Garden Bulbs

Some people that are new to gardening can get a bit flustered over the prospect of planting bulbs so far in advance of actually being able to see the results. After all, if you buy a ready grown plant from one of your local garden centres, when you plant it, you can see where it is and keep an eye on it until the confidence in your abilities to care for it grow enough for the doubt to pass.

To be honest, planting garden bulbs is very straightforward, and simply requires the following of simple instructions. There’s very little that can go wrong, and nature, as usual is a very good driving force that causes any one of the umpteen varieties of flowering bulbs to be utterly driven to make it through the winter and put on a good show.

Choosing your Garden Bulbs

When you decide it’s time to plant bulbs, it’s vital that you only plant healthy ones. Unhealthy bulbs are easy to spot and should simply be thrown away. A healthy bulb should be firm and relatively heavy for its size. The colour should be fairly even all over, with no light or dark patches and there should be no split or soft parts which indicate rot. If they feel very dry and light, don’t bother planting them, they simply won’t have enough food stored in the bulb to make it through the winter and produce a flower in the spring.

Some flowering bulbs, such as daffodil bulbs, by nature have a flaky outer covering, this is perfectly normal. Compare the bulb in your hand to others of the same type. If they’re all the same, the chances are they’re meant to be like that.

When it comes to choosing garden bulbs, bigger is generally better. The whole science behind spring flowering bulbs is that they are bulb shaped because they contain the whole plant inside together with the food supply ready to get it through the winter and produce a flower at the other end. A dense and heavy bulb is a good indication that there is a good supply of food matter inside the bulb to see it through.

If the garden bulbs you end up with do seem a little on the small side, all is not lost; it may just take a couple of years before the bulbs have stored up enough nutrition from the ground to be capable of producing flowers.

When to Plant Bulbs

As with most things related to gardening, to get the best from your flowering bulbs, you need to do a little preparation. To get the best results, bulb planting generally begins in the August and September and continues through to December depending on the type of bulbs.

Storing Bulbs

It’s usually a good idea to be fairly ready to plant your garden bulbs pretty soon after you get home from the garden centre. If there is going to be a delay, please make sure to store your bulbs properly. You’ll notice that when you see them in the shops, they’re in string or net bags. This is to ensure that the air can circulate and you don’t get a build up of condensation which can cause them to rot. Make sure that they don’t just get left in a plastic bag somewhere; store them somewhere cool and dry where the air can circulate.

It might also be a wise move to keep them in the bag they came in; that way, you won’t lose the label that tells you what they are! Lots of flowering bulbs look very similar.

Planting Bulbs

For the most part, garden bulbs will come in a net, or perforated polythene bag with a cardboard tag attached. The tag will have on it the planting instruction telling you when and how deep to plant your bulbs, how far away from each other they need to be, whether they can cope with shade or not and when they will flower. Planting bulbs is only as complicated as following the instructions!

As a rule, the bigger the bulb is, the deeper it needs to be planted; and this usually results in the bulb needing to be planted 3 or 4 times the size of the bulb.

Dig a good hole as loosening the soil around the bulb will help encourage a good set of roots. Don’t forget; pointy end skywards! If you can’t work it out, don’t panic too much, nature will usually sort it out.

Garden bulbs will prefer to be planted where they’ll get plenty of sun, in ground that is well drained. Having said that, it’s very common to see swathes of snowdrops, crocus, bluebells and daffodils around the bases of trees. You would think that this might cause issues with the lack of sun; however, don’t forget, there won’t be any leaves on the trees till April at the earliest.

When you decide that you want to include flowering bulbs as part of your garden plan, you’re setting yourself up for a delightful end to the greyness of the winter months; what more could you ask for?