IT'S TIME TO TALK BULBS + SOME FOR YOU TOO

Longtime readers will know that I'm not one to rush the seasons (other than winter, which I'm happy to mentally check out of sometime around January 5), but we need to talk about autumn. And maybe a little bit about spring. Because even though my garden is currently enjoying a very summerlike couple of weeks, the autumnal equinox is Friday, which means it's time to get serious about fall garden jobs.

Some of my favorite daffodils that I grew last year, including three split corona varieties and one multi-flowered variety.

And among all the less-than-pleasant jobs (endless raking, anyone?) is one that I guarantee will bring you more satisfaction than any other: bulb planting. OK, so you'll have to wait a few months for the real satisfaction but I promise that there is nothing better seeing the first flowers pop up in spring when the rest of the world is gray.

Because I live in an area with a lot of deer and, more recently, a healthy rabbit population as well, I only plant bulbs that are critter resistant. I can protect my garden in summer from animal browsing by using animal repellents, but I'm not going to pull on my parka in late winter or early spring to go out and spray flowers. That means that my go-to fall-planted bulbs are daffodils and alliums, both of which I can all but guarantee won't be eaten by anything.

A naturalizing daffodil mix I planted in a wooded area last fall bloomed for months in spring, starting with these yellow trumpet daffodils before they gave way to all sort of other varieties.

When planting almost any bulb, my advice is the same: think drifts, not dots. There is something so spectacular about swaths of flowers in spring. Some bulbs naturalize better than others, so last fall I planted a naturalizing mix in the woodsy area along the driveway. They were fabulous last spring, but I anticipate they will get even better as they multiple in future years.

An exotic and unusual double with orange accents.

Daffodils are tough buggers, as this one that seemed intent on blooming through a nest of mayapples proved. 

There are "fancier" daffodils out there as well, and those I like to save for areas closer to the house where their finer details can be admired. The doubles look like roses, the miniatures are charming and sweet and those with reflex petals are downright intriguing. But last year I discovered a group of daffodils that really stole my heart: the split coronas. I can't explain why I had never paid much attention to this before, but last spring they were the real standouts for me.

'Mount Everest' allium was a lovely addition to this part of the garden in early summer. 

'Purple Sensation' alliums looked great from afar and up close. 

If daffodils are the good-doers of spring, alliums are the statement pieces of early summer. Although they come in myriad forms and a handful of colors from deep purple to blue and snow white to pale pink (with the occasional yellow and maroon thrown in), all alliums do one thing better than any other flower: draw your eye. Be they tall like 'Globemaster' or 'Gladiator' or shorter in stature like 'Ivory Queen', just the form of alliums is an attention-getter. I let them stand in the garden long after their flowers have faded as even the dried flowers add important texture.

Quick aside: Here's the how-to on my favorite way to plant bulbs. When you buy them in massive quantities as I tend to do, you have to find an efficient way to get them in the ground and this is fast!

OK, you're sold (as you should be!). But if you're expecting me to tell you to get out there and start planting, you're going to be disappointed. Because in most places in the U.S., it's still too early. You want your bulbs to have time to settle in, but you don't want them thinking, "Hey, it's go time!" I wait until there is a decided nip in the air, usually before a frost. That puts my personal bulb planting time around mid-October, although you can plant them right up until the ground is frozen if you really have to. So why the rush on talking about bulbs now? Because if you don't buy them now, all the good stuff will be gone by the time you do.

So here's me, telling you to shop. Seriously ... go for it, and I promise you will thank me come spring.

To help get you started, Longfield Gardens has agreed to give a selection of daffodils and alliums to two lucky readers. I'll be giving away one Naturalizing Daffodil Mix with 100 bulbs, perfect for creating a swath of gorgeous blooms that should multiple over the years, and one Amazing Allium Mix with 63 bulbs of four varieties of alliums, including 'Christophii', which is a favorite of mine.

Enter using the widget below. There are a lot of ways to enter to maximize your chances, but if you're short on time all you have to do is log in and click and you're in!

Spring blooming bulbs

WAITING FOR SEED SIGNS OF LIFE

I hesitate to even tempt the weather gods by posting this, but holy smokes are we in a stretch of beautiful weather here. The snow is gone, the little creek in the back yard is running (and astonishingly not a single Newfoundland dog has figured that out yet), bulbs are peeking their heads out of the soil.

