Don't Be Bulb Light

To garden is to invest in the future, but come fall, too many gardeners decide they’ve had enough of this investment business and deal only in the final, fleeting moments of their landscapes’ beauty. Yet September is the key time for performing one final act of gardening that produces bountiful payoff the next spring: planting bulbs.

Decide not to plant bulbs this fall, and you’ll kick yourself next spring when scant few other perennials rise from their winter slumber to grace the garden with immediate bold color and form. If new to gardening, you should know that planting bulbs is easy, in many ways easier than planting annuals and perennials—so grab some weekend hours over the next few weeks and dig in.

Minnesota was a dicey investment, as our state lies in the very northernmost reaches of tulip viability. Our coldest winters can knock tulip bulbs for a loop, to the extent that a planting of several dozen tulips one fall often diminishes to a scant half dozen survivors only a few years later. For better success growing tulips, adhere to the following:

* Virtually all tulip bulbs available for purchase in Minnesota come from Holland, and Dutch growers, aided by U.S. bulb specialists, have made great strides in producing hardier and more robust tulip varieties developed specifically for northern climates. So simply buying fresh bulbs this fall will give you multiple years of bloom that will expand year after year in the garden bed.

* Plant tulips deeper than is suggested on the package. Those are generic instructions designed for the majority of gardeners who live somewhat closer to the Mason–Dixon line. In Minnesota, plant tulips eight to ten inches deep. This extra depth drops the bulbs a few inches below the severe winter frost zone that makes tulip bulbs yearn for the wimpy winters of Holland. Some Minnesota gardeners plant tulip bulbs twelve inches deep; I’ve tried it, and the tulips came up just fine. No, they won’t be shorter.

* Plant tulips, and any bulb plant, the easy way: Rather than messing with one of those ineffective and vexing bulb-planting devices that necessitates removing a small core of earth and planting the bulbs one by one, dig up sunny areas oPlanf the garden to a depth of ten inches or so. Scratch bone meal or a granular bulb fertilizer into the soil in the planting area, then lightly push the bulbs into the soil, with the pointed tip up and the flatter, root end down. Space tulip bulbs between four and six inches apart. Planting bulbs at different depths—eight inches, ten inches, twelve inches—will stagger bloom time. Shovel the removed soil back over the bulbs, and water thoroughly.

* Key to successfully growing all bulb plants is to plant them in soil that drains well. If dealing with heavy clay, remove it to a depth of fourteen inches and order the required amount of black topsoil or amend the clay with copious amounts of organic matter. Cover bulb planting areas with a good foot of fluffed marsh hay to keep frost from penetrating deeply.

* When it comes to quantities of tulips to plant, realize that a dozen tulips, if that number constitutes the grand total for your garden, is nothing. Buying twelve, then planting six over here and a few over there and one here and two there will make for a disappointing spring show. If you’re going to invest in the future, go whole hog.

I recall that during cocktail chatter one evening a gardener whose yard I knew well mentioned that she and her husband had spent the day planting 250 tulip bulbs. The nongardener in the circle spat out a large sip of drink. I recall thinking that for a half-acre lot with numerous curving garden beds 250 bulbs was about right.