See the fall colors along Newfound Gap Road in the Smokies
See the fall colors along Newfound Gap Road in Great Smoky Mountains National Park on October 11, 2022.
Brianna Paciorka, Knoxville News Sentinel
Fall is the season to plant bulbs for the burst of early spring color. Planting some bulbs now can help you have a colorful garden next spring. Early-blooming daffodils, hyacinths, tulips and many other colorful bulbs will get you ahead of spring and reward you with colorful gardens before the dogwoods bloom in spring. Bulbs need warm soil to establish roots before winter, but if you plant in early fall, there’s little risk of the bulbs sprouting too early.
An important point to remember about flower bulbs is: THE BIGGER THE BULB, THE BIGGER THE FLOWER. Flower bulbs are sorted and priced by size; larger ones cost a few cents more but have larger flowers and more flowers per plant. Fully grown daffodil bulbs are 14-16 cm in diameter. Tulip bulbs should be at least 12 cm tall and hyacinth bulbs at least 16 cm. With flower bulbs, origin is important, as is freshness and quality. Your biggest investment is your own time and effort, so don’t waste it on inferior flower bulbs.
Bulbs prefer loose, nutrient-rich soil and will thrive much better if you dig a hole big enough for them. Think of bulbs as plant roots without plants. The wider the hole you dig and the better the soil you plant them in, the healthier they will grow and the faster they will multiply. Dump the soil into a wheelbarrow or bucket, crumble it, and mix in bulb fertilizer. Bulbs like bone meal, a key ingredient in fertilizers like Espoma Bulb Tone.
If your soil is hard clay, throw it out and use bagged topsoil mixed with bulb fertilizer instead. Now add one to two centimeters of this mixture back into each hole. This will get the food to where the bulbs’ roots are. Place the bulbs in the holes with the point facing upwards. Now fill the holes with the remaining soil mixture and press firmly.
Flower bulbs can rot in wet soil and are attractive to rodents, so a little prevention increases their chances. We recommend mixing Bonide Mole Max with your flower bulb planting soil. Moles don’t eat flower bulbs, but Mole Max deters other rodents by giving the bulbs a bitter taste. Like any plant, they need water to grow, so the final step is to water the area thoroughly.
We’ve planted thousands of bulbs without ever using a bulb planter. It’s easy to stick bulbs into freshly tilled soil with your fingers, since we usually till it deeply before planting so the soil is nice and loose. To “naturalize” bulbs at random intervals, we simply scatter the bulbs in open areas between other plants and then just stick them in wherever they fall. Then we cover them with three inches of mulch. Small bulbs only need a couple inches of topsoil/mulch on top. Larger bulbs like tulips and daffodils need four or five inches.
This sounds radical, but it’s quite simple. When you buy your bulbs, just get enough mulch to cover them with, then add as many inches as you need to get the right depth. Instead of digging, add, which is much easier. Bulbs like mulch to prevent weeds and keep the soil moist, so the top few inches can be covered with mulch instead of soil.
Over the years, we’ve found daffodils to be the most rewarding because they multiply quickly into large clumps. We consider tulips annuals because they’re so attractive to rodents that they rarely survive more than one season. Either way, bulbs give you a show in early spring and then die back when the weather gets hot. Once the foliage starts to turn brown, you can cut the plants off at the ground without damaging them. Planting ground covers like pachysandra saves you even this simple task because ground covers quickly cover the dead leaves of bulb plants.
Steve Boehme is a landscape architect and builder specializing in landscape “makeovers.” “Let’s Grow” is published weekly; column archives are available online at goodseedfarm.com. For more information, contact GoodSeed Farm Landscapes at (937) 587-7021.
