Flowering bulbs can change your garden from being merely a plot of dirt and rocks adorned with a few scraggly plants to being an absolute showplace, with splashes of brilliant color. Bulbs provide a good investment in terms of their longevity and hardiness. Your garden will benefit from the vast variety of bloom colors, length of flowering time, and the heights and shapes of flowering bulbs. Autumn is the ideal time to plant robust spring-flowering bulbs; most bulbs can be planted until the ground is frozen.
Most bulbs are perennials, going through a period of growth and flowering, dying back to the ground before going dormant at the end of each growing season. Late spring or early summer herald the end of the growing season for spring-flowering bulbs. However, these bulbs will begin to grow again in the fall and flower the next growing season.
Tulips and other spring-flowering bulbs, such as snowdrops, crocus, daffodils, and hyacinths require a stretch of cold weather during the winter in order to give their growth cycles a running start. This cooling process enables the bulbs to flower in early spring. They can be planted until the first frost.
Make careful plans on paper before planting your bulbs. If you sketch your plan on graph paper, it will help you to calculate the correct number of bulbs to purchase. Keeping a “roadmap” of your garden will help jar your memory in case, in the future, you want to mix in annuals or perennials where your bulbs have gone dormant. Tulips bloom anywhere, especially in full sun, from very early spring to late spring/early summer.
Your tulips may bloom in an explosion of color or you may choose to limit the color palette to just one or two. Colors give the viewer the perception of warmth or coolness; hues of blue and violet give the impression of coolness, while warm hues are tones of red, yellow, and orange. The human eye perceives warm colors as advancing while cool shades recede into the background. To create the illusion your yard is larger than it actually is, make a planting of cool-colored flowers in the rear of the yard, but if you want the illusion of a smaller and more intimate garden, plant warm-colored flowers in rear of the back plot. Remember, warm colors will create a dramatic effect, no matter where planted. Whatever color scheme you decide to use, plant each type of flower in groupings of at least three to twelve plants. A particular color, placed one here and another there and yet a third elsewhere, will diminish the effect you wish to create. Keep the color groups massed together for best effect.
When planting tulips or daffodils, use at least twelve bulbs of one variety in a grouping. The more bulbs of one variety, and color, the stronger the visual impact will be. However, when planting smaller spring bulbs, such as snow crocus, it will take a minimum of fifty bulbs or more to make a statement. Small bulbs need to be seen at close range to make the planting more effective, Mixing in early flowers such as pansies give visual contrast to a planting packed with just tulips.
If you prefer a more casual look to your garden, think about naturalizing your tulip bulbs. Naturalizing may take the guise of devil-may-care planting or, of a planting very carefully calculated to give the illusion that Mother Nature has decided to put down a bulb, or other flowering plant, in a random action, much like broadcasting wildflower seeds in a meadow. I guess this style of planting might be considered a variation of the Chaos Theory.
The process of naturalizing is that of man imitating nature with bulb plantings. Bulbs, when found in a natural state, do not grow in neat, meticulous rows; rather, they present themselves in irregular clumps dispersed throughout the landscape.
One advantage of naturalizing is that bulbs so planted need very little care. At the end of the tulip blooming cycle, either allow the foliage to die away on its on, allowing the plants sufficient time to revitalize their bulbs in anticipation of flowering during the next season or you can remove the dead foliage by hand. An important point to remember is that if you have naturalized bulbs in your lawn, the foliage must not be mowed over until it dies naturally or the bulbs themselves will sooner or later die out.
Autumn is the perfect time to plant hardy tulips. Tulips need plentiful water plus good drainage. The hard subsoil in the planting area needs to be broken up so that there is no standing water interfering with the healthiness of the tulips. After breaking up the subsoil, you will need to put in a layer of drainage material such as loose gravel, broken stone, or sifted cinders (some gardeners use barbecue briquettes smashed by a hammer) below the soil surface.
When planting spring bulbs, a general rule of thumb is to plant the bulb two to three times as deep as the bulb itself is tall; most large bulbs such as tulips should be planted approximately six inches deep while smaller surrounding bulbs will be three to four inches deep. Measure the depth of planting from the surface level of the soil to the shoulder of the bulb. To measure the distance between plants, mark off from the middle of one plant to the middle of the next.
There exist two basic methods of planting bulbs. One way is to dig individual holes for each bulb with a garden trowel or a specialized hole-cutting tool known as a bulb planter (or dibble). Dig a hole several inches deeper than the called-for planting depth; fill the hole to base level with plant food specifically designed for bulbs. After placing your bulb in the hole, cover it with loose soil. Using your hands, delicately form the soil around each plant to eliminate air pockets.
Now for the question that has plagued mankind...Which end of the tulip bulb is UP? Tulips have pointed ends that should be positioned upward. Some of the smaller bulbs, such as Poppy Anemones, can be planted in any direction. These small bulbs send out shoots which find their own way through the soil to the sun.
Once planted, tulip bulbs need serious watering. Not only does the water settle the soil in the planting bed, but also acts as a water well needed to provide moisture for rooting activity. It is vital for bulbs planted in the fall to root before cold weather sets in but avoid over-watering, the perfect setting for bulb rot.
Your tulips should get adequate hydration from average spring conditions. But, if you get a stretch of unusually hot and dry weather, a weekly deep soaking will make bigger and longer-lasting flowers. Water with a soaker hose so the blooms will not get overly wet.
Aesthetically, tulip foliage remains long after the bloom is dead. As unattractive as it is, do not mow off the foliage until it becomes yellow and dies back naturally, a process that can take several weeks. The plant needs the green leaves for photosynthesis, or the manufacture of food which is stored in the bulb for the next growing cycle. If the foliage is removed too soon, the plant will no longer be able to create the nutrient reserves necessary for future growth.
The botanical name for the tulip is believed to have been derived from the Persian (Iranian) word toliban or turban; the inverted flower was said to resemble such head wear. Tulips are members of the Lily Family and grow wild in the vast region from Asia Minor through Siberia to China. Tulips are a good bulb for the beginning gardener, as they are extremely easy to grow. Tulips are happiest in the full sun and should be planted around 6” deep. Within a few short months, tulips will bejewel your garden in a dazzling array of color.
