Planting Bulbs in Your Garden
Nothing is more beautiful than the first signs of Spring, when the daffodils and tulips start to bloom. There are also many other types of bulbs you can naturalize in your yard if you have the right space.
Naturalizing is creating drifts of, say, daffodils that look like they’ve always been there. The beauty of daffodils is they come back year after year. In our community volunteers have even planted them along the highways and everyone enjoys seeing them in the spring.
If you purchase bags of lots of bulbs, the best way to plant is to dig a large area about 6 inches deep and 3 foot wide by 2 foot across. Add some mulch and bone meal to the area and place the bulbs with the point facing up. You should leave about 2 inches between the bulbs, but they don’t mind being crowded. Then cover the whole area with the dug soil. This will create a drift of blooms in the spring.
My Father in law was a good gardener, but he always planted everthing in perfectly straight lines. Wasn’t quite as pleasing to the eye, but that’s the way he liked it. I think it came from always planting vegetables in a straight line.
Whenever doing a planting, whether it’s bulbs, shrubs or perennials, it’s best to group the plants in uneven numbers, such as 3 or 5 and place them so they form sort of a triangle. This is especially true when doing a zeriscape yard. This means removing water thirsty grass and replacing it with drought tolerant plants.
Getting back to bulbs, once you have all your bulbs planted (should be in before Halloween) then you can over-plant with pansies, violas, alyssum or various other bedding plants that stay low and do well in the winter months. The bulbs will come up right through your bedding plants and it will look fabulous!