Only a gardener would truly appreciate all of those things because taken in a broad view, the yard and garden are an unholy muddy mess. It is all I can do to not go traipsing about trying to neaten things up.

Seeds—foxglove on the left in soil blocks and sweet peas on the right—are on a heat mat in the office. Foxglove seeds need light to germinate, which is why they are upstairs. I have two more trays of sweet peas on a heat mat in the basement as well. 

Inside, I have been tending the first seeds of the year. I sowed sweet peas and foxglove 'Dalmation Peach' last weekend, which was a week later than I wanted to. These first seeds are always nerve wracking for me. Even though I do the same thing I have done in previous years, I always worry that perhaps I've done something wrong, or something bad may have happened to the seed. I won't rest easy until I start to see some germination, and that shouldn't be until the middle of next week at the earliest.

As I look at my little pots and tiny bricks of soil, seemingly doing nothing other than occupying space, it is amazing to me to think that soon I will have a room full of seedlings doing a good job of crowding out the humans.

I can't wait.

Are you experiencing amazing weather right now? It seems like all over the country spring is springing.

One last note: I have a very quick favor to ask of you. For the first time ever, I've prepared a very, very short survey about the blog. It's four questions, and one is optional, so it should take about 20 seconds or less to do. Click here if you don't mind helping out. Thank you in advance!

FRIDAY FINDS

This is going to be so darn cool.

I have never even heard of a meal planning system, but I'm pretty sure our current method of a 4 p.m. phone call every day with a cranky conversation about what we don't want to eat and who is going to go to the store can be improved upon.

Deborah Silver did a little roundup of great Narcissus varieties. I have done nothing about bulbs yet this year, but this post is lighting the appropriate fire under my butt.

The Prudent Gardener image

I'm still in denial about fall and certainly what comes after it, but fortunately Debbie over at the Prudent Gardener isn't. She's put together an excellent round up of winter gardening tips that are worth checking out with a hot toddy in hand.

I'm a pretty good baker (or so the people who eat what I bake tell me), but this free course is interesting to me. I will say though, I don't think there is any reason to make your own puff pastry. Life is too short. My baking goal for the winter is to master bread pudding (particularly the recipe for Poogan's Porch bread pudding that I fell in love with in Charleston).

Kylee is giving away some cool Ball jars!

CHECKING IN

Someone just pointed out to me today that Monday is the beginning of June. I can hardly believe it. I feel like I have been complaining, or at least commenting on how busy life has been every time I write a post, so you won't hear that from me today. I'll just say that I have high hopes of getting caught up in the garden over the weekend. Although I'm just coming off a three-day weekend, the weather was not very cooperative and I've not really felt comfortable planting annuals with the cold nights yet.

Just planted, the tomato trough doesn't look like much yet, but in a few weeks it should be looking great.

I've been able to put in a few late nights in the garden this week though, and one of the things I accomplished was getting my new tomato trough planted. I had woodworker extraordinaire Ryan build this for me (Ryan also did the built-ins in our bedroom and our kitchen cabinets) and told him to do it as cheaply as he could while still using wood that would last more than a year or two. As usual, he did a fabulous job building it to my sketch and I stained it gray to match the deck underskirting.

I have two smaller tomatoes planted in it, three basil plants and a couple of parsley plants. I'll have lots more of all of them planted over in the vegetable garden, but these will be right outside the kitchen door for easy access. I'm so happy with how it turned out. It's a big container and I filled it entirely with soil mix, in this case a combination of Fafard 3B potting mix, a bag of manure, a fair amount of chicken grit for drainage and a few handfuls of Espoma Tomato Tone fertilizer.

The first clematis is blooming. Unfortunately I don't recall where I got this one or what it is called but I believe it's an alpina variety. It's growing up the new magnolia tree and the two plants blend in so well together that it looks like a weird tree with two completely different blooms.

You can tell I haven't gotten around to edging this bed yet.

Gardening after work at this time of year really is a joy. There are no mosquitos yet and the light is so beautiful. The new garden I built last year is looking pretty darn good for a new bed. I planted double white daffodils (and I wish I could recall the name) here and I'm so happy with the effect. These daffs are so gorgeous. A neighbor stopped by and said they remind her of gardenia blossoms.

I also snapped a photo the other day of a new sedum I picked up on a whim. I think it is called 'Plum Perfection' but there was no tag in the pot. I'm loving the blush of purple on it. I'll be interested to see if that stays during summer or if that's just a spring show.

