Not long ago , I was talking to a gardening friend . The bailiwick was spring bulbs , and her coronach was that she just did n’t have the fourth dimension to get them in the ground . “ I ’ve give up buying bulb , ” she tell , “ because every year they terminate up rot in my service department . ” I can sympathize with her , because of every fall , at least in my little corner of the worldly concern , minacious forces conspire to take off the weekend that I intended to expend planting all the bulbs that I ordered back in August .
The job is , if you do n’t plant bulbs , you wo n’t have all those lovely daffodils , tulips , crocus and hyacinth next spring . What you will have is depression over the deficiency of beauty after the long gray wintertime , coupled with envy of your neighbors who did manage to get something in . There are enough sources of impression in the macrocosm , without try out to eradicate those that are easy treatable .
So take eye . It really is n’t too late . If the priming has not frozen where you are , you’re able to still plant those bulbs . Now , however , is not the meter to use that wimpy petty dibble that you dictate from one of the high - oddment garden catalogue . Desperate time call for desperate metre . Take a sturdy spade and dig trenches so that you may establish fistful at a time . Using this method acting you could actually get quite a few bulbs in the ground in a comparatively short period of time . It also work it possible to create fair sized clumps of individual cultivars , and those will look quite dramatic in the outpouring .
If the ground has freeze down , and you do n’t feel up to diggingbulbholes with dynamite , there is another feasible alternative . Go to thegarden centeror out into that neglected corner of the service department and get as many wide , shallow toilet as you may . If you have take the garden meat path , buy a large sack ofpotting mixas well . Pot up your bulbs just as if you were putting them in the background alfresco . Water your newly fill up pots , then pose them in an unwarmed garage , on a corner of the back porch , or in some similar , out - of - the- way spot . Water them every once in for a while .
After a few month , you’re able to do one of two things . If you bring the pots into the house , they will be pull a fast one on into imagine spring has arrived , and within a hebdomad or two will begin sprouting . Eventually , you will have flower , probably ahead of the bulbs that are hold off in the ground outdoors . Without the welfare of script or sage advice or anything else , you will have“forced ” pots of leap bulbs . you could bring the pots in each week to reel the period of indoor bloom of youth .
If you decide to keep the hatful in the garage , wait until the weather begins warming up ( when the nights are above freezing ) and take them out into the garden . They will bourgeon and blossom just as if they had been plant in the ground . respite assured in the knowledge that it ’s quite stylish to mix in containerized specimen with in - ground plantings . Things will be so beautiful in March and April that your friends will never bed that you procrastinated in October .
Once your light bulb have bloomed , keep water them , and do n’t trim off the foliage until it begins to brown . As you areplanting your annual , dig holes that are more or less deeper than normal . Unpot your clumps of rooted bulb , and put those bunch in the planting holes . This way the annuals will immediately hide the less - than - attractive dying leave of absence of the daffodils and tulips . You will also be go under for next class , as some of the tulips ( depending on the variety ) and most of the daffodils will reappear the following natural spring .
The great garden author Henry Mitchell is reported to have collapsed and give-up the ghost one November day while helping a admirer plant spring light bulb . It was a poetic and raw manner for a outstanding human being to go , but if you are palpate a second peaked these days , there is no rationality to get out in the low temperature with a trowel . tolerate by the sink with a superfluity of pots and a big suitcase ofpotting soil . You ’ll find just as satisfied , and your foot will delay tender .
by E. Ginsburg
Yellow RoseSWORD LILIESCHANGE IN THE GARDENUNFORGETTABLEFRESH veg
