris reticulata, there is a great show when planted in the ground the first season, but the showings after that are so sad. I don't like the way a few sporadic bulbs look and dig them up. Containers are easier to manage with those.

I wish I had the strength and stamina that Laura has. 2700 hundred bulbs HAH, even with help that is impressive. She is 23 years younger than me though and has been doing gardening work most of her life. Makes a difference I suppose. All I can say is that I don't actually ever give up, but I sure do wish there was a bulb fairy that would get my bulbs planted for me

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