The Serviceberry blooms have come and gone.

I would love to do a Friday Finds post for you today, but I've not been online much lately. I shall fix that next week! The good news is that I have lots planned for the blog for next week: a product review that I hope you'll love as much as I do, a little bit about my day as a "movie star," and weather-willing, a post about all the planting I hope I get done over the weekend.

I hope you have a great weekend in the garden!

PLANTING A LAYERED BULB CONTAINER FOR SPRING

Although the forecast for Halloween is for a full-on gale we continue to enjoy a pretty great autumn here so I still haven't done much in the way of garden cleanup. One fall gardening chore I have accomplished, however, is planting bulbs.

It's been several years since I've planted any bulbs, but last spring I was kicking myself for not having more color around because it is so appreciated at that time. I picked up bulbs at Costco and from Brent and Becky's Bulbs (my first time ordering from then and I was very happy with my purchase) and planted them all in about an hour or two.

I'm not going to tell you how to plant bulbs because really it is the most simple of gardening tasks. Dig a hole to the proper depth (it'll be on the back of the package), stick the bulb in pointy side up, cover it with soil, water it and sit tight until spring. There are other things you can do, including fertilize with bone meal and recently I read a suggestion to soak bulbs in Moo-Poo Tea before planting. I don't honestly think you need to do either of those things if you start with good bulbs but they might help keep them going in future years.

I did try a little gardening experiment though. Growing tulips at my house is a pointless activity. Some critter always eats them. But they are so beautiful and I didn't want to go another spring without them. So I'm growing some in a container. In fact I'm growing a whole bunch of bulbs in a container.

I started with a medium-sized planter, the one I grew the patio tomato in this summer, actually. I also reused the potting mix I used for the tomato, although I added a lot of grit to it (I've discovered chicken grit, purchased at a feed store, for this purpose). Bulbs contain everything they need to grow, but they don't like being soggy, so good drainage is really important.

To create a layered effect of bulbs that should bloom from late winter or very early spring all the way through the warmest days of spring, I selected three varieties. I picked a late-blooming tulip (honestly, I can't remember the name but it was a purple and apricot mix from Costco), a mid-spring blooming daffodil ('Avalanche') and a mixture of very early blooming dwarf irises. If you wanted to try this same layering effect, you can really do it with any bulbs so long as you layer them from earliest blooming on top to latest blooming on the bottom.

Sure, I could have made a fancy Adobe Illustrator graphic for you, but this photo of a sketch I made took exactly one minute to create and you get the basic idea, right?

I started with enough soil in the container to be able to plant the tulips (the last to bloom) at their proper depth or a touch deeper (about 9 inches) and packed them in shoulder to shoulder. Then I layered on more gritty potting mix and planted the daffodils about 6.5 inches from the top of the container. I didn't have enough of these to pack them in as tightly, but I evenly spaced out the 10 bulbs I had.

Tulip bulbs packed in tight make up the bottom layer.

Daffodils make up the middle layer.

You get how this goes by now. I covered that with more soil and planted the irises about 3 inches from the top and covered them with soil, filling it all the way to the rim of the pot because I'm sure it will settle throughout the winter.

Dwarf irises are on top. These were then covered with potting mix all the way to the rim of the container.

What I didn't do was water the container at this point, which is a big departure from what you should do when you're planting bulbs in the ground. The potting mix was already really moist and I didn't want the bulbs to get too wet. When I was finished, I just stuck it in our unheated garage sort of in the middle and away from the walls. I have other containers I'll be storing in the garage for winter so I'll group them all together and maybe put some bubble wrap or something around them.

I'll bring out the bulb planter in late winter and give it a good drink and then hopefully the magic will start to happen. If all goes as planned, the irises will bloom first and as they are fading the daffodils will emerge. When those start to fade, the tulips will push through. Don't worry about all the bulbs being on top of each other: the plants will find their way around them.

If you're doing this, the key is to store the container in a cool enough spot. Bulbs need a certain amount of cold to bloom, so a basement is probably too warm.

And now comes the tough part: waiting for spring.

FEATURE FRIDAY: SPRING HAS SPRUNG

The declaration in the headline might be more optimistic than realistic, but I thought it would be appropriate to mark the first full day of spring with some shots of spring bulbs in full bloom, even it will be several weeks before such a thing happens in my area.

When I did the garden design styles series, one reader had a comment that had me laughing so hard and I've not forgotten it. Now every time I see a photo of a garden with a boxwood hedge I think of it.

