Bulbs

I arrived and took possession February 4th 2019. The town was sheathed in ice-covered snow, and the fifteen trees were shrouded at their bases. Had the previous owner planted beds of bulbs around each tree - would I be greeted next month with purple and yellow crocuses?

No!

So I waited until September, ordered a couple of hundred bulbs (Narcissus, Hyacinth, Crocus, Tulip, Bluebell) and when they arrived the first week of October, got to work. Waited through the winter, and on Saturday, April 11, 2020I reported "Two new shoots; somewhere here are a couple of crocus shoots."

Each September I place an order for bulbs and increase the number that sprout in Spring each year.

Hyacinths

This year (October 2022) I have loaded five old hanging baskets with sixteen fresh hyacinth bulbs, labeled H1 through H5.

The pots were loaded half-full of rich soil from my vegetable bed, the bulbs pressed in, and then topped off with sieved soil.

H4 and H5 have a white-colored bulb; we will see,

Here the five pots, topped off with sieved soil, are assembled at the top of the driveway to be rained on, for the soil to settle down. If the soil settles well I shall top off with more rich soil from the vegetable bed.

When the first frost arrives, I plan to bring the five pots into my 5c laundry shelter, to keep them chilled. Then in February, March at the latest, I shall bring them out one week at a time and hope that they all sprout and fill my stale winter cabin with the aroma of spring.

Wednesday, February 01, 2023

This morning I brought in the first of my five remaining Hyacinth pots. The label says it is Hyacinth 6, but I thought I had planted only five.

The pot can thaw in the kitchen overnight, and then find itself a sunny spot on the house. Perhaps my bedroom. Two weeks from now I shall bring in a second pot.

Sunday, March 12, 2023

The Mathematics of Bulbs .

Saturday, April 01, 2023

Sometimes a well-meaning friend will give you a grab-bag of bulbs, unlabeled, mixed, a mess. Perhaps a milk carton containing about two dozen bulbs. The bulbs are a mixture of several types of flowers such as Daffodil, Crocus, Tulips and so on.

What to do?

My suggestion is that you lay out, say, five beds as squares two feet on a side. Or similar. In a sunny spot, and as soon as the ground has thawed to three or four inches depth, group the bulbs by colour, size, or what have you, then plant each group of bulbs in its own square. You may have a few bulbs in a “I have no idea” group, so plant them along the front edge of the squares.

When your bulbs come up, you will recognize the flower – “Square one is daffodils, square two is crocus” and so you will know what each bulb is.

The front row will self-identify “OK, so that bulb is a daffodil”, and you will have a better idea next year.

The Planting of Bulbs: Spear a hole twice the depth of the bulb. Drop the bulb in the hole, cover with compost/soil, water so as to settle the soil around the roots and bulb.

That’s it!

I used some strips of batten painted with luminous pink spray paint to identify my first set of bulbs. After that year I just dug out the trench, sieved the soil. Soil went back to the compost bins between layers of grass clippings. Fresh compost went into the trenches, pushed the bulbs in by hand, covered with more top-soil.

Piece of cake.

Have fun.

Garlic

Friday, April 07, 2023

A sack of two garlic bulbs from Foodland.

The bases show dried roots.

I put them, half immersed, in a bowl of rain water to take in water for a few days, after which I will split off the cloves for planting.

Sunday, April 09, 2023

One cluster of bulbs has developed roots; at least, the dried roots have soaked up water, have swollen, and offer promise of a rich harvest later this year.

The second cluster seems to have developed a thin film of mold across the outer scales.

Surprisingly, the second cluster, whose roots were nowhere near as swollen as the first, has begun to sprout!

Inspection of the image shows ten potential garlic plants. Since I buy at most one sack of one or two clusters each year, I am unlikely to run out of garlic if I plant ten cloves, each producing ten bulbs!

Nonetheless, I shall plant all twenty(?) cloves and give away what I cannot use.

Wednesday, April 12, 2023

The first work-outdoors day this year. Soil Remediation for this date has a short account of the bed preparation.

A set of red tulip bulbs. Note that in most cases the bulbs have sprouted. I hang on to the dinky plastic tags and insert them at the end of each mini-plot so that I can document the plots.

I have two flats of narcissus, different verities, all shooting well.

And these are crocus if I am not mistaken. I ran out of time last year and didn’t get around to planting these out.

Here is a view of the last mini-plot – the crocus bulbs – before shoveling more Good Soil over them.

Then of course, next morning, all is covered in a light flurry of snow.

Sunday, April 16, 2023

Today threatened to be 8c, so at eleven o’clock I am out making a new plot in what is turning out to be my Bulb bed. I have shoveled more thawed surface towards the eastern end of the bed to make a pile about one foot thick of loose soil.

The next rain (tomorrow) will tamp it down a bit. I continue to separate my plots of bulbs with 32” scrap timber, white edge up!

A view of the eastern end; the yellow lines mark my newest plot, target for garlic..

A view from the western end of the plot. You can see the deep-dugout in the centre of the bed; more detail below.

The lower-left part of this image shows undisturbed soil from last fall. The upper-right part of the image shows where I shoveled out a few more inches of soil ten minutes ago.

In the foreground, the side boards show that I am this day able to dig down about half a foot, which suggests that generally the thaw has reached six inches.

And in the centre, the side boards show that I am this day able to dig down a foot, mainly because a week ago I scraped off the top two or three inches.

I lay out a refrigerator grid as a kneeling pad, and a tub of 40 garlic cloves.

I use a spare board to guide my shovel as I drag it like a ploughshare to mark, but not make, a trench for eight cloves. Five such trenches should suffice.

The top-left corner shows the nine-foot stalks from last year’s artichokes. I ran out of time to clear them away before the cold and snowy weather began, but on balance this is a good thing. They make a bed of what must be similar to “rushes” on the path between my beds.

And here is my new plot of garlic, the cloves press down easily into the loose soil, no need to trowel out holes. The top is smoothed over to cover the cloves.

Some of the gloves were old and suspiciously soft. My principle is “The answer is NO, unless you ask!”, so I plant not only healthy sprouting cloves, but also cloves that look suspicious. The suspicious ones MIGHT sprout and yield another twelve cloves, but if they don’t, well, they will continue to rot down and enrich the soil.

We are due for light showers tomorrow, and I can top this (and the other plots) off with more soil from this bed, or by compost from the bins.

Another word about compost: I use a cyclical process:-

(a) Once the crops are harvested in the fall, I use the vegetable bed soil to cover the rockery or to spread on new beds with fall plantings. This soil provides nutrients and raises the bed by an inch or two.

(b) At this time of year, when I have scavenged the beds for top soil (as I have with my series of bulb beds), I fill in the quarries with decomposed compost from the bins.

The skin of the bins, surface material that is not rotted down, goes into the new bins along with the first grass clippings.

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