thistlebloom
Garden Master
- Joined
- Dec 1, 2010
- Messages
- 16,473
- Reaction score
- 17,414
- Points
- 457
- Location
- North Idaho 48th parallel
The back story:
Summer of 2014 I got a new client in an old landscape that I have taken care of for 4 years. New people, new ideas.
One thing the new owner wanted to see was an "explosion of blooms" at the entry using spring blooming bulbs. It's problematic for a couple of reasons, one of which was the owners timing for residence. This is their summer place, arriving sometime in June. About when, if bulbs still have blooms, they are on the decline side of "exploding". More of a fizzle really.
Another problem was placing the bulbs where she wanted the most color isn't the best place to grow bulbs. I think that one was explained and resolved to everyones satisfaction....we'll see.
I wanted her to pick the flowers, since I can only guess what would be the most pleasing to her. I wasn't comfortable with guessing wrong, bulbs in quantity aren't cheap.
She picked, they got shipped and arrived right after, or actually, right in the middle of a deep freeze, and the ground was frozen.
So here's the experimental part:
I want to try to retard the bloom time of the bulbs as much as possible.
Because the ground was already frozen when the bulbs arrived, and didn't thaw appreciably even when we had a warmup I opted to plant them all in nursery pots.
So 611 bulbs, 3 cubic feet of soil, 1 cubic foot of perlite, and nearly every pot in my hoarded stash later, (boy am I glad I didn't take them to the recycle bin last fall, I was sweating it, worried if I'd have enough) they are all potted up, watered and waiting for the next freeze.
When we've had more cold and snow I plan to shovel a pile of snow over them, and keep shoveling until they are well and truly buried, then mulch over the snow pile with straw, pine needles or bags of leaves that I've saved back. Whatever it takes to keep them cold for as long as possible.
Then in late Aprilish (?) I'll pull them out of cold storage and plant them in the ground and keep my fingers crossed. Some of those will go in decorative pots to display on their deck, and I'm thinking those will probably warm up and bloom sooner than the in-ground ones, so I may hold them back and keep them cold and dark longer.
I added to the owners shipped daffodils with 150 pink tulips I picked up at Costco, I've had good success with the dormant plants I bought there in the past, including my own tulips, and picked up some assorted end-of-season tulips for half off from HD, about 96 of those. Those HD bulbs are a little dicey, some of them had begun sprouting already, so they may not make it to spring.
I'm hoping this all works out. The good thing is that she (my client) realizes the timing was off, so she sees it as an experiment too, and that takes some of the pressure off.
If anybody sees holes in my mad scheme please point them out! This is a learning thing for me.
Summer of 2014 I got a new client in an old landscape that I have taken care of for 4 years. New people, new ideas.
One thing the new owner wanted to see was an "explosion of blooms" at the entry using spring blooming bulbs. It's problematic for a couple of reasons, one of which was the owners timing for residence. This is their summer place, arriving sometime in June. About when, if bulbs still have blooms, they are on the decline side of "exploding". More of a fizzle really.
Another problem was placing the bulbs where she wanted the most color isn't the best place to grow bulbs. I think that one was explained and resolved to everyones satisfaction....we'll see.
I wanted her to pick the flowers, since I can only guess what would be the most pleasing to her. I wasn't comfortable with guessing wrong, bulbs in quantity aren't cheap.
She picked, they got shipped and arrived right after, or actually, right in the middle of a deep freeze, and the ground was frozen.
So here's the experimental part:
I want to try to retard the bloom time of the bulbs as much as possible.
Because the ground was already frozen when the bulbs arrived, and didn't thaw appreciably even when we had a warmup I opted to plant them all in nursery pots.
So 611 bulbs, 3 cubic feet of soil, 1 cubic foot of perlite, and nearly every pot in my hoarded stash later, (boy am I glad I didn't take them to the recycle bin last fall, I was sweating it, worried if I'd have enough) they are all potted up, watered and waiting for the next freeze.
When we've had more cold and snow I plan to shovel a pile of snow over them, and keep shoveling until they are well and truly buried, then mulch over the snow pile with straw, pine needles or bags of leaves that I've saved back. Whatever it takes to keep them cold for as long as possible.
Then in late Aprilish (?) I'll pull them out of cold storage and plant them in the ground and keep my fingers crossed. Some of those will go in decorative pots to display on their deck, and I'm thinking those will probably warm up and bloom sooner than the in-ground ones, so I may hold them back and keep them cold and dark longer.
I added to the owners shipped daffodils with 150 pink tulips I picked up at Costco, I've had good success with the dormant plants I bought there in the past, including my own tulips, and picked up some assorted end-of-season tulips for half off from HD, about 96 of those. Those HD bulbs are a little dicey, some of them had begun sprouting already, so they may not make it to spring.
I'm hoping this all works out. The good thing is that she (my client) realizes the timing was off, so she sees it as an experiment too, and that takes some of the pressure off.
If anybody sees holes in my mad scheme please point them out! This is a learning thing for me.
Tulips, Daffs, Scilla....and dozens more.