Casa Mariposa said, "I don't like structured, formal gardens and little boxwood hedges drive me nuts. I just want to take a pair of shears to the side and cut an escape route for all the plants penned up inside." 

The image of cutting an escape route for the plants stuck in boxwood jail (such as the tulips below) brings a smile to my face every time.

Looking at these photos, I'm a bit sad that I don't grow more tulips, but it seems like a worthless cause when every critter around seems to line up to eat them.

I've discovered some of the fancier kinds of daffodils and that helps me forgot that I'm missing tulips. I love the doubles and many of them have a lovely fragrance too.

The Impatient Gardener photo

Every spring I tell myself that I'm going to plant more spring bulbs come fall and then every fall I decide that I have too many other chores to do in the garden so I skip it. The only negative about spring bulbs as far as I'm concerned is having to deal with the foliage after the flowers have faded. The more daffodils I have, the more braiding of leaves I have to do and that gets tiresome. Still I doubt that few things can stir a gardener's soul more than the springs first flowers.

What are your favorite spring bulbs?

All photos from Houzz.com. Click on the photo for more information.

The Garden Appreciation Society Week 2

Welcome to Week 2 of The Garden Appreciation Society. Sounds like everyone made it through Week 1 without any emergency visits to their therapists, so I'd say we're all doing a good jog at easing ourselves into bringing our flowers inside to enjoy in a whole new way.

So tell the truth, especially if you're reluctant to actually cut any blooms in your garden to enjoy inside: Did you love seeing your beautiful bouquet last week? Did it bring at least one smile to your face?

We're still fully ensconced in daffodil land here these days so this week's bouquet features more of them. I only picked yellow ones this week and the one featured front and center—the double bloom with the orange center—is a favorite. It's either Cheerfulness or Tahiti (I can't remember which), and it smells amazing. I combined it with Virginia bluebell blooms, which are the most intense blue for that totally classic combination of yellow and blue in a favorite vase.

How are you appreciating your garden in new ways this week?

New to The Garden Appreciation Society? You can read more about it here, but the general idea is that gardeners need to break the habit of only appreciating their hard work and their gardens in their "natural habitats" and bring a small part of their garden inside to appreciate in a new way. It doesn't have to be a huge bouquet. It's not about flower arranging and it's not about photography.

So make a bouquet from your garden, bring it inside and appreciate it! And if you feel like it, link it up below. You can link to it on your blog, a photo site (like Flickr) or even Facebook (just check your settings for that photo so you make sure we can all see it).

Here's a link to Week 1. If you haven't already, check out the great links there.

Two sure signs of spring

A happy Friday to you all!

There is indeed reason to be joyous this Friday. The painters were to come this morning to finish up a few last touch ups on the cabinets which means that I will spend a good part of the weekend organizing what I can while we wait for drawer fronts and cabinet doors. I can't tell you how nice it will be to reduce the number of boxes spread throughout the house. When we bought the house I was in a hurry to get unpacked because Mr. Much More Patient left for about four months the day after we moved in and I just wanted things put away, so I sort of threw things in drawers and they stayed there for 11 years. Now I have the luxury of thinking things through a bit more.

The even better news is that yesterday I came across two sure signs of spring.

Those are daffodils, folks. But not just daffodils poking up. Those are BUDS! Sure it's only one small clump that is always the earliest to show its face, but who cares. There is life out there.

The other sign of spring was this.

The first spray painting project of the year! I'm not sure what is up with me and painting things black on the spur-of-the-moment but it has happened again. I've been thinking that I needed to pull a little black over to the other side of the kitchen to balance out the botanical prints and the door. The light was down for painting and the outside temperature was 52 degrees, a whopping two degrees above the minimum temperature for spray painting.

Of course I'll show you more on that later, but for now, let's all revel in two signs of spring as reliable as a robin searching for a worm.

Daffodils: Spring's unsung heroes

The relationship I have with daffodils is one that has evolved over the last decade. For a time, I thought of daffodils as the ugly stepsister to the showier and more varied queen of spring bulbs, the tulip. They were something I merely tolerated because I wanted something blooming but knew that tulips would be ravaged by critters in most of my garden. Then I started appreciating the cheery color they brought at that time when a gardener so needs to see something blooming. Soon after, I discovered all the different varieties of daffodils and now I have a whole new appreciation for them.

