patweppler said:I do put a heavy mulch on in the fall but still they emerge too early. A lily breeder here in Ontario told that I might be 3 weeks behind with the mulch I added last year but still they came up early through all that....go figure...
I'm not sure what you mean by "3 weeks behind". Similar to the words "wander" and "wonder" (that have completely different definitions), people use the word "behind" differently in the context of sentence grammar. If the lily breeder meant you should have put the mulch down earlier, then I am perplexed. That would keep the soil warmer through the winter, and it would mean bulbs would wake up earlier in the spring, with even warmer soil, and sprout earlier. Conversely, if the lily breeder meant that you put down the mulch 3 weeks before you should have, that would allow the season's cold to penetrate the soil more deeply, and applying mulch then would keep the cold in rather than keep the cold out. This makes more sense, as a colder soil in spring will delay lily emergence.
patweppler said:I am not sure what am going to do this coming winter.....since I had 4 to 5 inches of mulch on top and this had this issue.
Unless you use a wood mulch, most natural mulches quickly settle, decompose and compact after spreading. If you use leaves as mulch, 4 to 5 inches is very minimal. By spring, it will be only 1 inch. (If you have access to oak leaves, these are longer lasting.) I use a minimum of 10 inches of leaf mulch everywhere that I want to delay spring growth. That's a LOT of leaves. I am the "collecting station" for two of my neighbors when they gather their leaves in the fall. By winter, my stockpile of already shredded leaves is taller than my head.
William's suggest of deeper planting of bulbs is also very advantageous to delay spring growth.
