Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Planting Tulips

It's raining today. All the pretty leaves are already tumbling down, plastered on the ground in the rain. Blazes of glory are short lived, but we do still have a lot of color. 
 What a difference a day makes.
But while there was sunshine, we made the most of it. 

On Saturday we unpacked our bulbs, which UPS delivered about a week ago from RoozenGaarde, the Skagit Valley bulb growers. We planted them up in one gallon nursery cans, five bulbs per pot, tagged by name.

Monday I cleared the dahlias out of the bed where most of the bulbs get planted. 
 The tops went into the compost bin and the tubers are washed, dried and stored in the garage. I dug the bed to loosen the soil and remove weeds and unwanted spreaders. 

 Them my teammate came to help dig the holes to bury the cans. 
All planted.

Then on Tuesday I cleared and cleaned out spaces in other beds to plant the rest of the bulbs, like here in the rose bed. 
 Hopefully in April it will look like this!


15 comments:

  1. Wow! That was a task that I look forward to see come to life. I know you will be showing me in April. :-)

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  2. So amazing the vast amount of knowledge you have about gardening.

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  3. What is the reason for planting the bulbs in pots as opposed to in the ground? Do you treat the Tulips ( I'm assuming they were Tulips) as annuals? I'll check back to see if you had time to answer. Thanks.

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    1. Yes, we do treat the tulips as annuals. In pots they are easy to lift out when they are finished blooming, and something else goes in their place, like dahlias, which have been started in the greenhouse. Tulips do best if they are allowed to dry out completely after blooming. Because we water, that can't happen. Also tulips don't persist well here. We lift the pots, dry out the bulbs and then take them to our garden on Whidbey island and plant them in the sandy soil there where they get very little summer water. They come back better for us there.

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  4. It will be beautiful in the spring, here the deer eat them off as soon as they emerge from the ground, tulips and their leaves must taste really really good:)

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  5. If you want a great garden next summer a lot of work has to be done now. You are telling me how to do it. Our fall gardening ended about 3 weeks ago. It's never warmed up or dried up to do much work.

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  6. my goodness, that's a lot of work! Can't wait to see the rewards next year!

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  7. I've been considering digging my Dahlias. I usually just leave them in the ground. It looks like you don't wait till a freeze to dig them, I've always heard you're supposed to do that, but I guess not.

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  8. A lot of hard works but well worth it when we see the beautiful display come Spring. I love tulips and daffodils.

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  9. Something to look forward to over the winter months.

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  10. You plant the bulbs in the cans. That's really cool. I've learned something new today. Looking forward to seeing your pictures in the spring.

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  11. I have never seen bulbs planted in pots before. Interesting. May give it a try.

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  12. I have also never seen tulip bulbs planted in pots before. It sure does work for you because they look absolutely gorgeous in spring. I know a lot of my daughter's bulbs got eaten by squirrels.

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  13. You are amazing at all the work you put into your beds. I guess that is why they are so beautiful.

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  14. Look at you! My bulbs are still sitting on a table on the back porch waiting for the rain to let up for a few minutes. (My excuse and I'm sticking by it.) Come on spring!

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