I'd like to say I planned it, but to be honest, I got lucky and inadvertently planted varieties that bloom at different times so I have about two months of daffodil blooms to enjoy. I don't pay much attention to their names so some are unknown to me, but others I pay more attention to. 

I don't do anything special to my daffodils. These days I just dig a hole and throw a bunch of them in as I prefer to have large clumps vs. individual flowers scattered here and there. I don't fertilize them. I do leave the foliage standing as long as I can possibly tolerate it (although I braid it and tied it into little packages), but that's it.

Some varieties have already finished blooming (I believe my first bloom was April 7 this year, a record for me, I believe), but others are just now coming into their glory. Here's a sampling of the daffodils you'll find around my yard.

 

I have to say, I'm partial to the doubles, but what amazes me most is the lovely scent that some of them have. It is sweet and decidedly not daffodil-like. They will never play second fiddle to a tulip in my yard again.

On my desk

Brightening up the corner of my desk at work today.

I'm so stingy about cutting flowers from my garden but I never regret it when I do. It's unbelievable to me how much this collection of daffs is making me happy today. 

What's happening now

This headline should really read "What WAS happening a few days ago." Blogger was down for much of the end of the week so I couldn't post this, but I hope you enjoy it now. Sorry for the delay.

Sometimes I feel like everything I write on this blog is old news because my zone 5 garden is so far behind so many of those of my readers. I can't believe that some blogs have pictures of tomatoes on the vine this week!

The situation seems to be particularly bad this year, although I'm not sure if that's because the weather really has been worse than normal or if it's because we had a lovely spring last year so things are slow in comparison to last year when they were probably ahead of schedule.

I planted climbing rose CanCan in front of the downspout in the front of the house. I was so upset when I found out there was no option to putting that downspout smack dab in the middle of the front of the house, although I have to say it doesn't look as bad as I thought it would. Cancan is developed by Bill Radler who created the Knock-out rose series and grows to about 10 feet so I have hopes that it will do well in this place and not eat the house.

 

Some of the daffodils are blooming. Is there any cheerier flower than a daffodil? OK, maybe daises, but daffs are close.

 

Other varieties have yet to bloom. I should have daffodil blooms for at least the next two to three weeks.

 

I was thrilled to see the wonderful purple spikes of 'Blue Angel' hosta poking up. Certainly a favorite in my garden.

 

The Serviceberry tree has fuzzy little buds getting ready to bloom. The Serviceberry trees at work usually bloom four to seven days before the one at my house does so I usually have a little warning. My mother-in-law bought this tree for us the second summer after we bought the house, so it's been in the garden for eight years now. It's a lovely little tree.

 

Dicentra 'Gold Heart' is coming up. I think everyone should grow this plant. It's just amazing.

 

The mini greenhouse is full of plants: some plugs from the Yahoo plant co-op, some from last year that I overwintered in pots heeled into the ground and, believe it or not, I finally potted up the poor amaryllis bulbs that were forgotten in the basement.

 

There are a lot of plants by the garage waiting for a spot in the ground. Three beautiful Hydrangea 'Little Lime' are waiting, along with some roses I overwintered (again in pots in the ground) and a few other random things.

 

They back yard looks like a graffiti artist attacked it. That's the rough layout for a path and new beds that I have planned. I'm not at all looking forward to doing the hardscaping, but paying someone to do it just isn't in the budget so that too is going to be a (back-breaking) DIY project. I hope to complete it by Memorial Day but I suspect that, like a lot of my DIY projects, that is a totally unrealistic deadline. (There is nothing like taking a picture of your own space to realize what a dump it looks like!)

 

And very exciting news: The cable railings are finally finished on the deck! I was going to do a post on installing these because Mr. Much More Patient did the honors, but honestly, it's a pretty high-level DIY project that is a bit more complicated than a post on a blog would cover. They are however, sailboat lifelines. No seriously, they really ARE sailboat lifelines. There is NO difference and we actually bought the materials for this project from a company that sells both marine stainless steel products and has an architectural line. By the way, if you're looking for something like this, email me for the contact information. Anyway, since Mr. MMP has experience with lifelines, he figured this out pretty quickly, but it was still a three-weekend project just because drilling all the holes and cutting all the wire took a long time. I'm happy it's finished now. All we have to do now is touch up some of the stain on the deck and pergola and install the stair lights and the deck is finished!

 

So as Al Roker would say, that's what's happening in my neck of the woods. What's up in yours?